When you venerate an icon, you’re greeting a person. You kiss the icon, bow before it, light a candle, or make the sign of the cross, but the honor passes through the wood and paint to reach Christ, the Theotokos, or the saint depicted there.
That’s the short answer. But if you grew up Baptist or non-denominational here in Southeast Texas, you probably have questions. Doesn’t the Second Commandment forbid this? Isn’t this idolatry? Let’s talk about what’s actually happening when an Orthodox Christian venerates an icon.
It’s Called Proskynesis, Not Worship
The Greek word is proskynesis. It means bowing down, showing reverence, offering honor. When you walk into an Orthodox church and see someone kiss an icon of Christ, they’re performing proskynesis. They might bow. They might cross themselves. They might stand there quietly for a moment. These aren’t random gestures, they’re how we greet the people we love who are alive in Christ.
But here’s what matters most: proskynesis isn’t latreia. That second word means worship, and it belongs to God alone. The Orthodox Church has always distinguished between these two. We venerate icons. We worship God. The Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787 AD settled this question definitively, and the Church hasn’t budged since.
St. John of Damascus put it plainly. We honor the Gospel book, don’t we? We don’t toss it on the floor or use it as a coaster. We treat it with reverence because of what it contains and what it represents. Same with the Cross. Nobody thinks we worship wood when we kiss the Cross on Good Friday. The honor we show passes through the physical object to the reality it represents.
Icons work the same way.
The Incarnation Changed Everything
Here’s why icons aren’t idolatry: God became visible. That’s what the Incarnation means. The Second Person of the Trinity took flesh, and people saw Him, touched Him, ate with Him. St. John writes in his first epistle about what they heard and saw and handled with their hands. Christ had a face. He had features you could paint.
Before the Incarnation, depicting God would’ve been impossible and wrong. God is spirit, invisible, beyond all images. But when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, everything changed. We can now depict Christ because He truly became man. To refuse to depict Him starts to sound like denying the Incarnation itself, which is exactly what the iconoclasts were doing back in the eighth century.
The Seventh Ecumenical Council understood this. When they mandated the use of icons and the practice of venerating them, they weren’t inventing something new. They were defending the reality of the Incarnation against people who wanted to keep God safely invisible and abstract.
What It Looks Like in Practice
Walk into St. Michael’s on a Sunday morning and you’ll see it. Someone approaches the icon of Christ on the iconostasis, crosses themselves, bows slightly, and kisses the icon. Maybe they pause there for a moment. They’re not confused about what they’re doing. They know they’re not kissing paint. They’re greeting their Lord, showing Him honor and love through this physical act.
It’s not magic. It’s not superstition. It’s how we relate to God in a religion that takes the body seriously. We’re not Gnostics who think the spiritual life happens only in our heads. We’re Christians who believe God took a body, died in that body, and rose in that body. So we use our bodies when we pray. We bow, we kneel, we cross ourselves, we kiss icons. The physical and spiritual aren’t separate.
Some inquirers worry they’re being asked to do something that feels like idolatry. I get that. If you grew up hearing that Catholics and Orthodox worship Mary and pray to statues, this practice looks suspicious. But spend time with it. Watch how Orthodox Christians venerate icons. You’ll see they’re not confused about who God is. They’re crystal clear that worship belongs to the Trinity alone. What they’re doing with icons is different, it’s honor, respect, love expressed through physical reverence.
The Person, Not the Materials
Here’s a helpful comparison. You probably have photos of people you love. Maybe your grandmother, maybe your kids. If someone spit on that photo or threw it in the trash, you’d be upset. Not because you think your grandmother lives inside that piece of photo paper, but because the image represents someone you love. The dishonor shown to the image feels like dishonor to the person.
Icons work similarly, except they’re not just reminders or decorations. They’re theological statements painted in egg tempera and gold leaf. An icon of Christ proclaims that God became man. An icon of a saint shows you what a human being looks like when transformed by grace. These are windows into heaven, and when we venerate them, we’re reaching through those windows to touch the people on the other side.
The Seventh Ecumenical Council said it clearly: “The honor rendered to the image passes to the original.” When you kiss an icon of the Theotokos, you’re honoring Mary herself, the woman who said yes to God and bore the Savior in her womb. She’s alive. She’s more alive than we are. And the icon is one way we stay connected to her and ask her prayers.
An Invitation
If you’re visiting an Orthodox church for the first time, nobody expects you to venerate icons right away. Watch. Ask questions. Read about the Seventh Council. But don’t be surprised if, after a while, you find yourself wanting to kiss that icon of Christ when you walk in the door. It stops feeling strange and starts feeling like greeting an old friend. Because that’s what it is.
