Is it okay for Catholics to venerate Orthodox icons?

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lorenzoruiz

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I bought an Orthodox Icon of Our Lady of the Gate. And I was really fascinated and moved by the image. I know that this question has been asked before. So could some one please direct me to the correct thread.
Is it okay for Catholics to venerate Orthodox icons?
Are there saints who are exclusively “Orthodox saints”? Can Catholics venerate them?
 
While there are saints that are specific to the Orthodox Church - or more accurately the particular local Orthodox Churches - it is completely permissible for Catholics to venerate those saints. Eastern Catholics venerate many Orthodox saints through liturgical celebrations according to our liturgical calendars. One example would be Russian Catholics celebrating the feast of St. Seraphim of Sarov or St. Theophan the Recluse. The most obvious example is the feast of St. Gregory Palamas, which is celebrated by all Eastern Catholic Churches of the Byzantine tradition.

Roman Catholics are free to venerate these saints in the privacy of their home, but since they are not saints of the local Roman tradition, they are not venerated liturgically in Roman Churches (Roman Catholics have a different liturgical calendar from Eastern Catholics).
 
lorenzoruiz said:
I bought an Orthodox Icon of Our Lady of the Gate. And I was really fascinated and moved by the image. I know that this question has been asked before. So could some one please direct me to the correct thread.
Is it okay for Catholics to venerate Orthodox icons?
Are there saints who are exclusively “Orthodox saints”? Can Catholics venerate them?
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Our Lady of Częstochowa is an Orthodox Icon.


The Black Madonna
 
I have heard that the Icon of Our Lady of Perpetual help is of Byzantine origin. You can see it in many Latin-rite Churches.

Also, at this past WYD, the Pope traveled with a copy of the icon of Maria Salus Populi Romani
 
The icon of Our Lady of Kyiv-Belz (🙂 ) did come to Kyiv via Constantinople and was later taken to Belz which is on the border with Poland. The Polish noble Wladislaw Opolskie took it to Czestochowa with him where it became “Our Lady of Czestochowa.”

We even know the route he took as his entourage moved from Belz to Czestochowa - wherever he stopped with his entourage for the night, there a church or a monastery was built in honour of a copy of the icon because of the miraculous signs following where the Icon was put for the night.

One copy of such an icon, Our Lady of Hoshiv, became especially miraculous in the years leading up to the destruction of communism and the resurrection of the Eastern Catholic Church. Another such miraculous copy of the Czestochowa icon is Our Lady of Turkovitz.

There is a miraculous copy in Kyiv as well as in other places.

In the 15th century, a Ukrainian prince, Theodore Ostrozhsky, fought to push the Poles out of western Ukraine. He later went to Czestochowa to engage in peace talks. As he visited the chapel where the icon was enshrined, he recognized it to be one of the icons historically from Ukraine but taken out of Ukraine (such as the Virgin of Vladimir was by Andrei Bogolubsky). Being of a hot-tempered sort, he climbed up and started to remove the icon from its shrine to take home with him . . . He was quickly arrested and then tried in a Polish court for “blasphemy.” His defence was that he committed no blasphemy, only that he wanted to take back what belonged to his country. He was later released and then went to Kyiv where he joined the Kyivan Caves Monastery, leading a saintly life and was canonized as “St Theodore Ostrozhsky” among the more than 150 Holy Fathers of the Kyivan Caves.

Believe it or not . . .

There are also a few statues of the Mother of God that are venerated in the Orthodox Church - not many, but there are some. It is said in the life of St Alexius, the Man of God, that he heard the voice of the Theotokos that came from a statue enshrined at Edessa, Our Lady of Edessa that is honoured in the East, but I have yet to come across a representation of it.

Alex
 
We had the Miracle-Working Icon of Our Lady of Kazan at my parish for a few years “which Fr. Andrei Urosov, our founding pastor, had rescued from the hands of a private collector in the mid-sixties”. She later went to HH JPII who had it in his private quarters. She was returned to the Moscow Patriarchate in 2004.

