Sunday of Orthodoxy

[Caedmontwo]

>Sunday of Orthodoxy 1998
>
>
>The Hierarchs of the Standing Conference of the Canonical Orthodox
>Bishops in the Americas
>
>To all the clergy and laity of the Holy Orthodox Church throughout the
>Americas
>
>
>Through the divine descent of the Comforter sanctify Thy temple, and by
>His coming banish the error of heresy, O most merciful Word of God.
>Deliver thy people from the violence of impiety, and kindle them with
>zeal for Orthodoxy, as they cry aloud to Thee in faith:
>Glory to Thy power, O Lord.Ä
>(Canticle Four, Matins for the Sunday of Orthodoxy)
>
>
>Beloved Children in Christ,
>
>
>Each year the Holy Orthodox Church ushers us into the saving season of
>the Great Fast by reminding us of that day, March 11, in the year 843
>A.D. when, against the persistent heretical attacks of the iconoclasts,
>the holy icons were restored once and for all time to the veneration of
>the faithful and for use in Divine Service, by the pious Empress
>Theodora acting as regent of her young son Michael III. This day is
>commemorated by all Orthodox Churches as the Sunday of Orthodoxy.
>
>We, your Bishops and spiritual fathers in the Lord, remind all Orthodox
>Christians that the First Sunday of Great Lent recalls for us that the
>holy icons in our homes and churches are images that communicate the
>presence of God, indeed, as Sacred Scripture does. Saint Basil the
>Great notes this when he writes: ÇWhat the word transmits through the
>ear, the painting silently shows through the image.Ä (Discourse 19, on
>the Forty Martyrs)
>
>Our veneration of the holy icons is a statement of the Orthodox faith
>in the Incarnation of Christ-- God taking flesh and blood, heaven
>coming to earth, the external expressing itself in time and space. As
>Saint John of Damascus asserts of the holy icons: ÇI do not worship
>matter, but I worship the Creator of matter, Who for my sake became
>material and deigned to dwell in matter, Who through matter effected my
>salvation.Ä (On the Holy Icons, 1.16)
>
>Yet the spiritual significance of the Sunday of Orthodoxy comes not
>only from our veneration of the holy icons, but from the great witness
>of all those who literally shed their blood and gave their lives that
>the truth of the Orthodox Christian faith be preserved. Against
>heresies and false teachings, against the anti-Orthodox sentiments of
>their times, these confessors of the faith resisted the easy path and
>chose the Çnarrow wayÄ of defending the essential truth of the faith
>against the insidious forces of impiety and error working within and
>outside the Church.
>
>Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, we are summoned on this First
>Sunday of Great Lent 1998, near the dawn of the New Millennium, to
>carry on their bold witness, not against physical enemies and powers,
>but, as Saint Paul teaches, Çagainst the principalities, against the
>powers, against the world rulers of the present darkness, against the
>spiritual hosts of wickedness.Ä (Ephesians 6:12)
>
>There are, in our society, signs of the Çviolence and impietyÄ and the
>Çerrors of heresyÄ that the liturgical texts speak of this day. The
>forces of secularism are bent upon eliminating a theological
>understanding of the human person, one that emphasizes that man is a
>creature of God, that sin corrupted and corrupts human society, that
>salvation and redemption is found nowhere but in Çthe Cross of our Lord
>Jesus Christ in whom the world is crucified unto me and I to the
>world.Ä (Galatians 6:14)
>
>This secularism, guised under the many forms of New Age and humanistic
>thought, trivializes religious belief, re-defines man in mere
>psychological, emotional or social terms, and is void of any belief in
>the eternal destiny of the human person, the reality of salvation and
>punishment, and the discipline of the spiritual life in the unseen
>warfare against the ego.
>
>Coupled with a growing moral relativism in our society where absolute
>values are dismissed, where the ethic of immediate gratification and
>pleasure seeking prevails, secularism has directly contributed to a
>cheapening of human life and sexuality, a disregard for self-discipline
>and personal restraint, and an illusory notion that this life, this
>work can satisfy the deep God-craving of the human heart. These are the
>great heresies of our day! These are signs of the Çviolence of impietyÄ
>that confronts every Orthodox Christian believer.
>
>As our ancestors in the faith gloriously and boldly carried the icons
>and their truth into the face of the insidious heresies of their day,
>so must we boldly take a stand against the death producing ideology of
>secularism and its accompanying ethic of moral relativism. By
>dedicating every parish and every individual believer to the
>restoration of the traditional disciplines of Orthodox asceticism--
>fasting, prayer, faithful attendance at Divine Services, and the
>reading and study of the Fathers of the Church-- we will Çgird our
>loins with the truth and put on the breastplate of righteousness.Ä
>(Ephesians 6:14)
>
>We call upon you, our beloved children in the Lord, to dedicate
>yourselves to a renewal of Orthodox spirituality and its discipline.
>Walk the martyr×s path, endure the hardship, preserve and defend the
>truth of our holy faith against those who could dilute it, compromise
>it, or deny it altogether. We are sent, as Jesus said, as Çlambs into
>the midst of wolves,Ä but by the offering of all Divine Services, by
>the discipline of full fasting, by daily prayer and penance and through
>the wisdom of the Fathers, we can and will prevail-- bishops, priest
>monastics and laity-- together. May the Crucified Lord of Glory grant
>that it be so!
>
>With Archpastoral blessings, and prayers for a spiritual Lent and a
>blessed Pascha,
>
>
>+Archbishop Spyridon, Chairman
>Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America
>
>
>+Metropolitan Philip, Vice Chairman
>Antiochian Orthodox Chrisitan
>Archdiocese of America
>
>
>+Metropolitan Joseph, Secretary
>Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Church
>
>
>+Metropolitan Nicholas of Amissos, Treasurer
>American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox
>Greek Catholic Diocese in the USA
>
>
>+Metropolitan Theodosius
>Orthodox Church in America
>
>
>+Archbishop Victorin
>Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese
>in America and Canada
>
>
>+Metropolitan Christopher
>Serbian Orthodox Church
>in the United States and Canada
>
>
>+Metropolitan Constantine
>Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA
>
>
>Protopresbyter Ilia Katre, Vicar General
>Albanian Orthodox Diocese in America
>

In Him,
the sinner Caedmon