The Significance Of Icons In Orthodox Worship

The Eastern church has long valued the significance of icons as sources of revelation in worship. With insights from the Eastern Orthodox churches, the theological rationale and traditional practice of iconography is described here in terms of its role in worship. Windows on the Holy There is an old story about a child in a Sunday School class who is asked by her teacher,"And who are the saints?" Thinking of the elaborate stained-glass windows lining the nave of the church, the child responds,"They're the people that the light shines through. " In a certain sense, that is the task of the liturgy: to be, like the saints (or the stained-glass windows), a means through which God's light might shine, might reach us. And that has always been the primary role of iconography as well: to be a window, a doorway, a glimpse of the light of God's kingdom. Yet to Western eyes, icons can often seem dark, sad, primitive. Icons without interpretation are meaningless: flat paintings, mysterious, …