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The sacred action that now lies before us is so striking in itself, it contains so much strength and edification that it has no need for help from our word. To think that something can be imparted to it through oration would mean the same as if, when a cloud approaches, someone imagines that the power of heavenly thunder can be increased by the noise of his lips. But perhaps it will be useful for some if we explain briefly and say where this, beneficial in itself, but terrible and thunderous cloud, came from, and why it appears annually on this day on the clear and peaceful firmament of the Church of Christ. When the ungodly heresies, which madly rebelled against the Divinity of the Person of the Son of God and the Most Holy Spirit, fell and were forced to return to their insignificance, the enemy of God and man, who could not wound the most venerable Persons of the Divine, decided to attack Their sacred images in the Church and, to console himself, invented the evil heresy of iconoclasm. To succeed in his evil plan, he, as usual, transformed himself into an Angel of Light, took on the guise of holy zeal, supposedly out of the purity of the Christian faith, instilling that the worship of holy icons places a Christian along with idolaters. In vain did the God-wise shepherds of the Church teach and affirm that holy icons are not at all like idols, that the honor given to them is not given to soulless substance, not to wood and paints, but is transferred to the prototype, that is, to the holy faces depicted by them. Blinded by the spirit of darkness, the iconoclasts did not want to see or hear the truth. Having gained power into their hands, they were not slow in turning to violence and persecution for the Orthodox, who would rather give up their lives than with the holy icons, because of their weak and insignificant objections. Cruelties and executions began, reminiscent of the first times of martyrdom for Christ. One of the favorite barbarities of the persecutors of holy icons was, using hot iron, to inscribe their images on the faces of their admirers: hence the so-called Inscribed Ones in the face of the saints Theodora and Theophanes. Perhaps violence and seduction would finally prevail over human weakness. But He who founded and established His Church not with the merits of others, but with His blood and entrusted its fate not to the wisdom and arbitrariness of man, but to the all-effective providence of the Spirit of truth, He did not allow her children to be tempted more than they could bear, but created “with temptation also abundance” (1 Cor. 10:13). After a long and persistent struggle between truth and error, civil power and power finally passed from the hands of heretics; At the same time, all the power of heresy disappeared. The holy icons, washed with the blood of the holy confessors, appeared in greater beauty than before. In order to perpetuate the victory of Orthodoxy over its enemies, the Holy Church decided to annually remember and celebrate the restoration of holy icons on this day, as the first day, on this occasion, of its triumph. And so that the words of God, cut by the sword, and the former heresies do not dare to raise their dark head again over time, it is appointed annually on this very day to strike each of them again with anathema. Thus, the persecution of the holy icons, raised by the spirit of malice, turned to his greatest disgrace and served to confirm not only the holy icons, but also all the truths of the Christian faith. It is not without an important reason and not without a beneficial purpose that the anathema now thunders. It thunders so that the faithful children of the Church are even more confirmed in their faith; so that the unfaithful and frivolous may be encouraged to come to their senses and return to the right path. Let us, brothers, be present at this sacred rite in the very spirit with which the Holy Church established it. Let us pay attention to our way of thinking about the objects of faith, and if in any way we do not agree with the rule of faith indicated by the Church, we will hasten to leave what is wrong. And those whose precious deposit of faith will be found safe and sound, together with the Church, may shed warm prayers for the return of their lost brothers to the right path. For the Church of Christ, like a tender mother, does not want the destruction of any of her most obstinate children, but may they all come to repentance and unity of faith and love. Amen. You might be interested in: