The First Sunday of Great Lent: The Commemoration of the Triumph of Orthodoxy #

The church service of the first week of Great Lent is dedicated to the commemoration of the Council held in Constantinople in the year 843, during the reign of Emperor Michael and his mother, Empress Theodora. This Council marked the end of a grievous and terrible period in the history of the Greek Church—more than a century of persecution against the veneration of holy icons.

It is sorrowful and even frightening to imagine that, after so many labors of the apostles in preaching the Gospel, after the great feats of the martyrs, after a series of Ecumenical Councils and the countless labors of holy theologians who defended the Orthodox faith, in the eighth century after the birth of Christ, a new tempest of heresy struck the Eastern Church. Its waves crashed against the ancient and universal tradition, cherished by all pious Christians—the depiction of the countenances of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Most Pure God-bearer, and the saints for prayerful veneration and reverent contemplation. This calamity coincided with another misfortune—the invasion of the Byzantine Empire by the Muslim Arabs, who tore away vast lands from the Christian world. These regions, which had for centuries borne rich fruits of faith and ascetic struggle, and had given the world a multitude of saints—Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Libya, and other territories stretching from Persia in the East to distant Spain in the West—fell under foreign rule. Tens of millions of Christians found themselves subjected to non-Christian dominion.

This trial, permitted by Divine Providence, which befell the Christian world, could not but give rise to temptations and scandals in the faith, as the Savior had foretold: “Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh!” (Matthew 18:7). The sower of this offense at that time was Emperor Leo the Isaurian, who himself was deceived by the accusations of the Muslims, who claimed that by depicting the countenances of Christ, His Most Pure Mother, and the saints, Christians were violating the commandment given by God to Moses: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them…” (Exodus 20:4). Foolishly heeding the words of non-Christians, Emperor Leo presumed that this prohibition against idols—images of false gods, which pagan imagination portrayed in the form of men or animals—extended also to the icons of Christ, the true God, who in His incarnation, by the will of His Father, took upon Himself human nature and appearance.

Endowed with immense power, which had been given to him for the defense of Christianity against its enemies, Leo imagined himself to have the right to decide matters of faith, disregarding bishops, priests, and entire councils. The inglorious end of many past emperors, who had likewise, by their arbitrary rule, opened the doors to heresies, subjecting the Church to schisms and uprisings, did not serve to admonish him.

Removing from the patriarchal throne the holy Patriarch Germanus, who refused to introduce any innovations into the faith of the Church, Leo issued a decree for the destruction of holy icons. When a royal official, acting on the emperor’s orders, began to break apart an ancient and highly venerated icon of the Savior, which had adorned the Bronze Gates in the very center of Constantinople for four centuries, simple women pulled the ladder out from under the sacrilegious official’s feet, and he fell to his death. In response, the emperor sent soldiers, who carried out a massacre in the square. Instead of defending the peaceful people from foreign enemies, the soldiers shed the blood of their fellow Christians. The nun Theodosia, who had inspired the Orthodox to defend their sacred treasures, was brutally tortured for eight days and then killed without trial.

This was only the beginning of years of atrocities. With similar and even greater cruelty acted Leo’s son and successor, Emperor Constantine, who inherited power from his father, as well as other iconoclastic emperors. Their persecutions claimed the lives of many bishops, priests, monks, and pious laypeople.

Tens of thousands of Orthodox Christians, faithful to the traditions of the Church, were forced to flee to remote outskirts and beyond the borders of the empire. It was during this time that monks fleeing from Byzantium founded monasteries in the inaccessible mountainous regions of Tauris, now Crimea, carving out cells and even churches in the rocks—some of which have survived to this day. In defense of the veneration of holy icons, many Orthodox theologians wrote extensively, among them St. John of Damascus, who labored in the Lavra of St. Sabbas the Sanctified near Jerusalem.

