Why the veneration of icons?
Icon comes from the Greek word eikon for image, the same word used when our Holy Prophet Moses says “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” or when St Paul admonishes the Corinthians, “For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.” One of the hallmarks of Orthodoxy is the restoration of icons in the worship of the Church after the iconoclastic period of persecution in the late first millenium. Read the Apologia against Those who Decry Holy Images (8th cent.) from St. John Damascene’s On Holy Images as translated by Mary H. Allies, 1898, which addresses the age old question about the veneration of holy images and icons. Why the veneration of our Lady the Theotokos (Mother of God) and ever-virgin Mary? In struggling for a year with this question, it was a surprise to find out that even the reformers have no trouble in relating to Mary a
