Icons and Orthodoxy Sunday

The idea that the Son of God was incarnate, born of a woman as all other humans are, that He lived, and breathed, and laughed and then even suffered and died, as do all humans ~ this idea was anathema to many people. Actually it still is today. Many Protestants and Roman Catholics and others view the Orthodox person bowing and venerating the icons, and think we are engaged in some form of idol-worship. But we worship only God, Father Son and Holy Spirit, but we use the medium of the icons to do so. And in the case of all the saints, angels and the Holy Theotokos, we do honor and respect, ask for prayers and blessing from them, but we do not idolize nor worship nor provide the relationship which is due to God alone. The best way I can explain it it to point out that you might have a picture of your deceased grandfather, or another deceased relative, in your home, and when you think of that departed beloved done, you might even give the picture a little kiss and have warm feelings welling up in your heart for that person, now gone to their reward. But you certainly are not worshipping them, or the glass and wood the picture is made of. Or even when you kiss a friend's cheek, or a child's forehead or even your spouse, you are loving and connecting with a living "icon" of the living God, who is not due worship but only respect and love, as the east Indians say, "Namaste" ~ basically meaning "I see the God in you, the divine in me sees the divine in you and gives it greetings".

The Sunday of Orthodoxy is the first Sunday of Great Lent. The rancorous iconoclastic controversy, which had raged on and off since 726AD, and in 843AD was finally laid to rest, and icons and their veneration were restored on the first Sunday in Lent by the Empress Theodora. Ever since, this Sunday has been commemorated as the "Triumph of Orthodoxy." Today it is known as the Sunday of Orthodoxy, or simply Orthodoxy Sunday.