The Sunday of Orthodoxy is a celebration of the truth of God’s incarnation. It is much more than the celebration of paint and art. Holy Icons are a crucial reminder that God has become human so that we commune with Him. Holy Icons are a reminder of the truth that God has brought us the hope of salvation, through living in communion with God.
Transcript:
My brothers and sisters, today, the first Sunday of Great Lent we call the Sunday of Orthodoxy, it is the Sunday of Truth. We celebrate the restoration of Holy Icons today, my brothers and sisters, not simply because they are beautiful, not because they uplift our hearts to God when we look at the beauty. And I can tell you, day after day, we have visitors coming in our cathedral who walk into this beauty and their hearts are lifted to God. So the icons absolutely are a thing of beauty, and they draw our hearts closer to God.
But that is not why we are celebrating today. We are celebrating today because of the truth of God’s incarnation. “God became man,” as St. Athanasios says, “so man could become like God.” You see, my brothers and sisters, God becoming man was only the first step in our salvation. The second step was that God unites us to Himself in holy Communion, in our baptism, in our Chrismation, but He couldn’t have done that from heaven. If God had not become a human being, we would be stuck in our sins. If God did not allow us to be united to him physically, not just mystically but physically united to him, if He did not become man and allow that, my brothers and sisters, we would have no hope.
What would a life be with no hope? What would a life be stuck in our sins? This is the Feast of Holy Icons because as the Gospel says today, as Jesus was approaching and he spoke to Nathanael when Nathanael said to him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God. You are the king of Israel.” And Jesus answered, said to him, “Because I said to you I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe you will see greater things than these?” You see, my brothers and sisters, God sees everything. And when I say everything, I mean everything. We cannot escape the eyes of God. Nathanael was sitting under the fig tree in a distance and Jesus saw him there.
Now, that was enough for Nathanael to believe as he looked at Christ, but Christ promises something greater. He says, “Greater things than these, you will see,” and Nathanael saw the resurrected Christ. And because Christ is resurrected from the dead, my brothers and sisters, because we have seen Him, we paint icons of Him to prove to the world that He is real, to prove to the world that He came to save us, to prove to the world that we have been forgiven of our sins and that we have been united to God so that we can be in communion with Him.
Life without holy Communion is not life. Christ says in the Gospel of John, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” We may wake up, we may go to work, we may go to school, we may go out and work in the garden, but without holy Communion, my brothers and sisters, we are dead. That is the truth of Holy Icons, because they remind us of that great gift, not just the beauty, not just the inspiring lives of the saints, but the gift of being able to receive holy Communion.
Too many of us, my brothers and sisters, do not have holy Communion as a priority in our life. I pray that that changes today. I pray that we will begin living the truth of the icons that we’re going to process outside, that God became man so that we could be in communion with Him and be divine with Him and united to Him. Otherwise, to borrow an image from Hollywood, without holy Communion, we may as well be zombies, the walking dead. We think we are alive but we are really dead inside without holy Communion. So hold your icons proud, my brothers and sisters, but not just as pieces of wood and paint but as the truth of God’s love and as invitation for us to holy Communion. Glory to God for all things.
