An homily from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, for the Triumph of Orthodoxy Sunday, 7534/2026, by Priest Paul Siewers.
Imagine an Orthodox Church, even our modest country church, where one night all the iconography vanishes, here and in Orthodox churches around the world, and from our own home icon corners also. It would be like a nightmare, stripping our worship space of much beauty and spiritual meaning. It would not stop our faith, but would be sorrowful. Yet for 120 years or so in early centuries of the Church this was a real historical challenge. From this struggle came the Triumph of Orthodoxy we celebrate today. When icons were restored after the Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787, the victory came out of a defeat, which resulted in a greater understanding of the role of icons in our faith. We celebrate this triumph on the first Sunday of Lent in part because, like repentance, it is a celebration of victory coming from humbling, the full development of a theology and practice of bowing before icons as spiritual friends. And it came only after they had been stripped from our churches and homes, sometimes violently and producing martyrs.
God restored the icons. But today especially in Protestantism and in the secularism that emerged in the West we often see the same cheapening of Christian worship and faith and of life. This heresy denies the energizing of Creation by God with divine beauty, and how the image of Christ may be seen in each of us. Today our online world in a new subtler iconoclasm turns icons and ourselves into virtual images empty of relationship with God, and shapes a virtual reality of idolatry.
But always the triumph of Orthodoxy remains an embrace of humility. We bow and venerate and make the sign of the Cross before icons as windows into eternity, and also as family portraits. In the same way, our very involvement in a parish Church family is a humbling experience, recognizing the importance of others in our lives, and we bow to each other at Forgiveness Sunday just as we will embrace at Agape Sunday, recognizing the image of Christ in each other. For as Jesus Christ said, His New Commandment is to love each other as He loved us. He laid down His life for us. This means we are to love one another not only as our self, but more than ourself.
The Triumph of Orthodoxy really in a sense lies in our embrace of worldly defeat as Christians. That the Triumph of Orthodoxy is not of this world but otherworldly, is seen in the cup that Jesus Christ drank for us. Great milestones of Orthodox Church history are the loss of Constantinople, the persecutions by Islamists, and the Communist takeover of Russia. But these also involved humiliations that were great lessons for our faith and a source of martyrs who intercede for us and whose example in Christ help light our way to salvation.
Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov wrote about this in a wonderful short essay called “The Cup of Christ” which is most appropriate for this first Sunday in Lent. He wrote:
“Two beloved disciples asked the Lord for thrones of glory, and He gave them His Cup (Matt. 20:23). The Cup of Christ is suffering. But for those who drink from it on earth, the Cup of Christ grants participation in Christ’s Kingdom. It prepares for them the thrones of eternal glory in heaven. We stand in silence before the Cup of Christ, nor can any man complain about it or reject it; for He, Who commanded us to taste it, first drank of it Himself. O tree of knowledge of good and evil! You killed our ancestors in Paradise, you deceived them by the delusions of sensual pleasure and the delusions of reason. Christ, the Redeemer of the fallen, brought His Cup of Salvation into this world — to the fallen and to those who are exiled from Paradise.
“The bitterness of this Cup cleanses the heart from forbidden, destructive and sinful pleasure. Through the humility that flows from it in abundance, the pride of understanding on the carnal level is mortified. To him who drinks from the Cup with faith and patience, the eternal life, which was -and still is – lost to him by his tasting of forbidden fruit, will be restored. I will accept the Cup of Christ — the cup of salvation. The Cup is accepted when the Christian bears earthly tribulation in the spirit of humility learnt from the Gospel. St. Peter turned swiftly with a naked sword to defend the God-Man, Who was surrounded by evil doers; but Jesus said to Peter:‘Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?’ (John 18:11).
“So, too, when disaster surrounds you, you should comfort and strengthen your soul, saying,‘The Cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?‘ The Cup is bitter: at first sight all human reasoning is confounded. Surmount reason by faith and drink courageously from the bitter Cup: it is the Father Who gives it to you, He who is all good and all wise. It is neither the Pharisees, nor Caiaphas, nor Judas who prepared the Cup; it is neither Pilate nor his soldiers who give it! ‘The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?’
“Pharisees think evil, Judas betrays, Pilate orders the unlawful killing, the soldiers of the government execute his order. Through their evil deeds all these prepared their own true perdition. Do not prepare for yourself just such a perdition by remembering evil, by longing for and dreaming of revenge, and by indignation against your enemies. The heavenly Father is almighty and all-seeing. He sees your affliction, and if He had found it necessary and profitable to withdraw the Cup from you, He would certainly have done so….
