The Nativity Icon
All of us appreciate the importance of icons as part of the expression of our Orthodox faith. In addition to enhancing the beauty of a church, icons serve a number of purposes for our spiritual development.
- Instructing the laity in matters pertaining to the Christian faith.
- A means of veneration which lifts our minds up to the prototypes which the icons symbolize.
- Arousing us to imitate the virtues of the holy personages depicted thus transforming and sanctifying us.
Because of this we recognize that our Orthodox practice of iconography is much more than merely stylized artistic representations of holy figures but are a symbol of both the material and the spiritual reality of the person or event depicted. From an instructional perspective icons are unique in that unlike regular artwork that depict a singular moment in me like the Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper or Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son, icons oftentimes present multiple events in Christian history in a single icon, helping us understand through simple artwork the intricate elements of our salvation.
The Nativity Icon is a beautiful example of just such an icon presenting simultaneously and concisely many things, a place, persons and events, that would require many words to express. Let’s look
at this in a typical of the event of the Nativity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ…