Praying to Icons: Sister Jeana on the Spiritual Meaning of Iconography

But now can you tell us, listeners, if they don't know, what is an icon and how do we pray with one? It's a

big question.

So literally an icon, I mean, the Greek word icon, it just means icon.

image or representation or portrait.

So it could refer to a lot of different kinds of things.

But usually we're talking about a kind of church art, sacred art, an image of Jesus or the saints or the angels.

And it's created in the Byzantine system and it's meant for prayer.

So it's not just for decoration, but it's created in prayer for the sake of prayer.

And yeah, they use a particular kind of perspective that's a little different from naturalistic perspective.

And there's some other commonalities.

A lot of times they have a gold-toned background, but not necessarily.

There's a little bit of idealization of the world of heaven.

Yeah, that's a starting

point anyway.

I've learned that you write an icon and not paint an icon.

Correct? Am I right? It's not wrong to say you paint an icon.

But the word in Russian means write or paint.

It can go either way.

But really what that's coming out of, you'll also hear words like the grammar of iconography or the, it's a, it's a visual word of God in a sense.

So when you think about if Jesus is the word of God in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

And in the beginning he was, you know, so it's, it's that sense of Jesus is that aspect of God made visible.

And so when we're depicting Jesus or the saints, it's like we're all part of the body of Christ.

And so these are, aspects of God made visible in that bigger sense.