Reading about this church council is interesting in itself, and can also teach us so much about the Orthodox understanding of the church and it’s attitude toward the material world.

During the reign of Emperor Leo the Third and his son Constantine of the Eastern Roman empire there was a campaign against icons on the part of these emperors. No one is quite sure why the emperors had started the campaign. After all, icons had been venerated in the church for many centuries. Indeed tradition tells us that St. Luke painted the first icon of the Mother of God. Some think the emperor’s order was based on the Old Testament commandment against the making of images of God.

Others think that influence of the anti-iconic Muslims who were threatening the empire  influenced his decision. In any case, the emperor ordered icons to be removed from churches, public places and homes. Many Orthodox believers, clergy, monastics and laypeoples suffered in this campaign. The emperor even called a false council of bishops which condemned icons.

However, when Emperor Leo the IV died unexpectedly at a young age, his widow Empress Irene became regent for her young son. Irene believed in the veneration of icons and called another council which met in the year 787 and approved the use of icons. This council is the Seventh Ecumenical Council. Despite this council, the campaign against icons was renewed by Emperor Leon the V in 815 and wasn’t’ finally ended until another Empress, Theodora, acting as regent for her young son ordered the return of icons in 843. This event is commemorated as the Sunday of Orthodoxy during As interesting is this story is, what does it tell us about the church? First of all, no one bishop or group of bishops are “infallible”. In the history of the church there have been many false councils, including the one that condemned icons. Rather, the whole church has to receive the decision of a council. This can be a lengthy,  cumbersome process, but it does work, because the Holy Spirit abides in and guides the church into the truth. Second, use of icons tells us something about the importance of the material  world. In some religions and philosophies, the material world is seen as evil, or even as an illusion. In such a religion the goal is to be liberated from the material world.

However, in Christianity we believe that God created the world which is inherently good, despite the effects of sin on the world. This means that the goal of Christianity is the resurrection of the body in a transfigured heaven and earth. Because of this God uses material things (i.e., the water of baptism, the bread and wine of Holy Communion) in the process of human salvation. The veneration of icons is part of this. So we see that the Seventh Ecumenical Council has much to teach us not only about icons, but about the nature of the church and the church’s attitude toward the material world.

Troparion — Tone 8

Most glorious are You, O Christ our God! You have established the Holy Fathers as lights on the earth! Through them you have guided us to the true faith! O greatly Compassionate One, glory to You!

Kontakion — Tone 6

The Son who shone forth from the Father was ineffably born, two-fold in nature, of a woman. Having beheld Him, we do not deny the image of His form, but depict it piously and revere it faithfully. Thus, keeping the True Faith, the Church venerates the icon of Christ Incarnate.

Fr. John

The Orthodox Church has been a missionary church right from the beginning. Before Jesus Christ ascended into heaven He said to his apostles “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” In other words, the apostles were to bring the Christian message to the peoples of the world and to baptize them. The apostles were called to be missionaries.
We can see the beginning of this preaching in the Acts of the Apostles. The Acts of the Apostles is the fifth book of the New Testament and tells the history of the early church. It begins with St. Peter preaching to the Jews in Jerusalem on Pentecost. St. Peter himself reaches beyond Judaism with the baptism of the Roman Centurion Cornelius. We read about the conversion of St. Paul from being a persecutor of the church to becoming an apostle. St Paul spreads the Gospel throughout the Roman world, even to Rome itself where he was martyred.
Even though the church was persecuted by the Roman Empire through the early centuries, missionary activity continued and the church grew. After Emperor Constantine put an end to the persecution, both the Eastern Church and the Western Church spread the Gospel to many people in Eastern and Western Europe and the Middle East.
In what is known as the Age of Discovery (15th to 17th C) and afterward the nations of Europe brought the Gospel to many parts of Africa, Asia and South America and the church continues to grow in those places even today.

