St. Paul says that Christ is the icon of the invisible God (Col. 2:7). An image, says St. Thomas connotes three simultaneous qualities: likeness to prototype, derivation from it, and similarity of species with it. Likeness alone is not enough. A photography is a likeness; it is not an image in the sense used here. A son is the image of his father (but not vice versa). Christ is the image of the Father, because he manifests Him to mankind. The underlying idea of the icon and indeed of the logos, is the manifestation of the hidden. In itself "image does not demand equality with the archetype; but, in fact, we know that Christ, the image, is identical with the Father in every particular, differing from Him only by the fact of being begotten." (St. John of Damascus).

The icon is helpful for the prayer but not as a means to put the imagination into motion. Metropolitan Seraphim explains the role of the icon in prayer in this way: "If you stand before the Redeemer’s icon or that of the Mother of God, stand as if you were before the Lord Jesus Christ himself or before the most blessed Virgin Mary. Keep your intelligence without any representation, for there is a great difference between standing before the Lord in his very presence, and representing Him to the imagination. In the latter case, attention is not given to prayer directly, but is held by traditional impressions which only skim the surface of our consciousness."

The icon is not a picture. The icon is not a painted representation meant to teach. The icon is a grace and a life. It is a life that penetrates and purifies and elevates. From the icon emanates a virtue that inspires the faithful with hope and gives them consolation. St. Jon of Damascus calls it a "channel of divine grace." Metropolitan Seraphim relates how one of the slavophiles was led to understand the icon, and he quotes him: "One day I was considering a marvelous icono f the Mother of God and reflecting in myself on the childish belief of the people who came to pray before it. Women, old men, the sick, went down on their knees, crossed themselves, prostrated themselves before it. I fixed my gaze on the holy face. All of a sudden, the secret of its miraculous power became manifest. I no longer had before me a mere painting. In it there had accumulated over many generations the spiritual prayers, the passionate supplications of the disinherited, overwhelmed by evils and hardships; the icon had been saturated with the power of faith which now flows from it to be reflected in the hearts of its supplicants. It had become a living thing where Creator and creatures meet. With these thoughts in mind, I looked again at the women, the old men and the children prostrated in the dust before the holy icon, then I looked back at the icon. The features of the Mother of God suddenly came to life. The gaze of love and pity rested peacefully upon the simple believer’s eyes, and I knelt with them all in humble prayer."

The icon, then, is not only an aesthetical entity. It is the result of the faith and of the prayer of the Church. It is the life of the Church lived in Christ. A saving truth is not communicated by the word alone but by the fact of awakening vital forces of life, through the presentation of beauty. Because God loved us, He turned to us a visible face, a human face: He turned to us the face of the absolute beauty which is not different from the fullness of God and the fullness of being. The icon carries with it the love of this beauty, and the beauty of this love.