Reverend Fathers, Beloved faithful,
The first Sunday of Great Lent is dedicated to the victory of the Orthodox Faith over heresies. The Fathers who gathered in the Ecumenical Councils of the fourth to the eighth centuries settled the right doctrine about the deity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, as well as the true veneration due to icons. After more than a hundred years of controversies and battles against the holy icons, the veneration of the Holy Icons, the Holy Cross, and the Holy Relics was re-established by the Seventh Ecumenical Council in Nicaea in 787, and then by the Council of Constantinople in 843. This Council decided that on the first Sunday of Great Lent the triumph of Orthodoxy over all heresies should be celebrated, and that this Sunday should be called the Sunday of Orthodoxy. The Sunday of Orthodoxy commemorates the struggles and the victory over the heretics, a victory that is synthesized in the re-establishing of the veneration of icons.
The icon is a window into the Absolute which reveals to us the world transfigured, the world of those who partake of divine grace and bring us this transfiguration, that is, holiness. The representation in the icons of the Savior and of the saints is justified by the Incarnation of the Word of God: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). According to the witness of the Holy Gospel, the Unseen God became visible through His Son who became man by taking upon Himself our human nature. And if the Son, Who became man, is the image or visible icon of the Heavenly Father (see Colossians 1:15), then the visible image of the Son can be pictured in icons. Thus in the icon of Christ we see the God-Man, the Incarnate Son of God. In this sense the icon has as its basis the incarnation of the Son of God, in Whose image the first man was created (see Genesis 1:26).
The Church Fathers have taught us that through the veneration of icons we do not worship material, but we venerate the person represented in the icon. The Fathers tell us that the honor given to the icon is transmitted to the one pictured in it (St. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit), that the silent image speaks from the walls, accomplishing great good (St. Gregory of Nyssa), and that when we as Christians kiss with our physical lips the image of Christ, of an apostle, or of a martyr, with our soul and our mind we are kissing Christ and His saints (Leontios of Neapolis).
But the icon has its basis not only in the Incarnation of the Son of God, but also in His Resurrection. Without the Resurrection of Christ, the icon would not be a representation of a transfigured life, but merely a commemorative picture. This means that the icon brings God among us, while it also raises us up to the understanding of our life as a participation in the life of God. This is the Christian life which is revealed to us by the icon, nothing other than man restored to the image of God, man who is intended for holiness, for the brightness of the image of God to shine from his countenance.
In the icon of a saint we see his deified body, which becomes incorruptible like the glorified body of Christ, because the saint’s body participates in advance in the state of the spiritual body which man will receive at the universal resurrection. In his first Epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul the Apostle says: “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body... And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man... For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality” (I Cor. 15:42-44, 49, 53). Thus the icon presents us with the story of the life of the saint and a foretaste of his life in the Kingdom of Heaven. The icon represents the image of man in which the grace of God resides, sanctifying him entirely, body and soul. In this sense, the icons of the saints show us that it is possible to obtain holiness in any time and in any place, if a person loves God and seeks His holiness.
Beloved believers,
The celebration of the Sunday of Orthodoxy is an extraordinary opportunity for us to give witness to these truths of the Orthodox Faith; for us to speak about icons and about holiness, about foretasting the joy of the Kingdom of God. Only Orthodoxy has preserved the icon with its profound meanings. Only Orthodoxy still has this sign of eternity in our churches and in the homes of the faithful. At the end of the Vespers service on the Sunday of Orthodoxy, we have a procession with the holy icons and we will affirm in a strong voice: “This is the faith of the Apostles; this is the faith of the Fathers; this is the faith of the Orthodox; this is the faith which sustains the universe!” This witness ought to go beyond the walls of the Orthodox Churches and be heard in the entire world. Our world needs to hear the witness of the Orthodox Faith, that is, of the true Christian Faith. For in our world today we are being confronted with teachings and practices which, in the name of freedom, are in total contradiction with Christian teaching. And what is surprising in the history of Christianity is that some of those who ought to be defending and proclaiming Christian teaching are letting themselves be swept away by this great temptation of the world which some call post-modern. We find that in the name of tolerance we are trampling upon Christian principles and accepting as normal (or as some say, alternative) that which for Christians of the past two millennia has represented sin and human weakness. We seem to not understand that times change, but the Faith remains unchanged. If we confess that we are Orthodox, I mean, those who preserve the true faith, the faith of the Apostles, then we must find the way to bring the witness of our faith to light.
What, in fact, is the way? How can we respond to the challenges of our world, the challenges of technology, of speed, of internet communications which often bring us false information? How can we respond to the temptation of our world which insistently promotes the material to the detriment of the spiritual? How can we make it so that these nice words about holiness and eternity will not remain idle talk? I believe we must remember that Orthodoxy means right faith, but also right honor of God. Orthodoxy means to believe rightly, not in something, but in Someone, in Christ as the true God Who is revealed to the world; and it means to rightly honor not an abstract thing, but God the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And this right honor is discovered in prayer. Prayer is the voice of man seeking God. Prayer is giving oneself to God, which is clearly evident in the common prayer which culminates in the Divine Liturgy. In the Divine Liturgy we offer ourselves, and we ask for Christ, Who can change our nature into His image, the true image of God. Through prayer and through communion with the Body and Blood of our Lord, our divided nature receives the power to be reintegrated and brought back into peace. In prayer, the mind is united with the heart, and the entire creation regains its original unity with God and the world. The very first sign of our right worship ought to be prayer. The prayer rule that we fulfill at home with our family can be the most appropriate example for our children to not forsake their Orthodox faith. Prayer together with fasting can be the spiritual school of our family, where our children will receive the appropriate Christian education. Prayer in Church for our loved ones and for all mankind reinforces and heightens our home prayers. And through our heightened prayer, that which we do at home and that which we do in Church, we can find the way to the witness of the true faith to the world in which we live. The saints pictured in the icons were all people who prayed. If we are Orthodox Christians who honor the Holy Icons, then we should also be people of prayer, people who love God and seek holiness. There could be no more appropriate admonition on this day of celebrating the Sunday of Orthodoxy than that we pursue this prayer for holiness. Then the world will receive our witness and will rediscover the true Christian Faith, the Orthodox Faith.
† Metropolitan Nicolae