Ode 6.

Kontakion. Tone 2.

weetness and rejoicing the mountains have rained down; for the multitude of heretics has been scattered, which exuded bitter poison: the rejection of the holy images.

ea, let heaven and earth in harmony celebrate the greatness of the daughter of God; for she is magnified and casts down those who belittle her.

ew birth He gave me, the Son, of old of the Father without mother, and divinely born of a Mother without father; therefore making an image I greet the one who gave birth together with the One who was born.

The Son who shone ineffably from the Father, was born twofold in nature from a woman; knowing Him we do not deny the representation of his form; but depicting it devoutly, we honour it faithfully; and so, holding to the true faith, the Church greets the image of Christ’s incarnation.

The all-merciful God, wishing to rouse us always to the perfect memory of his incarnation, has delivered to us this notion: the depiction of his honoured form through the painting of images; that seeing it with our sight we may believe what we have heard in speech; as we recognise the action, name, appearance and struggles of the holy men, and Christ the prize-giver who gives crowns of victory to the Holy Athletes and Martyrs; through whom the Church lately more clearly holding to the true faith, greets the image of Christ’s incarnation.

After the Synaxarion of the day

On the same day we celebrate the memory of the Holy and blest Fathers, who assembled for a second time in Nicea in the reign of the devout and Christ-loving Sovereigns Constantine and Irene, against those who claimed, impiously, ignorantly and unthinkingly that God’s Church worshipped idols and who cast down the revered and holy images.

The Champions with the weapons of your words,

O Word, the foes of honoured icons trounced.

This holy, seventh Ecumenical Council took place in Nicea a second time, in the reign of the Emperor Constantine and his mother Irene, when Hadrian was Pope of Rome, Tarasios Patriarch of Constantinople, Politianos of Alexandria, Theodoret of Antioch and Elias of Jerusalem. Three hundred and sixty five Holy Fathers were assembled. They all assembled against the Iconoclasts, and they condemned in writing every heresy, the leaders of the heresies and then all the Iconoclasts; placing on record and decreeing that anyone who does not venerate the holy images is a stranger to the Orthodox faith; that the honour given to the image passes to its prototype; and that whoever worships and honours the image, worships the person of the one depicted therein. And so when they had thus decreed and had strengthened the Orthodox faith, each one returned to his own See.

Through the prayers of the Holy Fathers, O God, have mercy upon us.