We had a couple of visitors from a ROCOR parish near SF at my parish today related to our upcoming move. They commented on how they recognized the icons in our temple-- I guess it was their first time in an ECC temple, and they were especially pleased to see Saint John (Maximovitch) the Wonderworker, of Shanghai and San Francisco whose icon it beside our front door. It turns out their parish is dedicated to St John of SF. 🙂
 
lorenzoruiz, as others have mentioned, it’s fine for Catholics to venerate Orthodox icons. And as has already been mentioned, there are saints that are only commemorated in Orthodox calendars, but they may certainly be prayed to, have their relics venerated by, and have their icons venerated by Catholics. My icon corner has St. John Maximovitch in it, just as an example…
 
If we kiss/venerate or pray to Orthodox icons or say even bless ourselves with Orthodox Holy water ,will it take an effect into our lives/spirituality and perhaps draw us into further contact or ‘light’ communion with the ‘eastern Orthodox’

for e.g ,if i use EO holy water or pray to a greek EO icon will i start to bump into more Greeks or Russians at the marketplace or come across more ‘eastern influence’ in my life?

Or if i buy and pray to a 20th century Russian Othodox saint,will i maybe then happen to meet one of the saints great grandchildren etc

if someone doesnt mind all this then good for them ,but if i dont want to rub shoulders with a great grandchild of St Nektarios or any of his spiritual children then i wouldnt get his icon and pray to him…

If the RC is not in official communion with EO vise versa then is it proper to unite or be in communion on a lesser level with eachothers sacramentals?
 
Celticnovice said:
I have heard that the Icon of Our Lady of Perpetual help is of Byzantine origin. You can see it in many Latin-rite Churches.
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According to the legend, a merchant stole it from a miraculous icon of Mary from a church in Crete and brought it with him to Rome somewhere in the 15th century, but not before encountering a storm along the way (which was averted when the sailors prayed to the icon). There the fell mortally ill; as his dying wish, the merchant asked a friend to return the icon to a church where it could be properly venerated. The friend’s wife was very hesitant to part with the icon - it needed an apparition of Mary to the friend’s daughter, pleading her to bequeath the icon to a parish - more specifically the Augustinian-run titular church of St. Matthew in the Via Merulana, between St. Mary Major and St. John Lateran - to convince her to give it up.
 
tomarin said:
Isn’t Our Lady of Czestochowa in Poland? So how did she become an Orthodox icon? (Not trying to be snarky, just curious.)
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I know it was explained already, but I found this write-up from a website about the city of Belz, the English is a bit off …
icon

History about one icon –the Chenstokhovska Bozha Matir (Chenstokhovska Mother of God) is concerned with Belz. The name of icon resulted from the territory where it was transported from Belz in the 14th century and is situated in the abbey of Catholic order of Paulines. In 326 Jerusalem Christians presented icon to the tsarina Olena who brought it into Konstantinopol. How did this icon get into Ukraine? There are two versions. One is that it was brought by Kyrylo and Mephodiy. Another is that in the 10th century Greek tsarevna Anna was blessed by sacred icon to be married with prince Volodymyr. She took it with her to Kyiv. Icon got into Belz by marriages of Russian princesses with princes of Halychyna and Poland.

http://ukraine.kingdom.kiev.ua/region/13/belz-ikon.jpg

Wonder is concerned with icon – it happened during seize of Belz by Tartar-Mongols. City residents asked Mother of God for help and brought icon to the walls of city fortress. One of Tartar arrows got into the image of Mother of God. Blood was pouring from the wound and darkness had fallen. Tartars became panic-stricken and began to kill one another. Many Tartars died under the walls of the castle. The rest were horrified and ran away. Since those times there has been a sign of triangle on the surface of sacred icon. Icon had been in the temple of prince castle till 1377 in Belz. Then it was transported by prince Vladyslav Opolskiy to Lviv. Now icon is in Poland.
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It doesn’t mention that the icon is treasured in Poland because it seems to have turned back the Swedes.

