What makes a home a Byzantine Catholic home? An icon corner. This place of beauty and prayer is a beautiful reminder of who is at the centre of our lives: God. We’ve all heard of having a prayer corner in our homes, but Byzantines take this calling to the next level.
In the post I’m going to talk you through the tradition of Icon corners, why you should have one, and how to get started setting one up!
The Tradition
The tradition of icon corners goes all the way back to the beginnings of iconography in the Christian East. It is also based on the idea that the Christian home is also a church (the domestic church), and so it needs to be designed with God in mind. Typically, we choose an Eastern facing wall in the house. (Just as in our churches we pray facing the East). This is because East is where the sun rises in the morning, which is an icon of the resurrection within nature.
Also icon corners are placed in a prominent place in the house, where it can draw the family’s attention towards God and prayer. This corner becomes the centre for family worship. Morning and evening prayers all held at this corner. Some families even keep an oil lamp burning constantly as a reminder of the presence of God in our families and our lives, just like Roman Catholic Churches keep a red candle lit signifying the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.
Why an Icon Corner?
Although we have icons throughout our house, and indeed, in every major room, it is still important to have an icon corner. Our most precious icons are in our corner. Okay, it’s a wall not a corner. But it is Eastward-facing! And there wouldn’t be room in either Eastern corner because there a closets in the way. The icon corner provides a place in your home that has no distractions. It’s a space for quiet, personal prayer, as well as a place to sing loud hymns with the whole family (or, at least, the youngest kids might think that the loud factor is an important part of the song being heard by God). In this way the icon corner is expressive of the home as the domestic church.
An icon corner is also great if you feel like you’re forgetting to pray, or are getting distracted while you pray. Having a place set aside for prayer is also a great starting place for evangelizing. It is an example to your children of the importance of prayer and God in your lives and in your home. If it is in a common living space, visitors to your house may comment upon and you can have a discussion about your faith.
How to Build Your Icon Corner
First you need to pick a spot in your home. Pick a corner, closet, or a wall. Bonus points if it faces East.
Once you have a space selected, it’s time to add furniture! Depending on how much you can hang on the wall, a bookshelf or other surface may be needed to hold icons. Tables are good to hold larger items (like a Bible). In our last home we used wooden TV-tray tables as our icon corner surface. This giave us more space than the square bedside table we had in our first home. Now we have an even larger set up! One area of our homeschool room/lounge is a perfect corner space, so we filled it up entirely with tables and icons!
Next it is nice to have a cloth covering the surface of the table. In the Byzantine tradition this cloth is an embroidered Rushnyk. These can be expensive but they are beautiful and Byzantines invest in this part of their domestic churches.
After placing the cloth, add your wedding icons (one of Mary with Jesus, and one of Christ the teacher). Other icons that you’ll want to include are your patron saints, and whomever you want to entrust the care of your domestic church to. Saint Nicholas or a Holy Family icon are good staples, as well as a Trinity icon. There are a lot of good icon options on Amazon, which can help fill your icon corner. Also, use Prayer cards and saints cards from your local Catholic shop. If your budget is really tight, start your Icon Corner by printing icons from your computer (onto photo paper if you can) and put them into dollar store picture frames to make them look more expensive than they were.
The Full Icon Corner
Other items to include in your icon corner:
- Bible
- Holy Water
- Prayer books
- Cross
- Candles (try searching “Orthodox Vigil Lamp”)
- Wedding candles, crowns, etc.
- Palm branches/Pussy willow branches from Palm Sunday
- Other items blessed at church
To go all out in living the Byzantine life, get icons for all the major feasts in the church. Switch these out during the church seasons. Nativity, Crucifixion, and Resurrection icons are very popular. For Marian devotes, icons for the Nativity and the Dormition of the Theotokos are great. Also the Byzantine life is full of incense, which should be available to buy at your local Catholic shop.
So now you know what an icon corner is, and how to set one up. Every home (I mean domestic church!) needs to have one, so it’s time to get building! Spread the Byzantine Love! Call or email your priest for a house blessing once you’ve got your icon corner set up. Yes, that means you too, Roman Catholics. House blessings are universal… and an important part of every Catholic rite!
The Byzantine Life
Thank you for checking out this week’s article. If you haven’t already, you can read our article about the praying with icons. Or our article on Our Lady of Perpetual Help.Please share our article on social media! On our Pinterest we have boards full of different faith life ideas and icons! Also, you can follow our Facebook to see our latest blog posts as they publish. The Badger Dad also runs our Twitter (@TheByzLife) and Instagram accounts (username: thebyzantinelife)!
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Another great idea for an icon wall is that there are icons for each month of the year that show each saint on his or her feast day. You can see an example if you google ‘Menaion icons bostonmonks.com’ . Orthodox monks sell them as a set on that site. I’ve seen them at the Byzantine Catholic Church in Indianapolis (St. Athanasius the Great) and they are very nice, especially for the price.