Is this strange?

[Nickolai]

I found this Icon today and am very confused

http://www.sisqtel.net/~williams/blseraphimpics/bl-seraphim35lo.jpg

Blessed Father Seraphim Rose is not a canonized Saint, How can he have an Icon?

P.s. I hope one day he will be canonized.

[The Prokeimenon!]

My understanding is this:

Orthodox veneration of Saints usually begins with a small devotion among the people that knew him/her and spreads among the faithful. It's not uncommon for people to write and venerate Icons before a Saint is recognized by all the faithful.

I could be wrong, though... Iconographer?

Moses

[Suzannah]

I don't understand it either. Not that I am unhappy about it though. Our church has a special devotion to him and this icon is hanging in our church. I asked about it and I was told by a cradle Orthodox and I quote "Some things are indisputable."

I have not questioned it since...but I share your confusion.

[Matrona]

The fact that there's an icon at all is not an issue; plenty of saints had icons written before they were officially canonized. There were icons of St. Raphael of Brooklyn before he was glorified, and there are icons of Mother Maria of Ravensbruck and Yevgeny Rodionov, neither of which have been glorified. The difference is, one who is not officially a saint should not have a halo on their icon. So you are right to be suspicious; that icon is not supposed to be like that. It is wrong to depict someone who is not canonized with a halo on the head.

[Eusebios]

... there are icons of Mother Maria of Ravensbruck and Yevgeny Rodionov, neither of which have been glorified.
Matrona, et. al.
With regards to St. Maria:
On the 11th of February, 2004, the Diocesan Council of the Russian Exarchate of Western Europe under the Ecumenical Patriarchate announced that the names of Mother Maria (Skobtsova), Fr Alexis Medvedkov, Fr Dimitri Klepinin, Georges Skobtsov and Ilya Fondaminsky have been added to the Synaxarion of saints of the Great Church. Their common feast will be 20 July; the date of death of each will be their feast day as well. Four have been canonised as martyrs; Fr Alexis Medvedkov was a priest who died before the war and whose remains were found incorrupt some years later.
(from:http://www.geocities.com/orthodox_women/mmaria.html)
Eusebios.

[The Prokeimenon!]

Also- and this is one of those nit-picky semantics things- The Church Heirarchy doesn't glorify Saints, Christ does. They simply acknowledge what has been done by Christ, Who Is wondrous in His Saints. :)

Moses

[ufonium2]

We have an icon of him in my church as well. He doesn't have a halo in ours, though.

[Reader Nilus]

There is nothing strange about it. Saints in Orthodoxy are venerated from the ground up sort of speak, and you can commission an ikon of anyone if you wish. You maybe the only person to venerate someone as a saint.
Jeff the Finn