The Sunday of Orthodoxy was celebrated in Kotor today with the Holy Liturgy in the Church of St. Nicholas, followed by a procession carrying holy icons.

The sermon was delivered by the hierarchal governor of Kotor-Tivat, the parish priest of Kotor, archpriest-staurophorus Nemanja Krivokapić, recalling the period of the restoration of the veneration of icons in 843, during the reign of Empress Theodora, and after their long persecution in the 8th and 9th centuries, which is why this Sunday is also called the Sunday of True Faith.

“Today we confess our faith in Christ the Savior, that He is the Son of God, in another way, through the veneration of holy icons. Today’s Sunday is called the Sunday of Orthodoxy because we remember an event from the history of Christianity when the Church overcame a serious heresy that had shaken its body for almost two centuries.
We remember the event when in 834 Empress Theodora put an end to that story, which had lasted for a long time. Many sacrifices were made because there were people who believed that icons should not be venerated and that it was blasphemy, and since the emperors also supported such a teaching, the Church suffered great sacrifices. Many suffered, many icons were destroyed, many relics were unfortunately also destroyed, since the attitude towards relics was the same as towards icons. Many have even laid down their lives defending icons and defending Orthodox teaching.

Why so much sacrifice and so much struggle over this teaching about icons? Were there not greater dogmas and were not icons merely decorations of the church, why was there such a fuss about it?

“Icons are truly a wonderful decoration of churches, but they are far from being just decorations.” An icon is an expression of faith and a deep experience of the Church. An icon is an expression of the apostolic and patristic tradition from the very beginning of the Church. As the holy fathers say, “an icon is created in prayer and for the sake of prayer,” continued Father Nemanja, also saying that those who paint an icon pray to God while doing so and paint so that we may pray before it.

“Also, icons are also called the Gospel for the illiterate, figuratively speaking, because when we look at icons, especially icons of holidays, we can learn about some important events, great holidays through them, even without reading. The iconostasis presents the holidays on which the Lord Jesus Christ is present. Only by looking at these icons can we understand what happened. Icons therefore represent the expression of the Church, and the theology of the icon is a summary of all other dogmas that the Church has given birth to over the centuries,” said Father Nemanja.

As he indicated, the victory over heresy in the 9th century is what we call the victory of Orthodoxy, because it is not a victory over just one heresy, since there were also more serious ones, such as Trinitarian, Christological... The belief in icons contains a complete theology.

“By venerating icons, we confess all other dogmas. Through icons, we also glorify God, one in three persons, we confess Christology, we confess the teaching about the salvation of the world, the salvation of us humans, that God came, not purely to come, but to save us. And this teaching was crystallized precisely in the responses to the erroneous expressions of those who taught incorrectly - heretics. That is how other dogmas came into being,” said Fr. Nemanja, recalling that the Church did not have the need to express them precisely until someone taught incorrectly.

Thus, through the objections of the iconoclasts, he added, the Church clearly expressed our faith, why we venerate it and what our Church is.

The iconoclasts taught that iconoclasm is, in fact, idolatry and that the second commandment of God is violated: “You shall not make for yourself an idol or any image.”

“The Church explained that we do not worship any objects, which would truly be idolatry. The Church says that by honoring an icon, we honor God, or rather a saint. By honoring the image that is expressed, we transfer that honor to the person depicted on that icon. When we offer prayers before an icon, they go to the person of the saint, or God Himself, who gives us healing. Those who attacked icons said that in the Old Testament there was a prohibition on depicting God because no one had ever seen Him. Logically, indeed, if no one had ever seen God, you cannot depict Him. However, as Saint John of Damascus says, the very prohibition of depicting God whom no one had ever seen automatically also permits depicting God when someone has seen God. When have we seen God? The Incarnation is a crucial moment in the theology of the icon. Because God, the invisible God who created the world, who is above all creation, He becomes a creation and He becomes visible to us humans. He appears as a man and we all see Him and when He is visible then He can be depicted. We depict Him exactly as He was seen, as a man. But if we depict Him as a man, we do not think that He was just a man but the person of Christ in whom two natures, divine and human, are united,” said Father Nemanja.

Also, the iconoclasts believed that creation, everything that is created, cannot express the uncreated God.

“The Holy Fathers answer, if this uncreated God, the Almighty God, considered it worthy to “clothe Himself” in matter, to become a man, to be a real, proper man with a real body, if He considered it worthy to be so, then we too can praise with full lips the One who clothed Himself in matter and who saved us through that matter. As St. John of Damascus says, “I do not worship matter, but the Creator of matter, who clothed Himself in that matter and through that matter saved us humans.” Therefore, we worship the One who glorified matter and through it saved us humans. Ultimately, we believe that everything that God created is for salvation. Nothing is for destruction. Some mistakenly teach that only the soul is important and that the body and everything material, perishable. This is not Orthodox teaching because we know that everything that exists was created by God and that everything is good (Holy Scripture: “And God saw that it was good and everything was good”). Therefore, matter is also good because God created it. And matter is for salvation. When someone dies, what do we do with the body? We bury it, we bury it, which in Church Slavonic means to preserve. We preserve the body for the general resurrection,” said Father Nemanja, concluding that, by honoring icons, we honor all the dogmas of the Church and, as they did in 834 when Empress Theodora proclaimed the victory of Orthodoxy, we exclaim: “This is the faith of the apostles, this is the faith of the fathers, this is the Orthodox faith, this faith establishes the Universe, amen.”