In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is Orthodoxy Sunday, the first Sunday of Lent. Normally, we would have begun with a procession. We're going to save it for the end of liturgy, a procession with holy icons, and if you have brought icons with you, those who are children will join the procession, and those who are adults and your families come towards the center when that time comes. But this is Orthodoxy Sunday, and we celebrate particularly on this day, the holy images which we surround ourselves with here in the Church; we also do it at home too. We bring our icons home. We keep them there, these holy images. And this is an ancient practice. This is a very traditional practice for us, but for a while it was taken from us.

For a while, there was the breaking and destruction of these holy images, and let's think about what that means: why do we have icons in the first place? Well, how many of you have photographs of family and friends at home? More than a few of you? You have images of your family and your friends, and what does that do for you? I mean, not to be crass, who cares? You know who your family is, yes? You know who they are, but not everybody does. And more importantly, we like to be reminded of them. We can't help but see them, but want to see them. We can't help but be taken up with the image of them. We can't help that, and it's a loving thing. It's truly a loving thing to have images of the people in your life, your family, your friends, and to surround yourselves with them. That's the way we are historically.

You can find drawings in caves of some man drawing his beautiful wife, or a horse that he beloved. You can find these things. We can't help that. That is something that has been innate inside of us to have these images around us of people that we adore, of things that we adore, and surrounding ourselves with them does something for us. It completes us in a sense. It completes us, and it does something even deeper in terms of our worship with God. It testifies that Christ was real, as real as you and me, IS as real as you and me, truly. That God was born as man, and here's why icons testify to that specifically, that God was born on Earth. When we have icons, we don't just have simple photographs. We imbue them with meaning and with so much symbolism that you cannot deny what it is we are portraying. If we have this icon of Christ, we didn't just go for a photographic image. We imbued it with divine light, with the grace of God.

Every icon you see, the light source is from within, not from without. They are imbued with that symbolic and deep and divine light, that light that shines from within, that same light that we are called to have, and that's what our icons do. They don't just show us who our beloved and heavenly family and friends are, who we can go to for help and support, they also teach us HOW we are to be. They teach us how we are to be, how we are to live our lives, filled with the light of God; dispassionate and without prejudice. The passion of God is a dispassion, and you can see that in their faces, a simple peace in their lives that cannot be moved, immovable. How many of us have those people in our lives, peaceful people who are immovable, that have been for us icons of what we are called to be? They have been reminders for us, and icons, without mistake, teach us how we are to be. They are the symbols of our faith, and we celebrate them this day.

This is a very, very special thing, and they are for us also practice. Practice at seeing God in the world around us when it's hard, when it can be hard. There was a saint of recent times, Saint Paisios. And Saint Paisios, he used to famously see the cross everywhere. He would see a plane in the sky and said, "Look, the Cross is flying!” He would point these out, these things out to people. He would see the Cross everywhere. It was a practice for him, and so much so when he saw somebody, he saw the living God, and he gave them the love that came from that realization, gave them the appreciation, the hospitality, that complete abandon for the other person, that complete abandon of the self for the sake of the other, that love that can be so hard to find in the world and, moreover, hard to find inside of us. So, we surround ourselves with the way in which we are to do it.

Begin seeing God if we are struggling to see God in the world around us. Start here. Start by coming to a holy image where we can kiss, and through that kiss of an icon, love is given to God like a child kissing an image of their mother or father. That love is given to them, and so it is with icons. We have that adoration. We Cross ourselves before them. Sometimes we even bow before them, and we kiss them...and with love. And keep that in your heart, that every time that you kiss an icon, love is being given to God. Not just love, but also respect, adoration. These things that we do, they have meaning because we are physical creatures. We love our icons to death. That's why when I see icons in museums, it is so moving and beautiful, but it's also bittersweet because I know I can't kiss that icon or I'm gonna get kicked out probably. They do wonderful things, not disputing that. But for us, we love them to death. They deteriorate, they fall apart.

That's how you know a book is loved, yes? It's falling apart. You try to take care of it as best you can, but ultimately, you read it, you use it. And for us, icons are that. Every time we bless icons, the last thing you do in that blessing is that you kiss that icon and you recognize the presence of God. And so it is for us in the rest of our lives and with each other. Do we see the presence of God in each other who are made first in the image and likeness of God? And, moreover, have we made ourselves to be icons to one another? If somebody sees us, do they see an example of being like God? We struggle. We struggle, don't we? We struggle with these things, but this is a good struggle, and we are to get up more often than we fall down.

And moreover, to pray and have the presence of God in our life sacramentally and in the prayers and in the works that He teaches us to do, to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty. And how does that all become a regular thing in our life? By surrounding ourselves with all the helpers, because we're only as good as our helpers, and we have a heavenly helper. Glory be to God. And so this day, we celebrate our holy images, we celebrate these things that teach us to recognize the presence of God in the world around us and in each other, and to know that God is always with us. May God be with you. May God bless you on this Orthodoxy Sunday.

In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

-Fr. William Bennett, Pastor