The Sunday of Orthodoxy is the first Sunday of Great Lent according to the Eastern Orthodox (Julian) calendar. The dominant theme of this Sunday since 843 AD has been that of the victory of the icons. In that year the iconoclastic controversy, which had raged on and off since 726, was finally resolved by the Church, and icons and their veneration were restored on the first Sunday in Lent. Ever since, this Sunday has been commemorated as the Triumph of Orthodoxy.
The Council decided on a doctrine by which icons should be venerated but not worshipped. The decree of the Seventh Ecumenical Council of 787 restoring icons to churches added an important clause which still stands at the foundation of the rationale for using and venerating icons in the Orthodox Church to this very day:
“We define that the holy icons, whether in color, mosaic, or some other material, should be exhibited in the holy churches of God, on the sacred vessels and liturgical vestments, on the walls, furnishings, and in houses and along the roads, namely the icons of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, that of Our Lady the Theotokos, those of the venerable angels and those of all saintly people. Whenever these representations are contemplated, they will cause those who look at them to commemorate and love their prototype. We define also that they should be kissed and that they are an object of veneration and honor (προσκύνηση και τιμή), but not of worship (λατρεία), which is reserved for Him Who is the subject of our faith and is proper for the divine nature. The veneration accorded to an icon is in effect transmitted to the prototype; the person who venerates the icon, venerated in it the reality for which it stands.”
The theme of the victory of the icons, by its emphasis on the incarnation, points us to the basic Christian truth that the one whose death and resurrection we celebrate at Pascha (Easter) was none other than the Word of God who became human.
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