>>Home>>Ikonography

The Iconoclastic Controversy

 

On the Sunday of Orthodoxy the Church reaffirms the importance of Ikons

Sermon 29 Feb 2004
Sunday of Orthodoxy

In his diary, St. John of Kronstodt, a nineteenth century Russian saint, expresses the following words:

The Lord is everything to me. He is the strength of my heart and the light of my mind. He inclines heart to everything good; He strengthens it; He also gives me good thoughts; He is my rest and my joy; He is my faith, my hope and my love; He is my food and my drink, my raiment, my dwelling place.

The icons, hymns, prayers, worship and liturgy of the Orthodox Church unceasingly focus our attention on Christ. The heart of our faith, the inner mystery of its radiant beauty, the source of its teaching, the object of its worship, is the glorification of the living Christ through whom we know the Father and from whom we receive the Holy Spirit.

The first Sunday of Lent, the Sunday of Orthodoxy, is an impressive reminder of the centrality of Christ. It is a feast during which we reaffirm our confession of faith in Christ and his saving work.

The hymns of this Sunday echo three themes:

The expectation of the Old Testament prophets and righteous people for the coming of Christ.
The Incarnation of Christ and His presence in the Church, in history and in our lives.
The joy of the Church in confessing, proclaiming and glorifying Christ.

O Lord, who loves all people,
the Church rejoices in You,
her Bridegroom and her Founder,
for by Your divine will You have
delivered her from error and by
Your precious Blood You have
betrothed her to Yourself.

The fulfilment of the expectations are expressed in today's Gospel reading. Phillip, having found Jesus, goes on to find Nathaniel and tells him, We have found the one whom Moses wrote about in the book of the Law and whom the prophets also wrote about. He is Jesus and Nathaniel upon recognizing who Jesus was confesses, you are the Son of God! You are the king of Israel.

This has been the confession of our Church, this is its teaching, this is its faith.

The Sunday of Orthodoxy marks an historic event in the life of the Orthodox Church the restoration of icons as an important way of living and expressing the Christian faith.

Icons have two special meanings:

Firstly, they remind us how real our salvation is! The living Christ, our risen Lord, is the same as Jesus of Nazareth who took on flesh and blood, became one of us. His Mother and all the Saints were also real people like all of us.

Secondly, they remind us that we all belong to one family the family of God and that God achieved a triumph over sin and evil for us, that the gates of Paradise have been opened, that God became man so that man be become god ? like, divinised, that matter is sanctified and becomes spiritualised.

Just as we express our faith by means of bread, wine, water, oil, music and other symbols, so also we express it through icons. Icons are symbols, they are windows to the heavens. They seek to make the invisible visible, they seek to teach and to inspire. Icons are not worshipped, they are venerated. When we show respect to an icon, it is because of the person or event portrayed in the icon

As Orthodox, we find it natural to show the appropriate respect to the icons of Christ, of the Theotokos and of the Saints. There is however one icon that we so often neglect the icon or the image of God in our fellow man. It is paradoxical, almost contradictory, that we can show respect to an image of a person on wood and yet neglect to respect the living image of God in every one of our fellowmen that we encounter daily.

Let's not forget that the Lord Himself cautions, whatever you do to the least of my brothers, you do to Me.

Let us use this as a guideline, on this the Sunday of Orthodoxy, as how Orthodox we truly are in our dealings with others.

Father Petros