Today we celebrate the Feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy; what triumph is being spoken of now? When we look around, when we look into the depths of the Orthodox faith that is dear to us, how much defeat and dejection we see – how little, it would seem, there is to celebrate. But we do not celebrate only, or rather – we do not at all celebrate the visible glory of Orthodoxy. We see the Triumph of Orthodoxy in two things: first, in the fact that Orthodox people across the earth or gathered in close national communities, despite persecutions, despite enormous difficulties, have preserved their faith in purity, have preserved their worship with reverence, have preserved the spiritual path that Christ bequeathed to us in the Gospel and the Fathers of the Church throughout all the centuries of our ecclesial life. We may exult in this; we may revere those people who stood firm through the millennia in the faith of pure confession, in truly evangelical spirituality, and preserved for us our precious, profound, instructive liturgy. But we know that however much a person wishes to be faithful, however much he exerts his strength, he is easily overcome unless the Lord Himself gives him strength, unless the grace of God fights for him. And, ultimately, the Triumph of Orthodoxy, over which our heart rejoices because it continues to fill us with hope, is God’s victory in human weakness, over us and in us, among us, throughout the millennia that have already passed.
The Triumph of Orthodoxy is the day when we rejoice that God remained unconquered by human sin, by the sin of the mind, by the coldness and instability of the heart, by wavering of the will, by the sins of the flesh. God remained unconquered in the Church of Christ, God remained unconquered in individual, concrete persons – in this lies our great joy.
But the Feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy was instituted for a more particular reason; after the Seventh Ecumenical Council, when Orthodoxy finally achieved victory over iconoclasm, this feast was established. What does it proclaim? The Church of Christ defended the right, defended our duty to venerate the icons of Christ, the Mother of God, and the saints. In doing so she defended the truth of the Incarnation, and the truth that God reveals Himself, discloses Himself in images, perhaps imperfectly, but He is revealed to us in those images that we form of Him. These images are not only icons; they are verbal icons, as St. Andrew of Crete speaks of them, in the dogmas of the Church, in the teaching of the Fathers, in the instruction we receive. And, finally, again figuratively, God is revealed to us in people; for each of us bears within himself the image of the living God. Of Christ the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great says that He is the seal of likeness, revealing the Father to us in Himself. He is the perfect image, He is the truth, He is the perfect God, as He is also the perfect man. But in us also dwells the radiance and the seal of that image. And rejoicing today in the Triumph of Orthodoxy, we rejoice that God revealed Himself to us in the flesh in Christ – the Incarnation of the Son of God. We rejoice that our created world is such that the fullness of Divinity can dwell among us bodily, that through this God can become expressible in images, and that by gazing at icons and above all at the living icons that are people, if we only know how to set aside the human weakness that darkens our sight, and with clear eyes see through human frailty the abiding image of God, we can worship the living God among people, in people. Not without reason did the Fathers of the Church say: “He who has seen his brother has seen his God…” Therefore let us keep a reverent attitude toward one another, because we are an appearance, an image, an icon; let us reverently preserve our faith and the dogma of venerating holy icons, which expresses the unconditional belief that God became man. And let us rejoice that from generation to generation God conquers in our weakness, conquers and subdues us to Himself, and let us give ourselves to the Lord so that this victory may be perfected, so that He may conquer to the end – not only in past centuries, but now, in us, so that the radiance of His glory may be revealed to a world that lies in sorrow and in search.
Amen.
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