My prayer corner

The bedroom of Empress Alexandra Romanov at Alexander Palace, Tsarskoye Selo (in Pushkin, now part of St Petersburg)

I recall standing in the bedroom of Empress Alexandra Romanova, at Tsarskoye Selo in Saint Petersburg, in a pair of blue disposable shoe covers to save the parquetry. The room was warm, surprisingly small, and had a modest bed over which hung a collection of icons. These were not specially commissioned like a Fabergé egg or some royal trinket; they were not impressively framed either, but existed as a testament to a life spent in prayer.

In this homely space, I thought of the Empress standing before this wall praying for the health of her loved ones, praying simply for her country and giving thanks to God.

Why do the Orthodox venerate icons?

Firstly, it is not the wood and paint that we are venerating. Our saints are not dead but live eternally with Christ – icons make the unseen reality manifest. In worship we join the saints in the heavenly kingdom. Icons are not decoration or for schooling the illiterate. Rich in symbolism and very much prescriptive and created in a prayerful state, they are best thought of as theology in colour.

Christ appeared to humanity over 2000 years ago – He existed in bodily form. This is sometimes an overlooked fact as we grapple with faith and tend toward thinking of God's mysteriousness.

Maybe two summers ago I read Graham Greene's The End of the Affair in which the very British, essentially atheist character Sarah Miles experiences conversion when looking upon the marble form of Christ while on holiday in Spain. Why did God send Christ, who had a Body, she pondered? A Body that was maimed and killed for us, no less. Sarah is not a saint by far – she makes one part of the affair that the title refers to.

Why does Christ have a body?
Who can love vapour? She asks herself rhetorically.

I will quote here the Australian artist and iconographer Leonard Brown with whom I had the pleasure of speaking recently.
Essentially, the icon’s life is within the incarnation of Christ, that God became man in flesh…therefore becoming representable, and conversely not to make the image of the Incarnate Lord, speaks of a flawed theology of the Incarnation.   

I have barely hinted at the centrality of icons in Orthodoxy here but it is a subject I will definitely return to as I read and learn. 

An icon corner of my own

Icon corners normally face east to the rising sun which represents the Resurrection of Christ and His clothing during the Transfiguration. My bedroom's eastern corner is not functional as a large window edges up to it. It is also visible from the doorway, and I wanted privacy, therefore I found myself instinctively hanging my icon collection near my side of the bed, in the corner. As my prayer rule increased, I pushed the bed away further to have room to pray, and to prostrate. 

One day, probably a year ago, I walked into the study and caught the scent of myrrh which is known to stream from miraculous icons. Initially I thought it would be the antique original icons in silver protective casing that were giving off the scent. I climbed onto a chair and began my olfactory investigation. The old wedding icons from a deceased relative were not the source of the fragrance. 

I investigated the situation further. 

Christ 'Not made by hands'

I was ashamed to discover I had left small cheaply produced icons in piles on various surfaces. Save for the occasional effort at dusting, I hadn't touched them for years. The fragrance seemed to be emanating from a 10 x 10cm copy on wood of the Saviour-not-made-by-hands, or the Acheiropoieta which is pointedly, the original icon, created when Christ wiped his face on a towel. He then sent this towel with his Divine Image to the ruler of Edessa (in Syria) with a note. The ruler was healed of leprosy. 

On this unassuming little icon there was a faint but unmistakeable scent of myrrh, I can only liken it to Bulgarian attar of roses. There were no oil marks however. The smell of myrrh was the smallest miracle, just a reminder, I think. It hit home then that icons are not simply art, or the paper they are printed on. 

And so, my icon corner grew as I rescued the forgotten icons. I cleared my night stand and put a rather bohemian Indian candle holder on it. I keep my prayer book on it too. My wedding icons are there, 'written' by my relative who is an abbott. My saint, Saint Barbara is there as she has been when my aunty, also an iconographer, gifted me the original icon as a newborn. I now see them with new eyes.