Further, we venerate and honor the Saints, and we ask their intercession with God, but we adore and worship only God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Of all Saints, we honor exceedingly the Mother of our Lord (Theotokos), because of the supreme grace and the call which she received from God. Though she was not exempt from hereditary (“original”) sin, from which she was cleansed at the time of the Annunciation, we believe that by the grace of God she did not commit any actual sin. We venerate the sacred Images (Icons) as well as the relics of the Martyrs and Saints. Yet this veneration, according to the decisions and Canons of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, relates not to the sacred images as such, but to their prototypes, or to the persons whom they represent.
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