Today is the Sunday of Orthodoxy. On this First Sunday of Lent in 842 A.D. the iconodules—our “right believing” forefathers who upheld the fullness of the Apostolic Faith entrusted to them by Christ, celebrated their victory over the heretical beliefs of the iconoclasts, the “icon-smashers,” who had persecuted the Orthodox for keeping that “faith once received.”
Now, if there’s one charge we Orthodox hear more often than any other from Protestants, it’s this: “You worship icons!” It’s at such times that we as Orthodox have the opportunity to explain that while we venerate and greatly honor the holy icons as ‘windows’ to the heavenly reality, the world as God sees it, we worship God the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
This distinction between ‘veneration’ (Gk., “dulia”) and ‘worship’ (Gk., “latria”) is nothing new: The greatest object of veneration in Israel was the Ark of the Covenant, which God directed the Israelites to appoint with pure gold and decorate with images of golden cherubim, (Exodus 25:18). No Israelite would even think of worshiping the Ark. God forbid! But they held the Ark in holy awe. The Ark contained the holiest objects of Israel’s veneration: the rod of Aaron and the Tablets of the Ten Commandments. But just a few chapters later in Exodus 32, we read that the Israelites were worshiping a golden calf. That is what we truly call idolatry, but the honor they rightly showed the Ark, we recognize as veneration, which gives glory to God.
The holy icons, the Gospel, the cross, are all objects of Christian devotion and veneration precisely because they direct us and inspire us in our worship of the Holy Trinity. They form a tangible connection for us with their prototype. When we see an icon of Christ, we know that He is not some mythical being who lived only in ‘spirit,’ but rather the Lord God Himself, the Creator, who became incarnate for us to enter into human nature as man and defeat our sin and death as God. We can depict Christ iconographically, with great honor and in accordance with Holy Tradition, because of and in affirmation of the historic reality of the Incarnation of the Word of God made man. This is the truth revealed in the icon of Christ Pantokrator and the icon of the Theotokos holding Christ, which figure so prominently in our Orthodox worship and piety.
Likewise, we depict the Saints who’ve triumphed in the life of Christ precisely because of the witness they are to the reality of changed lives, the reality of new life, of deification, of growth in holiness that Christ God brings us by virtue of His Incarnation and triumph over sin and death. Our veneration of the holy icons witnesses to this truth: all are called to new life in Christ by water and the spirit, that is, Baptism and Chrismation, the sealing of the Holy Spirit. When we gaze upon an icon of the Theotokos or any of the Saints of the Church and venerate them, we affirm the reality of Christ God’s work in them and through them to God’s glory, as St. Paul says, that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ” (II Thess. 1:12).
And so, for us as Orthodox, the holy icons are never simply “religious art,” but truly ‘windows to the heavenly reality,’ strengthening us in the true, that is, Orthodox Faith. Our Fathers in the Faith, countless of whom lost their lives in martyrdom to uphold the Apostolic, Orthodox Faith, rightly understood that without the holy icons, the fullness of the historic reality of the Incarnation, the appreciation of all things holy and pertaining to God and our salvation, this integral part of Holy Tradition, would be sadly altered, if not lost altogether; the affirmation that the Word became flesh and “dwelt among us” to raise up fallen Adam, would come to be understood in increasingly subjective and twisted ways, threatening our faith, healing, and salvation in Christ. Indeed, this is exactly what we see happening today wherever the holy icons are absent, where fragmentation, confusion, divisiveness and schism are the norm.
In other words, our Orthodox forefathers rightly understood that if the icons of Christ, His Saints, His miracles, and the faithful interpretation of the Gospels as passed down in the holy icons, were lost, the reality of the fullness of the Faith Christ entrusted to His Church for all time, would also be lost. For this reason, the holy tradition concerning not only their veneration but also the teaching imparted through them, form a necessary part of Holy Tradition.
So, when we celebrate the Triumph of Orthodoxy, we are affirming, then, the Orthodox victory over all heresies that have distorted the truth of Christ and the fullness of life with Him. We recognize that the battle against the iconoclasts was the last of a five-hundred-year struggle to uphold the Orthodox Faith against those who would change our faith and lead others into heresy, thereby separating them from knowing the truth of Jesus Christ and His salvation.
In this way, the Feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy goes to the very heart of our faith in Christ and His redemption of the human race. All other victories of our faith stem from this truth: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death,” as we’ll sing at our joyous celebration of Pascha. It’s because of Christ’s incarnation, death, burial, and resurrection, that we’re here today worshipping Him, participating in His life, so that with Him, we too may be fellow victors over sin and death.
The holy icons also proclaim the truth that God is glorified in His Saints. “The great cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1) St. Paul reminds us of today, are paraded around the church. Every icon of a Saint testifies to the redemptive work and truth of God: redemption from a life of sin is real, spiritual healing is real, a new life is real, love and joy are real, salvation is real, the Kingdom of God is real—we see this reality no clearer than in the faces of the Saints and their witness. And so, in venerating their holy icons, we ask them to intercede for us before Christ God in whose near presence they now worship the one true God.
If people want proof of God’s existence, reality, and relevance, of the “therapeutic” ministry of Christ’s holy Church, they need look no further than the lives of the Saints, whose number is too great to count. For this reason, I greatly encourage all the faithful to take time daily to read the life of one of the many Saints commemorated on any given day in the Church calendar. We learn from their example to cling to Christ, to focus on Christ, to persevere in our faith and witness, being in the world but not of the world.
The days of battling new heresies may have come to an end; there are really no new heresies—just newly recycled ‘cardboard’ versions of the old, tired and defeated ones of the Church’s past. But Orthodoxy faces new challenges today. In our own day, we’re challenged by growing relativism, secularism, nihilism, the ‘new-morality’—all of which threaten the faithful proclamation of the “Faith once received,” the loving way of Christ to which all people are called and no one exempted. Because we love as Christ loves, we call on all people “to come and see,” we call all to repentance in the beauty of holiness.
Many modern religious groups are experimenting with new forms of worship, props, catering to the culture rather than seeking to baptize the culture, changing the definition of marriage, of what chastity means, of who Jesus is, doing away with the idea of sin without curing the disease. But it’s Christ God as He’s revealed Himself and invited us to know Him, Who alone is the cure. He reveals the way of healing and salvation to us through His Church. So we cling to what He’s revealed, to what He refers to as “the narrow way that leads to life,” to help others to come to the knowledge and love of Christ too. It’s to this love of the truth that you and I are also called. As we cling to Him who is that truth, even when the message of its fullness is unpopular or rejected by our friends and family, this transitory culture, we testify to the reality and relevance of the truth that is Christ—just as our Orthodox forebears did.
To be Orthodox means that we don’t compromise who Jesus Christ is; we keep the fullness of the Faith and life in Him. We don’t shape the faith; the faith shapes us through our communion with the Truth, Jesus Christ. Our faith, including the veneration of the holy icons, is in continuity with all those faithful who kept the Faith proclaimed once and for all— “to all people, at all times, in every place,” as 5th century St. Vincent of Lerins articulates it.
For love of God and neighbor, and all those who’ll come after us, for our children and grandchildren’s sake, we “lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us…” and we “run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our Faith.” The Saints cheer us on as we model ourselves on them and their faithful witness to Christ. We venerate them even as we worship Christ as God, the Savior of our souls.
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Sunday of Orthodoxy
Sunday, 5 March 2017
Epistle: Heb. 11:24-026, 32-12:1
Gospel: John 1:43-51
