A friend of mine likes to say that no nation or people is truly a Christian nation or people until it has a nationally-venerated icon or shrine of the Theotokos. This is not a doctrine of the Church, of course, but it is a cultural observation that rings true in a certain way. There is something about how a Christian society works that almost inevitably results in having a veneration for the Lord’s mother at the center.
The argument against iconography breaks down because those who reject icons do not understand what idolatrous images were actually used for. They were not merely religious art. They are a kind of religious technology designed to trap and control a god.
Sunday of the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, October 14, 2018 Titus 3:8-15; Luke 8:5-15 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. One of the accusations that certain non-Orthodox Christians level against the Orthodox is that we worship idols. They say that when we bow before an icon or kiss it or…
Sunday of Orthodoxy, March 5, 2017 Hebrews 11:24-26, 32-40; John 1:43-51 Very Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Today is the First Sunday of Lent, which is commonly called the Sunday of Orthodoxy or the Triumph of Orthodoxy. This “triumph” is dedicated to the historical event of…
Sunday of Orthodoxy, March 1, 2015 Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. “Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’” This phrase, which we hear in today’s Gospel, has come to be something of an evangelistic watchword among English-speaking Orthodox Christians. “Come and see.” It is used especially…