February 25, 2007
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~Sunday of Orthodoxy~Today is the Sunday of Orthodoxy. One of things I like most about being an Orthodox Christian, is the beauty and repetition of the church calendar. I love that year after year, we live out the life of Christ and the history of His Church, each year we add another layer, another dimension to our life in Christ. I blogged about Sunday of Orthodoxy last year, it is hard to believe a year has passed. Click here to see photos from last year. I am looking forward to the pan-Orthodox events in our new city. Glory be to God!
1st Sunday of Great Lent – Sunday of OrthodoxyOriginally, the Prophets Moses, Aaron, and Samuel were commemorated on this Sunday. The Alleluia verses appointed for today’s Liturgy reflect this older usage.
Today we commemorate the “Triumph of Orthodoxy,” the restoration of the holy icons in the reign of the holy Empress Theodora (February 11).Lent was in origin the time of final preparation for candidates for baptism at the Easter Vigil, and this is reflected in the readings at the Liturgy, today and on all the Sundays of Lent. But that basic theme came to be subordinated to later themes, which dominated the hymnography of each Sunday. The dominant theme of this Sunday since 843 has been that of the victory of the icons. In that year the iconoclastic controversy, which had raged on and off since 726, was finally laid to rest, and icons and their veneration were restored on the first Sunday in Lent. Ever since, that Sunday been commemorated as the “triumph of Orthodoxy.”
Orthodox teaching about icons was defined at the Seventh Ecumenical Council of 787, which brought to an end the first phase of the attempt to suppress icons. That teaching was finally re-established in 843, and it is embodied in the texts sung on this Sunday.
Comments (1)
Thank you for posting these. Keeping “in synch” is important to me and helps me understand what is going on.