Last week Father Michael Morris (of the Seminary faculty) blessed an icon for me. This week, another similar service was done by Economos Romanus Russo, an adjunct professor at Saint Joseph's Seminary and pastor of Saint Michael's Russian Byzantine Chapel (266 Mulberry St, NYC).Some are of the opinion that icons need not be blessed because they hold a holy image of Our Lord, the Virgin or an angel or saint. But because an order of blessing exists in the liturgical books from time immemorial, the mind of the Church indicates that holy images are in fact blessed by the proper minister and according to a rite.
The blessing of icons takes on a similar theological/liturgical sensibility as Christian Initiation where the person to be baptized is washed, anointed and receives Holy Communion. Hence, the icons today were blessed by holy water, anointed with sacred Myron (Chrism) and the Eucharistic ciborium was touched to each icon. We now have a fully initiated icon that leads us to Christ and the Mystery of the Holy Trinity. Economos Romanus then. in giving the icon back to the owner, blessed the man who in turn kissed the icon.
The ritual prayers were the same as used previously (see the link above).
Icons are visible gospels. The icon is an experience of the beauty of God revealing the divine order of things. In history the first icon not made of human hands was the body of Jesus Christ. Following Divine action, the iconographer cooperates with God in creation and reveals to us the reality of Jesus' humanity. The iconographer is also a theologian because he or she writes for us the dogmas of Christian belief--the reasons and pathways for our salvation.
The stipend for Economos's spiritual solicitude is that each time we pray before the icon we pray for him and his family, forever. Deal.
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