A sacred image, or liturgical icon, “principally represents Christ”, and the Church also venerates icons of “the Mother of God, the angels, and all the saints”. It “cannot represent the invisible and incomprehensible God”, but “the incarnation of the Son of God has ushered in a new ‘economy’ of images”. The seventh ecumenical council, at Nicaea in 787, “justified against the iconoclasts the veneration of icons”. Iconography “expresses in images the same Gospel message that Scripture communicates by words”. “The honor rendered to an image passes to its prototype”, and “whoever venerates an image venerates the person portrayed in it”.
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