“It is an excellent custom with Christians, and one pleasing to God, to have an icon of the Savior and to pray to Him before it. This is a crying necessity of our soul. The Lord Himself, with the love which is proper to Him, desires to be formed in us…But how can I form Christ in my heart if I do not first represent Him sensibly before my eyes? Thus we have images of the Saviour, of the Mother of God, and others.”
(St. John of Kronstadt in ‘My Life in Christ’)
 
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