History behind Orthodox Sunday

Every year, the Byzantine Catholic Church throughout the world commemorates first Sunday of Lent as the Triumph of the Holy Icons, the end of the controversy of iconoclasm.

St. Mary’s Byzantine Catholic Church, 7782 Glenwood Ave., Boardman, will celebrate Orthodox Sunday at 5 p.m. Sunday with a Great Vespers and icon procession. The Rev. John M. Botean of Canton will preside and give the homily.

The iconoclasm heresy, (“image-breaking”) is the name of the heresy that in the eighth and ninth centuries disturbed the peace of the Eastern Church. These crises had produced two waves of persecutions of Orthodox Catholic hierarchs, clergy and faithful.

The Byzantine emperors were the first ones who initiated the persecution of the iconodules. The iconoclasm heresy had begun in the Eastern Byzantine Empire and had two periods: 730-787 and 814-843.

The first period culminated with the seventh Ecumenical Council of Nicaea. The cult of the icons was restored and approved by the Church.

During the council at Nicaea in September of 787, the following was adopted: “... we declare that we defend free from any innovations all the written and unwritten ecclesiastical traditions that have been entrusted to us. One of these is the production of representational art; this is quite in harmony with the history of the spread of the gospel, as it provides confirmation that the becoming man of the Word of God was real and not just imaginary, and as it brings us a similar benefit. For, things that mutually illustrate one another undoubtedly possess one another’s message. ... We decree with full precision and care that, like the figure of the honored and life-giving cross, the revered and holy images, whether painted or made of mosaic or of other suitable material, are to be exposed in the holy churches of God, on sacred instruments and vestments, on walls and panels, in houses and by public ways; these are the images of our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ, and of our Lady without blemish, the holy God-bearer, and of the revered angels and of any of the saintly holy men. The more frequently they are seen in representational art, the more are those who see them drawn to remember and long for those who serve as models, and to pay these images the tribute of salutation and respectful veneration. Certainly this is not the full adoration in accordance with our faith, which is properly paid only to the divine nature, but it resembles that given to the figure of the honored and life-giving cross, and also to the holy books of the gospels and to other sacred cult object.”

In the second period, 27 years later, the iconoclasm resurfaced. The Byzantine emperors started a persecution of all those who opposed their theological views.

The theological opponents of iconoclasm, besides the popes of Rome, were the monks Mansur, including John of Damascus, who lived in Muslim territory as advisers to the Caliph of Damascus, and Theodore the Studite, abbot of the Stoudios monastery in Constantinople.

John declared that he did not venerate matter, “but rather the creator of matter.” He also declared, “But I also venerate the matter through which salvation came to me, as if filled with divine energy and grace.” He includes in this latter category the ink in which the gospels were written as well as the paint of images, the wood of the Cross and the body and blood of Jesus.

Regarding the written tradition opposing the making and veneration of images, they asserted that icons were part of unrecorded oral tradition (par °dosis) sanctioned in Orthodoxy as authoritative in doctrine by reference to 2 Thessalonians 2:15.

Iconodules argued that decisions such as whether icons ought to be venerated were properly made by the church assembled in council, not imposed on the church by an emperor. Thus the argument also involved the issue of the proper relationship between church and state.

Related to this was the observation that it was foolish to deny to God the same honor that was freely given to the human emperor.

After the death of her husband, the emperor Theophilus, the empress Theodora, like her predecessor empress Irene, being an iconodule, had stopped the iconoclasm and summoned a council in Constantinople in 842. It approved and renewed the decree of the Second Council of Nicaea and excommunicated Iconoclasts. This is the last act in the story of this heresy.

On the first Sunday of Lent (Feb. 19, 842) the icons were brought back to the churches in solemn procession.

That day was made into a perpetual memory of the triumph of Orthodoxy at the end of the long Iconoclast persecution.

The Synodikon is read this day after the procession. It is the “Feast of Orthodoxy” of the Byzantine Church still kept solemnly by both Greek Catholics and Orthodox.

The Rev. George D. Gage is pastor of St. Mary’s Byzantine Catholic Church.