Icons featured in Sunday of Orthodoxy observance

Published:Saturday, March 15, 2008

The members of the Eastern Orthodox Clergy of Mahoning Valley will join more than 250 million Orthodox Christians worldwide, including some 6 million in North America, to celebrate the “Triumph of Orthodoxy” on the First Sunday of Great Lent, which is this weekend. This commemorates the restoration of Holy Icons to the church in the ninth century.

This celebration will take place at 5 p.m. Sunday at St. John the Baptist Orthodox Church, Struthers-Liberty Road, Campbell. Dr. Nicola Nicoloff will direct the choir, and the youths of all the Orthodox parishes will join in the procession with their icons. The Rev. John Harvey, pastor of Sts. Peter and Paul Orthodox Church, will deliver the homily. After the service, St. John’s will host a reception in its fellowship hall.

In 843 A.D. when the veneration of icons was solemnly proclaimed at St. Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople, on the basis of a decision by the seventh Ecumenical Council of Nicea in 787 A.D., monks and clergy came in procession and restored the icons in their rightful place.

This event came to be known as the “Sunday of Orthodoxy,” and since that time is commemorated on the First Sunday of Lent. The Sunday of Orthodoxy is traditionally celebrated in Orthodox churches worldwide with special services as an act of rededication to Orthodoxy. During these services, the clergy and the congregations following a Procession of Icons recite the Declaration of Faith. This service also commemorates the suffering, martyrdom and persecution of Orthodox faithful throughout the centuries.

St. Gregory Palamas states this about icons: “Out of love for him you should make, therefore, an icon of him who became man for our sakes, and through his icon you should bring him to mind and worship him, elevating your intellect through it to the venerable body of the Savior, that is set on the right hand of the Father in heaven.

“In like manner you should also make icons of the saints and venerate them, not as gods — for this is forbidden — but because of the attachment, inner affection and sense of surpassing honor that you feel for the saints when by means of their icons the intellect is raised up to them.

“You must not, then, deify the icons of Christ and of the saints, but through them you should venerate him who originally created us in his own image, and who subsequently consented in his ineffable compassion to assume the human image and to be circumscribed by it.

“You should venerate not only the icon of Christ, but also the similitude of his cross. For the cross is Christ’s great sign and trophy of victory over the devil and all his hostile hosts; for this reason they tremble and flee when they see the figuration of the cross.

“So glorify the cross now, so that you may boldly look upon it then and be glorified with it. And you should venerate icons of the saints, for the saints have been crucified with the Lord; and you should make the sign of the cross upon your person before doing so, bringing to mind their communion in the sufferings of Christ.

“In the same way you should venerate their holy shrines and any relic of their bones; for God’s grace is not sundered from these things, even as the divinity was not sundered from Christ’s venerable body at the time of His life-quickening death.

“By doing this and by glorifying those who glorified God — for through their actions they showed themselves to be perfect in their love for God — you too will be glorified together with them by God, and with David you will chant: ‘I have held thy friends in high honor, O Lord.’

X The Rev. John Steffaro is pastor of St. John the Baptist Church in Campbell and a member of the Eastern Orthodox Clergy Association of Mahoning Valley.

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