Today, Sunday March 24, our Church celebrates the Sunday of Orthodoxy as the first Sunday of Great Lent (First Lent), which we count 42 days before the Orthodox Easter.
Christianity honors the restoration of icons by Empress Theodora in 842 AD, which marked the end of the Iconoclasm, the religious and political conflict that divided the inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire into Iconoclasts (or Iconoclasts) and Iconolatres (or Iconophiles and Iconoclasts ).
In Constantinople and in the magnificent church of Hagia Sophia, the restoration of the holy icons was celebrated in a solemn atmosphere, while a litany followed with a large procession.
At the same time, the iconoclasts were excommunicated, the heretics arrested and all those excommunicated by the Ecumenical Synods. At the end, all the “athletes” of piety and the Orthodox Faith were commemorated. In fact, during the procession of the holy icons in the holy temples, the faithful are accustomed to keep with them icons from their homes.
More specifically, in the Clock (liturgical book of the church) the following is mentioned: “For more than a hundred years, the Church was disturbed by persecutions by vicious iconoclasts. The first was the emperor Leo Isaurus and the last was Theophilos, husband of Saint Theodora, who after the death of her husband assumed power and re-established Orthodoxy together with Patriarch Methodius.
Queen Theodora publicly proclaimed that we embrace the Icons, not worshipfully, not as Gods, but as images of the archetypes. On the first Sunday of Lent in the year 842, Theodora, together with her son Emperor Michael, marched and suspended the holy icons together with the clergy and the people.
Since then we celebrate every year the memory of this event because it was definitively determined that we do not worship the Icons, but honor and glorify all the Saints who represent and worship only the Triune God. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and no other, either Saint or Angel”.
During the Divine Liturgy, a passage from the Epistle to the Hebrews (1:24-26, and 32-40) is read, where the struggles of the holy men of the Old Testament in favor of the Faith are set forth, as well as a passage from the Gospel according to John (John . 1′ 44-52), where the call of Philip and Nathanael who confessed Jesus Christ as the son of God is told “Lord, you are the son of God, you are the King of Israel”.
The rendering of the passage of the Gospel in modern Greek is as follows:
44 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He then finds Philip and says to him: “Come with me.” 45 Philip came from Bethsaida, the hometown of Andrew and Peter. 46 Philip finds Nathanael and says to him: “He whom Moses announced in the law and the prophets, we have found him – he is Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth.” 47 “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathanael asked him. “Come and see for yourself,” Philip tells him. 48 Jesus saw Nathanael approaching and said of him: “Here is a truly Israelite, without guile in him.” 49 “How do you know me?” Nathanael asks him. And Jesus answered him: “Before Philip told you to come, I saw you sitting under the fig tree.” 50 Then Nathanael said to him: “Teacher, you are the Son of God, you are the king of Israel.” 51 And Jesus answered him: “Because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree, do you therefore believe in me? You will see greater things than these.” 52 And he added: “I tell you the truth, from now on you will see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending around the Son of Man.”
In addition, Orthodoxy Sunday is included in the Sundays on which believers observe the strict fast of Great Lent, which ends after the Easter Vigil and the Solemn Divine Liturgy of the Resurrection of the Lord, early in the morning of Easter Sunday.
It is reminded, finally, that this year the Sunday of Orthodoxy will be celebrated in the Catholic Church of the Holy Monastery of the Incorporeal Petrakis, instead of the Metropolitan Church of Athens, following a decision of the Permanent Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, under the presidency of the Archbishop of Athens and all Greece etc. . Hieronymou.
The Holy Liturgy will be officiated by the Metropolitans of Nikopolis and Preveza Chrysostomos, Ierissos, Mount Athos and Ardameri Theoklitos and Maroneia and Komotini Panteleimon, while the solemn service of the day will be pronounced by the Metropolitan Damascenes of Aetolia and Acarnania.
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