Prayer with icons
Prayer before images that are venerated rather than worshipped.
Orthodox pray facing icons of Christ, the Theotokos, and the saints, in church and at home, lighting candles and kissing the images. The Seventh Ecumenical Council (787) drew the governing line: icons receive veneration, not worship, and honor shown an image passes to the person depicted. Many homes keep an icon corner as a set place of daily family prayer.
Icons are present wherever Orthodox prayer happens, in church and at home, where a corner of a room is usually given over to them. A person entering venerates them, often with a bow and a kiss.
The distinction the tradition insists on is between veneration, given to the icon, and worship, given to God alone. It was settled by a council in 787 after a long and violent argument, and Orthodox writers still make the distinction carefully because the argument was real.
Icons are written rather than painted, in the tradition's own vocabulary, and follow established patterns rather than an artist's invention. The point is recognisability rather than originality.
Does it have a text?
Praying before an icon has no text of its own; a person says whatever they were going to say. Particular icons attract particular hymns, and those belong to the fixed liturgical books rather than to this practice as such.
When it comes up
Other forms of prayer in Orthodox
- The Divine Liturgy — The central Orthodox service, sung throughout and almost entirely fixed.
- The Orthodox daily cycle and prayer rule — Vespers, Matins and the hours in church, and a personal rule kept at home.
- The Jesus Prayer — A single repeated sentence at the centre of Orthodox contemplative practice.
- Orthodox supplication and blessing services — Short services asking for help, healing or blessing outside the main liturgy.
- Orthodox prayer for the departed — Memorial services for the dead, kept at set intervals after a death.
This page describes a practice. It does not tell you how to perform it, or whether you should. Practice varies by region, community and household far more than a page like this can carry, and nobody credentialed in the tradition has signed anything here. The full dossier names its sources.