Before the icons at home and in church, the faithful light lamps and candles, bow, and kiss the images of Christ and the saints.
Tagged: Prayer Remembrance Sacred time
How It Is Practiced
Every Orthodox home keeps an icon corner — the 'beautiful corner' — facing east, with icons of Christ, the Mother of God, and family saints, a hanging lamp, and often incense. Morning and evening prayers are said standing there; the lamp is lit on feasts and in trouble. In church, the faithful venerate the icons on entering, with bows and a kiss, and icons are carried in procession and censed during the services.
Purpose and Meaning
Icons are confessed as windows, not idols: the honor shown the image passes to the person depicted, as the Seventh Ecumenical Council taught. The icon corner makes the home a little church and places the family's ordinary life — meals, departures, sorrows — in the witnessed presence of Christ and the saints. The practice is the devotional form of the doctrine of the Incarnation: matter can bear grace.
References
- Icon — Wikipedia Free / open access
Related Practices
- The Akathist — An akathist is a long hymn of praise to Christ, the Mother of God, or a saint, sung standing.
- The Prayer Rule — A prayer rule is a fixed daily pattern of prayers, readings, and prostrations kept under a spiritual father's guidance.
- Prostrations and Bows — Orthodox prayer is prayed with the body: bows from the waist and full prostrations punctuate the daily rule and the services.
Related Across the Site
- First Fridays Devotion Devotion — The First Fridays devotion joins Mass and Communion on nine consecutive first Fridays to the promises of the Sacred Heart.
- Home Pūjā Devotion — The household shrine's daily worship: the deity awakened, bathed, dressed, fed, and offered lamp and flowers as an honored guest in the home.
- Novena Devotion — A novena is a prayer or set of prayers repeated on nine consecutive days for a particular intention.
- Offerings at the Buddhist Shrine Devotion — Flowers, candles, incense, water, and fruit before the Buddha image: the daily offering whose lesson is impermanence itself.
- Stations of the Cross Devotion — The Stations of the Cross walk the worshipper through fourteen scenes of Christ's journey to the crucifixion.
- The Angelus Devotion — The Angelus is a short prayer on the Incarnation, prayed at morning, noon, and evening at the sound of a bell.
- The Kamidana — Household Altar Devotion — High on a wall of the home sits a miniature shrine: each morning it receives fresh water, rice, salt, and a bowed head with two claps.
- Dhikr Prayer or Creed — The remembrance of God through repeated short formulas of glory, praise, and greatness.