Wounding Presence of Prayer in Orthodox Iconography

As objects of devotion and veneration, icons invite the beholder to an encounter with the one depicted. But the presence an icon promises is grounded on a metaphysics of presence and absence, which, refuses stability or mastery and ultimately entails an essential difference between the icon and whom it depicts. In this paper I explore how phenomenology illuminates this encounter with the icon’s metaphysics of presence and absence. Drawing on Jean-Louis Chretien’s analysis of prayer, which explores the experience of presence and absence in prayer as both wounding and blessing, I argue that the traditional metaphysical accounts of the icon are amplified by consideration of how presence and absence is an experiential reality revealed in the prayerful encounter of the one depicted, an encounter that carries with it the possibility of wounds that bless.