St. Thomas the Apostle is an example of a first century missionary. We remember from St. John’s Gospel that St. Thomas doubted the story of Christ’s resurrection but when he encountered the risen Christ, he believed and became a zealous missionary. According to early tradition he went to India in 52 AD and spread the Gospel there, founded churches and was martyred there. Even today many Indian Christians refer to themselves as Thomas Christians. There are Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Thomas Christians and many of them have come to the United States within recent years.
St. Innocent of Alaska was born in Irkutsk. After graduating from seminary he got married and was sent to Russian America as a missionary. He mastered many native languages and even devised an alphabet for languages that hadn’t had one before. He was a tireless missionary traveling through his enormous parish, preaching the Gospel.
On a return visit to Russia he learned that his wife had died so he became a monk and then a bishop before being sent back to Alaska. He continued his ministry in Alaska as a bishop for nine years, being based in Sitka. He became an archbishop and moved to Yakutsk. Finally he became Metropolitan of Moscow.
Both St. Thomas and St. Innocent worked to spread the Gospel under the most difficult of conditions and have left behind churches which have survived to the present day and are examples for all of us, clergy and lay people alike. They show the importance of participating in and sharing the living Christian message in whatever way we are called.

Holy, Glorious Apostle Thomas

Troparion — Tone 2

You were a disciple of Christ, and a member of the divine college of Apostles. Having been weak in faith you doubted the Resurrection of Christ, but by feeling the wounds you believed in His all-pure Passion: pray now to Him, O all-praised Thomas, to grant us peace and great mercy.

Kontakion — Tone 4

Thomas, the faithful servant and disciple of Christ, filled with divine grace, cried out from the depth of his love: “You are my Lord and my God!” St Innocent the Metropolitan of Moscow, Enlightener of the Aleuts and Apostle to the Americas

Troparion — Tone 4

O Holy Father Innocent, in obedience to the will of God you accepted dangers and tribulations bringing many peoples to the knowledge of truth. you showed us the way, Now by your prayers help lead us into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Troparion — Tone 2

You evangelized the northern people of America and Asia, proclaiming the Gospel of Christ to the natives in their own tongues. O holy hierarch Father Innocent, Enlightener of Alaska and all America, whose ways were ordered by the Lord. Pray to Him for the salvation of our souls in His Heavenly Kingdom!

Kontakion — Tone 2

A true celebration of the providence and grace of God is your life, O holy father Innocent, Apostle to our land. In hardships and dangers you toiled for the Gospel’s sake and God delivered and preserved you unharmed. From obscurity He highly exalted you as an example that the Lord truly guides a man in the way he should go.

Kontakion — Tone 2

Your life, O holy father Innocent, Apostle to our Land, proclaims the dispensation and grace of God! For laboring in dangers and hardships for the Gospel of Christ you were kept unharmed and exalted in humility. Pray that He may guide our steps in the way we should go.

Fr. John

St. John the theologian is one of the four evangelists, or authors of the Gospels. St. John was the son of Zebedee and Salome, who were well-to-do fishermen. As a very young man, St. John was a disciple of John the Baptist. He, together with Peter and James, were especially close to Jesus and were with him at special moments such as the raising of Jairus’ daughter and the Transfiguration. At the Last Supper, St. John leaned on Christ’s bosom. At the crucifixion the Lord Jesus entrusted his mother to Saint John. St. John was a zealous disciple of our Lord and when a Samaritan village did not welcome our Lord he asked that God send down fire on the village. For this reason St. John was named “Son of Thunder.” After Christ’s Ascension he remained in Jerusalem until that city was destroyed by Rome, after which he lived and ministered in Ephesus. For a time he was exiled to the island of Patmos. Although he was tortured by the Romans he died a natural death in great old age.
If we compare St. John’s Gospel with the first three we find that in Matthew, Mark and Luke Jesus taught primarily in parables (short stories with a point) and short, pithy sayings. Within the fourth Gospel, Jesus teaches in long theological discourses. For this reason some critics would say that John’s Gospel cannot be relied on.
However, in the first three Gospels Jesus was teaching humble peasants in Galilee while in the fourth Gospel Jesus is addressing the well-educated theologians in Jerusalem and also was addressing his own disciples rather than the crowds.
As mentioned earlier, St. John lived to a ripe old age and wrote his Gospel many decades after the first there. St. John wanted to give a fuller teaching of Christ’s divinity than the first three did. In other words, St. John made what was implicit in the other Gospels explicit. Or to put it another way, St. John had been teaching, preaching and meditating on the Gospels for many years, so some scholars would suggest that St. John gives the deeper meaning of Christ’s words. This is not to say that St. John was “making things up,” rather he was presenting the fullest meaning of Christ’s words and deeds. This means we should always read Christ’s words and deeds in the first three Gospels in the context of John’s Gospel so we can understand them most fully.

