Icon's role in the life of believers

To perceive better the icon’s role in the life of the faithful one should first consider that our Christian Orthodox religion is a revealed one, meaning that it is not the outcome of human intelligence or fantasy, nor is it a passing human creation.

We’re talking about divine reason that has revealed itself to us, to people, first through the prophets of the Old Testament and then through God’s Son himself, Jesus Christ, who was incarnated for our salvation. This revelation has been entrusted for keeping and administration to the Church and its servants, to the bishops and priests who to this day have the duty to teach people the truths of faith. Thus, everything that happens within our Church is not a human invention.

Alongside God’s Word exposed through the Holy Bible, the icon is also a part of the divine revelation, especially if we take into account that the first icon of Saviour Jesus Chris was not painted by a human hand. As we already know, Christ’s face imprinted itself on Saint Veronica’s kerchief by divine miracle. The face was greatly worshiped and valued by believers since the first Christian centuries and it was reproduced by many painters for the piety of the believers who requested it. This is how the painting of holy icons of Our Lord Jesus Christ began.

On the other hand it is known that the Saint Apostle Luke was both doctor and painter and that he painted Mary the Mother of God holding child Jesus in her arms while Jesus Christ still walked this earth.

This first icon of The Mother of God – as the Holy Tradition would tell us – served as model to all the other painters. These first icons were worshiped by believers through kissing, especially after Jesus Christ ascended to heaven. It is also known that through icons God performed numerous miracles and healings. Let us think of Edessa’s king, Abgar, who was cured of the illness he suffered from by touching Jesus Christ’s face on the kerchief.

In the age of persecutions, when Christians had to pray to God in catacombs, underground, the face of our Saviour and that of the Mother of God were depicted on the catacombs’ walls. The same period saw the starting of depicting and worshiping God’s disciples and the martyrs who died for their faith.

Along with the fourth century, after Christians stopped being persecuted, came that period of heresies that lasted four centuries till the 8th century. During this period, the bishops and the Holy Fathers of the Church gathered together in Ecumenical Councils in order to define and lay in writing the dogmas (doctrines) of the faith that were attacked and mocked by the heretics and the faithless. Thus, at the 7th Ecumenical Council, the Church’s position regarding the saint icons’ veneration was definitively stated and settled.

Measures were taken against those who claimed that the worship and kissing of icons were mere idolatry and that under no circumstances should icons be painted in churches. At the time, lots of Christians gave their lives for publicly speaking the truth. By worshipping icons we worship God, the Mother of God or the Saints depicted on them. Thus the seventh Ecumenical Council, by its canons, stated that icons, as well as Christ’s Holy Cross had to be worshipped by all believers by kissing, and that those who would not worship them this way were to be anathema, that is to be eternally severed from Christ’s Church.

During that century a certain style of depicting the Saviour, the Mother of God and the other Saints was crystallized, style we now call the Byzantine style. It formed during the Byzantine Empire and through this style the Church preaches its truth of faith not only through words but also through images. It is known that the bishops and priests of those times were close to icons’ painters whom they guided closely.