Recalling the words of our Savior, “For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them” (Matthew 13:17), St. John teaches:

“The apostles saw Christ in the flesh, and His sufferings, and miracles, and they heard His words. We, too, long greatly to see and hear and be glorified. They saw Him face to face, for He was bodily present; but we, since He is not bodily present, as it were see Him through the medium of books, we hear His words and sanctify our hearing, and through it, our soul, counting ourselves blessed, and we venerate and honor the books through which we hear His words. Likewise, through iconography, we contemplate the image of His bodily form, His miracles, and His sufferings, and we are sanctified […] and we venerate and honor and bow down before His bodily image. And in contemplating His bodily form, we form, as much as possible, an idea of the glory of His divinity. For since we are composed of two parts, soul and body […], we cannot attain to the spiritual without the physical. Thus, just as through the audible words we hear with bodily ears, we come to an understanding of spiritual things, so also through bodily contemplation we attain to spiritual vision. Therefore, Christ took on both body and soul, for man himself possesses both body and soul.” (Third Discourse in Defense of Holy Icons).

A great victory of truth over error came with the Seventh Ecumenical Council, convened in Constantinople in 787 under the pious rulers Constantine and Irene. The Council proclaimed:

“We decree that the holy and honorable icons are to be set forth for veneration, just as the image of the Precious and Life-giving Cross—whether they be painted with colors, made of mosaic, or of any other material; whether they be placed in the holy churches of God, on sacred vessels and vestments, on walls and boards, in homes or by the wayside; whether they be icons of our Lord Jesus Christ, of our Sovereign Lady the Theotokos, of the venerable angels, or of all the saints and righteous men. For the more frequently they are contemplated through the medium of icons, the more those who behold them are moved to the remembrance of the prototypes, and to greater love for them…”

However, the struggle against the heresy that had caused the Church so much suffering was not yet over. When Emperor Leo the Armenian ascended the throne in 813, he revived iconoclasm and launched a new wave of persecution against those who remained faithful to the holy teachings and traditions of the Church. This persecution, sometimes subsiding and then flaring up again, continued until the death of Emperor Theophilus in 842. According to surviving accounts, this relentless enemy of icons, who had cast many confessors of the truth into prison and exile, suffered greatly from a tormenting illness at the end of his life. In his final moments, his wife, Empress Theodora—who had secretly venerated the holy icons—brought them before him. Filled with repentance, he kissed them.

After the emperor’s death, a Church Council was convened, which forever confirmed the Holy Tradition of venerating icons. It was through this Council that the celebration of the Triumph of Orthodoxy was established, commemorated ever since on the first Sunday of Great Lent.

The commemoration of this event is celebrated with such solemnity for several important reasons. The practice of venerating holy icons serves as a constant reminder of the truth of God’s incarnation—that the Creator of heaven and earth, of the visible and invisible worlds, truly and fully became man. In honoring the image in which God the Word was made flesh, we celebrate the redemption and sanctification of our entire nature, filling us with the greatest hope of union with God in the age to come.

The images of Christ, the Theotokos, and the saints, which we venerate, are manifestations of the image and likeness of God. “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness…”—thus did the Triune God proclaim His will concerning the creation of man (Genesis 1:26). “In our creation, we were given the possibility of being like God,” says St. Gregory of Nyssa. “Yet, in granting us this possibility, God has left it to us to be the agents of our own likeness to Him, so that we might be worthy of a joyful reward. […] What is Christianity?—It is the imitation of God, insofar as it is possible for human nature. If you have resolved to be a Christian, then strive to become like God, to clothe yourself in Christ” (On the Making of Man).

The remembrance of the restoration of the veneration of holy icons is, therefore, a significant milestone on the path of the faithful toward the goal of Great Lent. Gazing upon the countenances of the Lord and the saints with faith, love, and fervent prayer, it is fitting for a Christian to strive for the transformation of himself into that new man, whom the Lord Jesus Christ revealed in Himself in perfect form. And this, as we believe, will lead us to resurrection into the new blessed life, following the Risen Savior, as it is written:

“Christ is risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at His coming” (1 Corinthians 15:20–23).