Fr. John

September 21st is the leave-taking of the feast of the Elevation of the Cross (September 14th) so as we are still within this festal period it is appropriate to consider the relics of the True Cross.
In the years 326-328 AD St. Helen (Elena) the mother of St. Constantine the Great, was visiting the Holy Land, going to places associated with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. In particular she was looking for the True Cross, the cross on which Christ was crucified. She found the True Cross, which was venerated in Jerusalem for many centuries. Part of it was taken to Constantinople and many fragments were taken by Crusaders. There are many churches around the world which claim to have fragments of the True Cross.
There are many sceptics who mock these claims, saying there are too many fragments in too many places. The Swiss reformer, John Calvin, said there were so many pieces which claimed to fragments of the True Cross that one could fill a whole ship with them. Many people say the same thing now.
However, in the 19th century a Frenchman, Charles Rohault de Fleury, drew up a catalogue of all the fragments he could find and wrote that all these fragments put together did not make up even one whole cross.
In the 20th century, a German biblical scholar, Carsten Pieter Thiede, did the same kind of research that de Fleury had done in the 19th century and reached a similar conclusion. He wrote a book called “The Quest for the True Cross”, which is available used for one cent on Amazon.com.
So, can we prove that each and every alleged fragment of the True Cross is genuine? The answer is no, we can’t. However we should never mock relics because if we do we are, in effect, saying that God cannot be present in material things. But in fact, the whole point of Christianity is that Christ came to save not only human beings but the entire material cosmos, so God does, indeed, work through bread, whine, icons, relics of the saints and so on. Christianity is not a religion of the salvation only of disembodies souls but of the redemption of the entire human person, body, soul and spirit, and the material world also.

Link to book mentioned in article: The Quest for the True Cross

Fr. John

The feast of the Holy Cross commemorates two “rediscoveries” of the Holy Cross (the cross on which Christ was crucified) in 326 AD and again in 614 AD. These rediscoveries happened in this way.
In 70 AD, the Roman army of Emperor Titus destroyed the city of Jerusalem, including the temple, after a Jewish revolt which has begun several years early. Later Emperor Hadrian ordered a pagan temple to be built over Golgotha, the hill on which Jesus was crucified, so that no one would know where this had happened.
In 326 AD Empress Helen (Elena), mother of St. Constantine the Great (the emperor who legalized Christianity) journeyed to Jerusalem to visit the sites of Christ’s life, and to hopefully find the cross of Christ.
Local tradition said that Golgotha was under a pagan temple of Venus. St. Helen ordered excavations to be done there and found three crosses, but there was no way of telling which one was Christ’s. To find out, the empress asked a sick woman to touch the three crosses and when she touched one cross she was healed, so this was probably the cross on which Christ was crucified. To make sure, she laid the crosses on the body of a dead man. When the cross of Christ touched him he came back to life. In this manner St. Helen realized that the healing, life-giving cross was Christ’s.
Then in 614 AD when the Persians captured Jerusalem, the Holy Cross was taken as a war prize. The cross was recovered in 622 AD by the Roman forces and returned to Jerusalem.
But in 326 AD and 627 AD, when the cross was recovered, it was raised on high and the Christians sang “Lord have mercy” many times. One can see this recreated in the cathedrals and monasteries at the Virgil service on September 14th.
In parish churches the cross, decorated with flowers, is brought out for veneration at the end of Matins. At this time the hymn “Before Thy Cross” is sung.
This feast reminds us that the cross of Christ is the sign of Christ’s victory over death, a victory which we participate in during our baptism.

Troparion — Tone 1

O Lord, save Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance. Grant victories to the Orthodox Christians over their adversaries. And by virtue of Thy Cross, preserve Thy habitation.

Kontakion — Tone 4

As Thou wast voluntarily crucified for our sake, grant mercy to those who are called by Thy Name, O Christ God; Make all Orthodox Christians glad by Thy power, granting them victories over their adversaries, by bestowing on them the Invincible trophy, Thy weapon of peace.

Fr. John