Reflection on the Sunday of Orthodoxy

Today, as we celebrate the triumph of Orthodoxy, we remember the countless confessors who suffered on account of their veneration for the holy icons. Now these confessors are themselves depicted on icons. This is the victory and triumph of Christianity: suffering transformed into beauty, death and mortality swallowed up by the light of eternal life. Henceforth, instead of grumbling and wishing for better, let us set aside our egocentrism and misguided sense of rights, take up our cross, and use our own suffering as a path to holiness. This is the triumph of Orthodoxy in us, a restoration of the image – the icon – of the Crucified God-man, the image in which we were made.