‘The requirements of iconography are very high for its responsibility is enormous. Its “job” is a ministry. The tradition has always assimilated the iconographer with the priest. His piece of wood is an altar where he doesn’t paint in reality but prays and celebrates the Holy Mysteries, in the Church and for the Church. The more he himself advances along the path of holiness, the more he is in communion with the prototype whose resemblance he wants to express through painting. Everything depends on this spiritual experience of the painter that alone is the source of a transmission of beauty and vivifying power. The icons penetrate and install themselves in human hearts, inducing a manner of living and of understanding the world. This is their role.’ (The Spiritual Wisdom and Practices of Early Christianity, Alphonse & Rachel Goettman)