“How can we reject the Cup, which is the means of attaining this Kingdom and growing with it? I will accept the Cup — the gift of God. For the Cup of Christ is the gift of God. The great Paul writes to the Philippians ‘For unto you is given in behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake’ (Phil. 1:29). You receive the Cup, which seemingly comes from the hand of man. What is it to you whether the bearer of the Cup acts righteously or unrighteously? As a follower of Jesus, your concern is: to act righteously; to receive the Cup with thanksgiving to God and with a living faith; and to courageously drink it to the dregs.
“In receiving the Cup from the hand of man, remember it is the Cup of Him, Who is not only innocent but All-Holy. Thinking on this, remind yourself, and other suffering sinners, of the words that the blessed and enlightened thief spoke when he was crucified on the right hand of the crucified God-Man: ‘We receive the due reward of our deeds… Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom’ (Luke 23:41-42)…. Pray to the Lord on behalf of those who have insulted and outraged you that what they have done for you should be repaid by a temporal blessing and the eternal reward of salvation, and that, when they stand before Christ to be judged, it should be counted to them as if it had been an act of virtue. Although your heart does not wish to act in this way, compel it to do so, because only those who do violence to their own heart, in fulfilling the commandments of the Gospel, can inherit Heaven. If you have not the will to act in this way, then you have not the will to be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. Look deep within yourself and consider searchingly: have you not found another teacher, the teacher of hatred – the devil – and fallen under his power?….
“A living faith in Christ teaches one to receive the Cup of Christ, and the Cup of Christ inspires hope in the heart of him who receives it; and hope in Christ gives strength and consolation to the heart. What torment, what torment of hell, to complain or to murmur against the Cup that is pre-ordained from above!… It is sinful to complain of neighbors, when they are the instruments of our suffering; still more sinful is it when we cry out against the Cup that comes down to us straight from Heaven — from the right hand of God. But he who drinks the cup – with thanksgiving to God and blessings on his neighbor – achieves holy serenity — the grace of the peace of Christ. It is as if already he enjoys God’s spiritual Paradise….
“Righteous Job heard bitter news. Tiding after tiding came to pierce his steadfast heart; the last of these was the hardest: all his sons and daughters had been struck down suddenly by a cruel and violent death. In his great sorrow, he rent his clothes and covered his head with ashes. And then – in submissive faith – he fell down upon the ground, and worshipped the Lord saying ‘I myself came naked from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, the Lord has taken away: as it seemed good to the Lord, so has it come to pass; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ ” So wrote St. Ignatius Brianchaninov.
Brothers and sisters, the Triumph of Orthodoxy stems from defeat and humiliation, in our lives as in Church history. In bowing ourselves before the icons, we relive this and pass it forward in the spark of God’s love in our hearts that overcomes the world. Job from his humiliation said ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’ and we are told in the end (in the Septuagint) that he died in hope of the resurrection. Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky of blessed memory, the founding first hierarch of our beloved Russian Church Abroad in the sorrow of the Russian Civil War, famously taught that it was our Lord’s acceptance of the Cup at Gethsemane that marked a special moment in our redemption. For the tears that He shed like blood there, when He said He would take the cup, and uttered the words “Not my will but Thy will be done,” were for our benefit. They expressed His compassionate sorrow for our sins. So, too, all of Lent and the Triumph of Orthodoxy in particular, seen in the windows of the icons, teach us to empty ourselves in Christ so that we may bear the life-giving Cross of loving one another more than ourselves. For ultimately the Cup of Christ is the Cup of the Chalice in which together lies our sharing of His Body and Blood. Glory to Jesus Christ!
The Reading from the
Holy Gospel according to John for the First Sunday of Lent
§5 [1:43-51]
At that time: Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and found Philip and said unto him, ‘Follow Me.’ Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said unto him, ‘We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and the Prophets wrote: Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’ And Nathanael said unto him, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said unto him, ‘Come and see.’ Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and said of him, ‘Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!’ Nathanael said unto Him, ‘How knowest Thou me?’ Jesus answered and said unto him, ‘Before Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.’ Nathanael answered and said unto Him, ‘Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel.’ Jesus answered and said unto him, ‘Because I said unto thee, ‘I saw thee under the fig tree,’ believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things than these.’ And He said unto him, ‘Verily, verily I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’