Greetings in Christ ☦︎ and Happy Saint Nicholas Day this week!
Laurel Kashinn
Greetings in Christ ☦︎ and Happy Saint Nicholas Day this week!
CEDARBURG–St. Nicholas Church in Cedarburg will serve as host to area Orthodox churches with the annual Pan-Orthodox Vesperal Celebration of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, Sunday, March 20, at 6:00 p.m. The Triumph of Orthodoxy commemorates the end of a period of deep controversy in early church history.
Imagine coming home one day to find someone had broken into your house and smashed or defaced all of your family photographs. How would you feel? Furthermore, what if you found out it was the authorities who did it, calling for the destruction of all such pictures, everywhere?
For over a century in the first millennium, beloved hand-painted pictures of spiritual fathers and mothers–holy icons–were destroyed by iconoclasts, or “icon smashers,” who believed their veneration to be a form of idol worship. This was very disturbing to the faithful.
Icons… are to be kept in churches and honored with the same relative veneration as is shown to other material symbols, such as the ‘precious and life-giving Cross‘ and the Book of the Gospels.
Declared to be “open books to remind us of God,” icons are to be kept and used in churches and in homes, providing for a visual study of theology of the Christian religion. This ‘doctrine of icons’ is intrinsic to the Orthodox teaching that all of God’s creation is to be redeemed and glorified, both spiritual and material. Icons are necessary and essential because they protect the full and proper doctrine of the incarnation.
While God’s eternal nature cannot be depicted (“…no man has seen God,” John 1:18) the Council agreed He can be depicted in material images, precisely because He “became human and took flesh.” By His Incarnation, God deified matter, making it spirit-bearing. God proved that matter can be redeemed. If flesh can be a medium for the Spirit, the iconodules argued and the Council agreed, so, too, can wood or paint, although in a different fashion.
Services on the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, celebrated on the first Sunday of Great Lent, include the faithful triumphantly processing around the church, holding icons of their patron or parish saints. The Pan-Orthodox Vespers will be held at St. Nicholas at 6 pm. All are invited to stay for light refreshments afterwards in the fellowship hall.
References:
The Historic 1984 Sermon on Sunday of Orthodoxy by Metropolitan Phillip.
Canons of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, 787
Attention parish members, friends, and guests! You are cordially invited to dinner and a show hosted by members of St. Nicholas Orthodox Church, on Saturday, evening March 5, which is the eve of Meatfare Sunday!
Dinner is $15 for adults, $5 for children ages 6 to 12.
If you can, join us for Vespers at 5, dinner at 6, and the show following!
Please share!
St. Nicholas’ Got Talent!
Meatfare Sunday Eve Dinner and Show
Saturday, March 5, 2016
Vespers @ 5 pm Dinner & Show @ 6 pm
Come one, come all! Join the fun!
Note: this is not a contest!
What’s your talent?
Calling all Saint Nicholas:
• Singers • Storytellers • Dancers • Jugglers• Impressionists • Cloggers • Ventriloquists
• Poets • Actors • Instrumentalists
• and more!
Dinner: $15 for Adults $5 Children ages 4-12
This is a Saint Nicholas Fun Raiser for charity!
Support St. Nicholas — get in our Talent Directory & Program Book!
Sign up today! (See sign up form) Note: Deadlines all extended to Sunday, 2/28/16
St. Nicholas Church • N65 W6503 Cleveland St. Cedarburg • Info: Laurel@LaurelKashinn.com