kissing icons and theology

A young man called me recently to discuss his family’s movement toward the Orthodox Church. He told me a priceless story about how his seven-year old daughter helped him and his wife understand an Orthodox practice that is often a hindrance to inquirers. Although the family had icons in their home they could not grasp the reason for the practice of venerating (kissing) them. One evening after prayers with his daughter she looked at the icon in her room and asked, “Who is on those pictures, Daddy?”

He replied, “The Virgin Mary and Jesus.”

She picked up the icon, kissed it and hugged it to her chest exclaiming, “Oh, daddy, they love you so much!”

“Then,” he told me, “We understood. It’s all about affection.”

Love, in fact, is the heart and soul of the theology of the early Church Fathers and of the Orthodox Church. The Fathers of the Church-East and West-in the early centuries shared the same perspective: humanity longs for liberation from the tyranny of death, sin, corruption and the devil which is only possible through the Life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Only the compassionate advent of God in the flesh could accomplish our salvation, because only He could conquer these enemies of humanity. It is impossible for Orthodoxy to imagine life outside the all-encompassing love and grace of the God who came Himself to rescue His fallen creation. Theology is, for the Fathers of the Orthodox Church, all about love.

V. Rev. Antony Hughes, Ancestral Versus Original Sin: An Overview with Implications for Psychotherapy