Any prayer is always a meeting with God, during which a person turns to his creator with a question, a request or thanksgiving and it does not matter what words and in what situation he does it. The fact of the fact that there is a dialogue between a person and his Creator is important.
But often we plunge into the vanity of our affairs to such an extent that our eyes stop rising to the sky and in order to remember prayer we need a sign that will show us the way to God.
And this sign is an icon. In Orthodoxy, the icon is perceived not simply as an image, but as a theology written in colors and its task to remind us of the Kingdom of Heaven. That's why believers often pray before icons.
Orthodox believers pray before the images of the Savior , the Virgin , the saints or the image of the cross with a crucifix. When we begin to pray, we need to try to put aside all the worries for this time, to calm the feelings and looking at the visible image to try to lift our mind to the heavenly archetype.
At the same time, we must remember that we do not pray in any way to the icon, but to God. All our prayerful prayers and thanksgiving are raised to Him. Therefore, when we have an icon with the image of a saint in front of us, we do not pray personally to him. After all, the saint depicted on the icon is the same person as all of us, but for his righteous life he was awarded the Kingdom of Heaven, and we are asking for his prayers and intercession before God.
It is important that the icon does not become an idol and does not replace the true purpose of prayer, so that we do not have misconceptions, that God or saints look like they were painted on the icon. It was to avoid this that the Byzantine icons were drawn according to the iconographic canon, which tried not to add unnecessary details to the image of the saint.
Almost every Orthodox prayer-book or akathistnik has prayers for the Lord, the Theotokos, the guardian angel and various saints. And when we stand before the icon of the Virgin or the saint revered by us, we can read the canon or the akathist. These prayers, besides prayers themselves, also contain the life story of a saint, with a story about his deeds, and is designed to encourage us to imitate his good deeds.
It is also very important to remember to turn to God in your own words, because this is the pledge of the intimacy and intimacy of the relationship between man and God. After all, each of us has something personal than we would like to share or ask only God.
