Sunday of Orthodoxy make clear, it is possible and, indeed, essential

to depict His person in the holy ikons, using material wood and paint : 28 The Great Canon, Canticle Eight, irmos; Compline for Holy Thursday; Mattins for the Sunday of the Cross; Mattins for Palm Sunday. 29 The Persian Mani (c. 2 1 6 - 7 6 ) , founder of Manichaeism, advocated an uncom­ promising dualism. He considered that there is no salvation for man’ s body or for

the rest of the material creation; the particles of light imprisoned in man are to

be released through strict asceticism, including vegetarianism.

The uncircumscribed Word of the Father became circumscribed,

Taking flesh from thee, O Theotokos, And He has restored the sullied image to its ancient glory, Filling it with the divine beauty. This our salvation we confess in deed and word, And we depict it in the holy ikons.30 This assertion of the spirit-bearing potentialities of the material creation is a constant theme during the season of Lent. On the first

Christ’s Incarnation, of the material reality of the holy ikons, and of the visible, aesthetic beauty of the Church. On the second

who taught that all creation is permeated by the energies of God, and that even in the present life this divine glory can be perceived through man’s physical eyes, provided that his body has been rendered spiritual by God’s grace. On the third Sunday we venerate

material branches of palms; on Wednesday in Holy W eek we are signed with material oil in the sacrament o f Anointing; on Holy

before), and ending with the Ninth Hour on Friday in the sixth w$ek.

February, has been transferred to the first Saturday. The texts for the day in the Triodion make frequent reference to the literal meaning of the name Theodore, ‘ Gift from God’ . There is a specific reason why St. Theodore has come to be asso­ ciated with the first week of Lent. According to the tradition re­ corded in the Synaxarion,62 the Emperor Julian the Apostate 59 Schmemann, Great Lent, p. 7 1 . 60 Father John o f the Greek Church: an Appreciation (Edinburgh, 18 9 8 ), p. 23. 61 See the Council of Laodicea, Canon ς ι . Actually this rule is not now applied rigorously, for texts from the Mcnaia commemorating the saint of the day are often included on weekdays in Lent . 62 Synaxarion for Saturday in the first week, in Triodion Katanyktikon (ed. Apostoliki Diakonia), p. 1 2 8 ; see also the Narrative attributed to St. Nektarios,

Patriarch of Constantinople ( $ 8 1 - 9 / ) , especially § § 4 -13 (P .G . xxxix, 18 2 5 A 1 83 2D).

5} (reigned 3 6 1-3 ), as part of his campaign against the Christians, attempted to defile their observance of the first week of Lent by ordering all the food for sale in the market of Constantinople to be sprinkled with blood from pagan sacrifices. St. Theodore then appeared in a dream to Eudoxios, Archbishop of the city, ordering him to warn his flock against buying anything from the market; instead, so the Saint told him, they should boil wheat (kolyva) and eat this alone. In memory of this event, after the Presanctified

already evident on the Saturday of St. Theodore, is still more appar­ ent on the first Sunday in Lent, when we celebrate the Triumph of Orthodoxy. On this day the Church commemorates the final ending of the Iconoclast controversy and the definitive restoration of the holy ikons to the churches by the Empress Theodora, acting as regent for her young son Michael III. This took place on the first

historical link between the first Sunday and the restoration of the ikons but also, as in the case of St. Theodore, a spiritual affinity. If Orthodoxy triumphed in the epoch of the Iconoclast controversy, this was because so many of the faithful were prepared to undergo exile, torture, and even death, for the sake of the truth. The Feast0 34 03 See below, pp. 2 7 ^ -8 2 . 04 Probably the annual celebration of this event was not established at once. See ]. Mateos, Le Tjpicon de la Grande Eglise. Ah. Saint-Croix no 4 0 , Xe siecle (Orientalia Christiana Analecta ι6 ς ~ 6 : Rome, 1 9 6 2 -3 ) , vol. i, pp. x -x i v ; J. Gouillard, Le Sjnodikon de VOrthodoxie. Edition et commentaire (Travaux et Memoires 2 : Paris, 19 67), pp. 1 2 9 -3 8 .

o f Orthodoxy is above all a celebration in honour of the martyrs and confessors who struggled and suffered for the faith: hence its appro­ priateness for the season of Lent, when we are striving to imitate the martyrs by means of our ascetic self-denial. The fixing of the T ri­ umph of Orthodoxy on the first Sunday is therefore much more than

the result of some chance historical conjunction.

The Triodion gives the text of a special O ffice of Orthodoxy’

(not translated in this volume), which is held at the end of Mattins or, more commonly, at the end of the Divine Liturgy on this

ikons but, more generally, the victory of the true faith over all heresies and errors. A procession is made with the holy ikons, and after this extracts are read from the synodical decree of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (7 87). Then sixty anathemas are pronounced against various heretics dating from the third to the fourteenth century; ‘Eternal Memory’ is sung in honour of the emperors, patri­ archs and fathers who defended the Orthodox faith; and ‘ Many Years’ is proclaimed in honour of our present rulers and bishops.65 Unfortunately in many parts of the Orthodox Church today this impressive service has fallen into disuse; elsewhere it is performed in a greatly abbreviated form. Before the Triumph of Orthodoxy came to be celebrated on the

first Sunday, there was on this day a commemoration of Moses, Aaron, Samuel and the prophets. Traces of this more ancient obser­ vance can still be seen in the choice of Epistle reading at the Liturgy (Hebrews 11 : 24-6, 32-40), and in the Alleluia verse appointed before the Gospel: ‘Moses and Aaron among His priests, and Samuel among them that call upon His Name’ . (d)

to the memory o f St. Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica (12 9 6 -13^ 9 ). This commemoration forms a continuation of the feast celebrated on the previous Sunday: St. Gregory’s victory over Barlaam, Akindynos and the other heretics of his time is seen as a renewed Triumph of Orthodoxy. In the earlier period there was on this day a commemoration of the Great Martyr Polycarp of Smyrna 65 For an English translation of this service, as celebrated by the Russian Church in

the eighteenth century, see J. G . King, The Rites and Ceremonies o f the Greek

Church, in Russia (London, 17 7 2 ), pp. 3 9 9 -4 0 7 . The Greek form of the service is considerably longer.

( f c. 1 ςς), whose feast was transferred from the fixed calendar (23 February). This commemoration, like that of St. Theodore, under­ lined the connection between Lenten asceticism and the martyr’s vocation. The second Sunday also takes up the theme of the Prodigal Son as a model of repentance, with the first of the two Canons at

Sundays preceding, is one of joy and triumph. In the Canon at