In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Spirit, amen. Glory be to Jesus Christ.
Today, the first week of Lent is, as I'm sure
you all know, the Sunday of Orthodoxy. On this
Sunday of Orthodoxy, really like every Sunday
of Orthodoxy in the past, there is much for us
to rejoice about. as well as much for us to pray
about. Let's look at the rejoicing first. Of
course, this day commemorates the restoration
of icons in the church that after 150 years,
we can't imagine how this iconoclasm tore the
church apart. for 150 years. The Seventh Ecumenical
Council in 787 gave us our definition of the
reason why we can venerate and should venerate
icons, but that wasn't the end of the story.
The final restoration of icons took place in
the year 843, and that didn't even solve the
issue completely because iconoclasm didn't really
peter out for at least another 30 years. We know
that at a council in 969, there was still an
issue. What do you do with iconoclastic clergy
who want to repent and join the church? Should
they be received as clergy or should they be
received as lay people? So we know that iconoclasm
was an issue even into the latter part of the
10th century. Much like Arianism, which brought
about the first ecumenical council, this issue,
who is Jesus Christ, and the issue of why do
we have icons, may we venerate them, these tore
the church apart. St. Jerome, after the Council
of Nicaea, St. Jerome even lamented. He remarked,
you know, the whole world groaned to find itself
Arian. So even after the Council of Nicaea, Arianism
for a while looked like it was gaining the upper
hand until that issue was definitively resolved
at the Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople.
381, excuse me. So we have the fullness of orthodoxy,
how blessed we are, not only to have our Christian
faith, but to have our orthodox Christian faith,
that we can triumph in the fact and triumph with
humility. that we bear this truth in earthen
vessels, that we hold that faith which was transmitted
to us, preached by the apostles, and handed down
by the church fathers and the councils. So that
is the triumph that we have to humbly glory in
our Orthodox Christian faith. Okay, so what do
we have to pray for? For the peace of the whole
world, for the well -being of the holy churches
of God, and for the union of all, let us pray
to the Lord. How, a few weeks ago or a few years
ago, those words, that petition might just have
rolled out of our mouth without... Too much reflection.
But how important that is. Because just as heresy
tore the church apart during the time of Arianism
and iconoclasm, so what tears the church apart
nowadays? Factionalism. Nationalism. All these
things that we fought about for several centuries.
I remember when I first became Orthodox, almost
60 years ago, people would say, oh, Orthodox,
you mean Greek Orthodox, or what kind of Orthodox
are you? And I thought, man, when will we ever
get over this hump? And they still ask that question
now, oh, Orthodox, what flavor, so to speak?
What is the one church looks to some people like
several different churches, nations. Serbians
are different from Greeks, Ukrainians are different
from Russians. So we fought this issue about
fragmentation for quite a while. In, I'd say
within the last decade. it became even more intense
with the long -standing feuding between the Patriarch
of Constantinople and the Patriarch of Moscow
and between the church in Greece and the church
of Russia that this family feud, so to speak,
started gaining more momentum. And then now it
erupts. unfortunately, in the situation in Ukraine,
which is no longer just a family feud, but it's
a war between brothers. Years ago, when I was
teaching at a Roman Catholic seminary at a faculty
discussion, one of the priests, my colleague,
asked me very sincerely, he said, Father, What
really holds the Orthodox Church together? And
you know, that's a good question. And I said,
the Holy Spirit. Nobody else could. And that's
true. The Holy Spirit holds our church together.
But you know what also holds our church together?
Our adherence to this one faith, the faith of
the one holy Catholic and apostolic church. This
is what makes us one with Orthodox throughout
the world. Their problems, their issues, their
pains are our problems, issues, and pains. Because
we are not only members of the human race, but
we are members of the same family of Jesus Christ,
the Holy Church. So today, let us pray. for the
peace of the whole world, for the well -being
of the holy churches of God. That means that
they stay in good shape, that they get along
with one another, and for the union of all, that
the different Orthodox churches throughout the
world will be maintained in that oneness of faith,
and we can overlook pettiness in our church life
and realize that pearl of great price which we
have in the faith of the one holy catholic and
apostolic church thank you lord jesus for teaching
us and giving us faith in you and in your church
and save your church amen