I think the point here is that Roman Catholics have never had a problem with Orthodox icons, in fact they tend to seek them out.
 
Paul_theApostle said:
If the RC is not in official communion with EO vise versa then is it proper to unite or be in communion on a lesser level with eachothers sacramentals?
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I would say that would be fine. The only thing we aren’t to do (from my understanding, anyway) in regards to the Eastern Churches is to receive their sacraments (unless unable to access a Catholic priest for the sacraments). I have even known a Catholic priest who regularly attends Orthodox Vespers. Considering, also, the comments about Blessed Pope John Paul II, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about if one is comfortable doing so. For me, the Eastern Churches have much to teach us through their icons, saints, prayer, veneration, and worship…so I have no problem joining them in such things. Just my :twocents:…
 
BusterMartin said:
lorenzoruiz, as others have mentioned, it’s fine for Catholics to venerate Orthodox icons. And as has already been mentioned, there are saints that are only commemorated in Orthodox calendars, but they may certainly be prayed to, have their relics venerated by, and have their icons venerated by Catholics. My icon corner has St. John Maximovitch in it, just as an example…
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A friend of mine gave me a photograph of St. John Maximovich, and also showed me a photo of his tomb in [of all places] San Francisco.

And a neighbor, who is Orthodox (his brother has a high rank in the Orthodox Church in the US-something to the equivalent of a Catholic Monsignor), gave me a small picture of St. John of Kronstadt, a well-known figure of pre-revolutionary Russia. The small parish he and his family attends is dedicated to St. John of Kronstadt. Sometimes when I see him outside, I talk with him about icons. And he’s amazed over how much I know about them as a Catholic!

I also saw the icon of Our Lady of Kazan when it was in Fatima, Portugal, at the Blue Army’s ‘Domus Pacis’. It was in the upstairs Eastern chapel.
 
My take: considering that for the first thousand years we were still officially united as one Church (there was still yet no visible ‘Catholic versus Orthodox’ thing going around), I don’t see why not - IMHO it’s a heritage that we’re supposed to share. 🤷 😉
 
BusterMartin said:
I would say that would be fine. The only thing we aren’t to do (from my understanding, anyway) in regards to the Eastern Churches is to receive their sacraments (unless unable to access a Catholic priest for the sacraments). I have even known a Catholic priest who regularly attends Orthodox Vespers. Considering, also, the comments about Blessed Pope John Paul II, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about if one is comfortable doing so. For me, the Eastern Churches have much to teach us through their icons, saints, prayer, veneration, and worship…so I have no problem joining them in such things. Just my :twocents:…
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In terms of icons of the Mother of God, they are all good! Many of them moved back and forth from Orthodox to RC hands and vice-versa.

The Orthodox will sometimes even announce in Church (such as at a service where they know there are non-Orthodox in attendance) that only Orthodox Christians may approach the Sacraments/Mysteries.

Blessings, holy water etc. are a different category and there are areas in Europe and Africa where Muslims approach Orthodox priests to receive blessings on special feast days of saints that they also venerate. In the Coptic Church, it is common to see many Muslims attend festivals of Saints.

Orthodox Christians will also enter RC and Anglican cathedrals to venerate the relics of Saints that are recognized by the Orthodox Church e.g. St Alban the Martyr at St Alban’s in England.

Alex
 
Thank you for your replies!
I have been hearing the name of St. John Maximovich in orthodox websites and in this thread. Makes me curious who he is.

I saw a website of an “icon maker” (is the term correct?) who makes icons of Catholic saints like St.Pius Xth, St. Martin de Porres. I wish that an icon of our First Filipino Saint St. Lorenzo Ruiz can have an icon too. 🙂
 
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