We use icons because God became visible. When the Word became flesh, the invisible God entered history in a body you could see and touch. Icons testify to that reality.
If Christ hadn’t taken flesh, depicting him would be impossible and wrong. You can’t draw the divine essence. But the Son of God assumed human nature, and that changes everything. The Incarnation makes images not just permissible but necessary. Icons proclaim that God really did become man, that he walked in Galilee, that his mother held him, that Thomas touched his wounds after the Resurrection.
This isn’t just theory. The Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787 settled the question after decades of controversy. Iconoclasts, people who wanted to destroy icons, argued that making images of Christ was idolatry. The Council said no. It declared that icons of Christ, the Theotokos, angels, and saints should be displayed in churches and homes, that they should be venerated and kissed, and that this honor passes through the image to the person depicted. Rejecting icons, the Council taught, was really a way of denying the Incarnation itself. If you can’t depict Christ, you’re saying he didn’t truly become flesh.
Veneration Isn’t Worship
Here’s where people from Baptist or non-denominational backgrounds often get confused, and it’s a fair question. When you walk into St. Michael’s and see someone kiss an icon or light a candle in front of one, it can look like worship. It’s not.
Orthodox theology makes a sharp distinction. Latreia, worship in the fullest sense, belongs to God alone. We don’t worship icons. We don’t worship saints. We don’t worship Mary. What we do is proskynesis, which means veneration or honor. When you kiss an icon of Christ, you’re honoring Christ. When you light a candle before an icon of St. Michael, you’re asking his prayers, the same way you’d ask your friend to pray for you. The honor goes through the image to the person.
Think of it this way. If someone handed you a photo of your grandmother and you kissed it, nobody would think you were worshiping the photograph. You’d be expressing love for your grandmother through her image. Icons work the same way, except they’re not just sentimental keepsakes. They’re windows into the reality of the communion of saints, the truth that the Church includes both the living and the departed.
St. John of Damascus, writing in defense of icons in the eighth century, put it plainly: the honor shown to an image passes to its prototype. You’re not venerating paint and wood. You’re venerating the person the icon makes present to you.
What Icons Do
Icons aren’t decoration. They’re not religious art in the sense that a painting in a museum is art. They’re theology you can see.
Walk into an Orthodox church and you’re surrounded by the whole story of salvation. The iconostasis shows you Christ, the Theotokos, John the Baptist, the archangels. Icons on the walls depict the Nativity, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, Pentecost. The saints look out at you from every direction. This isn’t accidental. The church building itself is meant to be an icon of heaven, and during the Liturgy, heaven and earth really do meet. The icons remind you that when you’re standing in church on a Sunday morning, maybe after a long week at the refinery or dealing with hurricane cleanup, you’re standing with the angels and the saints. You’re not alone.
Icons also teach. For centuries, most Christians couldn’t read. Icons were their Bible, their catechism. Even now, an icon of the Nativity tells you more theology in one image than a paragraph of explanation could. You see the cave (the darkness of the world into which Christ came), the manger (his humility), the star, the shepherds, the magi. You see the Theotokos reclining, having just given birth to God. Everything means something.
And icons shape your prayer life. It’s easier to pray when you’re looking at an icon of Christ or his mother. Not because the image is magic, but because it focuses your attention. It reminds you who you’re talking to. Metropolitan Kallistos Ware once said that icons are meant to change us, to draw us into the reality they depict. They’re tools for transformation, aids to theosis.
The Incarnation Changes Matter
Here’s the deepest reason we use icons. The Incarnation didn’t just save souls. It redeemed matter itself. When God took flesh, he sanctified the physical world. Bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. Water becomes the water of baptism. Oil becomes holy chrism. And wood and paint become windows to heaven.
This is why Orthodox Christianity is so stubbornly physical. We don’t treat the material world as something to escape or transcend. We believe it’s being healed and transfigured. Icons are part of that. They show that creation participates in divine life, that the saints’ bodies were temples of the Holy Spirit, that even our faces can reflect the glory of God.
If you’re visiting St. Michael’s and you’re not sure what to do with the icons, start simple. Stand in front of one. Look at it. Let it look back at you. Kiss it if you’re comfortable doing that, or just make the sign of the cross. Ask the saint to pray for you. You’re not doing anything strange or superstitious. You’re doing what Christians have done since the apostles, participating in the communion of saints and the reality of the Incarnation.
Christ became visible. Icons make that visible to us.
