“Nathaniel asked him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said, ‘Come and see.’”
“‘Before Philip called you—I saw you.’... You shall see… greater things… heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.’” (John 1:46, 48, 50)
The gospel for the Sunday of Orthodoxy, the first Sunday of Great Lent, is the last part of the first chapter of St. John. It’s all about seeing, which is one but not the only reason why we celebrate the victory of icons today. The feast of feasts, the sacred Pascha reading is the first part of the same gospel. The common element is vision. Philip asked the Lord: “How did you see me?” [Under the fig tree.] Jewish scholars would read the scriptures under a fig tree—a suggestion that worship would transcend reading about God to a vision of the Invisible.
This of all years we might realize the difference between Orthodox Christianity and other faiths, Judaism and especially Islam. Consider the international pandemonium among the billion Muslims over some caricatures of Muhammad printed in a Danish journal. It took weeks to abate, and even now is a burning issue with many of them. Muslims abhor images of all sorts. I’ve been in Cyprus recently. I’ve visited the northern portion now occupied by Turkey. How painful to my soul to witness the defilement of the mosaics and icons in the Orthodox churches in the region. One wonders at the source of such violent hatred that causes them to smash and desecrate the images of our saints, our divine Lord, and the Mother of God. This is done elsewhere in the Balkans wherever Muslims overtake Orthodox Christian regions, as presently in former Serbian territories. And where they cannot reach from the floor level, in the high domes of cathedrals, they express their faith by shooting out the eyes of the saints.
Certainly the matter is theological. The Commandment to Moses that forbids making an idol of anything created by the Lord and worshipping it appears sufficient to prohibit iconography; however, as the Orthodox Christians continue to explain, the Son of God is not a merely human creature, but the second Person of the Holy Trinity, worthy of worship of emulation. And again we repeat the distinction between idolatry and veneration of our icons. One thinks of the classic dialogue between St. John of Damascus with the sultan when the saint was held captive by Muslims, explaining the rationale of iconography.
To return to the first chapter of St. John’s gospel, you will notice the proleptic nature of the promises: “Come and see,” is an invitation to go out of one’s self. You will see nothing until you make a move. Great Lent is the paradigm of self-transcendence. Pray, fast, study scriptures and separate yourself from your ordinary life style so that you will see our Savior within your soul. You are never alone. He told Nathaniel: “I saw you.” And He sees you and me. He is standing outside the doors of our hearts waiting for an invitation to enter. What will you see? “Greater things.” He promises you what your imagination cannot visualize, because you are limited by things of the world.
St. John the Evangelist was recalling the gathering of the apostles when it was all but a promise. We read the first part of the same chapter on Pascha liturgy where he looks back through his life in Christ. He then recalls that: “We have beheld His glory.” (1:14)