After Divine Liturgy on Sunday, March 24, 2024,  our parishioners took up Holy Icons and processed around the church grounds,  in the same manner that Orthodox churches worldwide have done ever since the final defeat of iconoclasm on the first Sunday of Great Lent in the year 843.

In the words of Archimandrite John (Krestiankin): 

The first Triumph of Orthodoxy was established when, in the struggle with iconoclasm, the Church defended its right and duty to venerate icons of Christ, the Mother of God, and the saints, and thus defended the truth of the Divine Incarnation. And now the Church continues to celebrate, and will celebrate until the end of the world, the appearance of images of the Living God within it. For even now God reveals Himself in people who have acquired and manifested within themselves this priceless treasure, this sole pearl, of which the world is not worthy—a person like unto God in holiness of life.

So let us pray now, my dears, to those who have illumined and still illumine the path to truth for us by the holiness of their lives.

Let us also pray for those who by their labors and ailments preserve fidelity to the true God in our day.

Let us entreat the Lord that we might not be strangers to this fidelity and these labors. Amen.