Today, and again on Wednesday, as it so happens, we remember our venerable mother Mary of Egypt.

Before her repentance, she was, as Simon the Pharisee observed today about the woman of the city, “a sinner” (Luke 7:39) Though she is often thought of as a prostitute, her sin was not so much prostitution as fornication. Saint Sophronios says that she would not charge her many sexual partners, but survived instead by begging and spinning flax. She was, like so many of us in this hypersexualized culture, consumed and driven “by an insatiable and an irrepressible passion” of lust.

She went to Jerusalem among the pilgrims, but her reason for going was not pilgrimage. Rather, she went in a large group for the purpose of seducing many partners. Some might question how such a sinner could even think to enter the holy city and its holy places.

But remember the woman of the city in Simon’s house today. She goes right up to Jesus himself and, weeping, wets his feet with her tears and wipes them with her hair and kisses his feet and anoints them (Luke 7:37-38). Though she is a sinner, she touches Jesus. And Jesus, who is more than a prophet, knows that she is a sinner, yet allows her to touch him.

On the other hand, when Mary of Egypt, who is also a sinner, tries to enter the house of Jesus – that is his Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the Church of the Anastasis – of the Resurrection – she is prevented by an invisible spiritual force from entering the church.

Why? What’s the difference between these two sinful women? Why does Jesus allow one to touch him while the other is prevented from even entering his house? There is only one difference between them – repentance. The woman of the city in the Pharisee’s house was penitent. She was weeping. And she was loving. She did not cease to kiss Jesus’s feet. So all her many sins were forgiven because she loved much.

Meanwhile, Mary of Egypt tries to enter the holy place of the Lord while yet impenitent. She goes to that holy tomb not seeking to anoint the body of the Lord, but rather seeking more partners for her lust. The invisible blockade that she experiences is in fact a strong medicine. It’s not meant, I don’t think, simply to keep the holy separated from the unholy – the clean from the unclean, but it is meant, I think, to reveal her situation to her and to bring her to repentance.

And, gracefully, it has this effect. Seeing outside the church an icon of another Mary – that is, of the most pure Theotokos – she does repent. She weeps and laments, like the woman of the city in the Pharisee’s house. And she learns that true love for the Lord surpasses any self-satisfaction gained by indulging in the passion of lust. Trying again, in her new state of penitence, to enter the Church of the Resurrection, she finds no force keeping her out. And she does enter and there she kisses the Holy Cross, just as the woman of the city kissed the feet of Jesus. She who is forgiven much loves much.

Now what might her fellow pilgrims have thought of her at this moment? Seeing this woman who they knew to be among their number expressly for the seduction of their members, now entering the Holy Sepulchre weeping and kissing the Holy Cross, what might they have thought? When Simon saw the sinful woman enter his house and kiss the feet of Jesus, he thought, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner” (Luke 7:39). If Mary’s fellow pilgrims were true followers of Christ, then they rejoiced at her repentance. But if they were like some of us, then they probably had thoughts rather similar to Simon’s. They may have thought “Who is this woman to kiss the Holy Cross? She has not embraced the cross by her dissolute living.” They may have judged her and thought her presence among them in this place at this time inappropriate.

I hope not. But if they did, the only true judge knew their thoughts. And if we have thoughts like this about others, he knows this as well, and we will hear about it. Let’s rather keep our thoughts on our own sins rather than on the sins of those around us.

For things are often not what they seem. A person who seems to us to be a great sinner may, in fact, be awash in the holy grace of forgiveness through repentance.

This was the case with Mary of Egypt. She seemed to be still a great sinner, but in truth, her glorification by grace, by the life of God, had already begun. She went immediately after her eyes were opened to the holy mystery of repentance, was absolved of her sins, and received holy communion. This is the proper, ordinary, and churchly way to begin again the life in Christ after we have sinned. When we fall, we get up again. When we sin, we repent and enter again into the communion with the Lord through the mysteries of the Church.

But then Mary did something less ordinary, less usual, and even less churchly by some standards. The next morning, she crossed the river Jordan and then lived the rest of her life – 47 years – in the desert as a hermit.

I say this is a less churchly way of life because, for one thing, it is extremely peculiar for a person to be called directly into the life of a hermit – without first having lived a long time in community. (Though, there are other examples of this – particularly in early monasticism – such as St. Antony the Great.) And then, even among hermits, it is peculiar to live most of life deprived of the holy mysteries, especially the Eucharist. Yet this is what Saint Mary of Egypt did. After that first holy repentance and communion, she went into the desert and never communed again, until the day that she died many years later.

We who are now deprived of church services because of the coronavirus are experiencing a relatively brief taste of the life that St. Mary lived for 47 years. If we use this time like she did – for repentance – we will come out on the other side of it not deprived of grace but still more illumined by grace.

A year before St. Mary died, St. Zosima, a priest, came upon her in the desert. Her hair was so long and she was so rough from her many years of ascetic practice, that from a distance he did not at first know for sure whether she was human. She told him her life story and she asked him to bring her holy communion the following year on Holy Thursday, which he did, on the banks of the Jordan – the same place she had received communion the last time. When she came to receive communion from him, for the second and last time of her life, she walked on the water of the Jordan to meet him.

Seeing this miracle, Zosimus began to prostrate himself, but she cried out to him and stopped him, “What are you doing Abba! You are carrying the divine Gifts!” Behold her reverence for the Eucharist, despite her forty-seven years of abstinence from it. When we carry the Divine Gifts – our Lord’s own body and blood, we do not kneel or prostrate, as if to make the Lord bow before his creatures. We do not kneel after holy communion, while we carry our Lord within our very bodies. To make a gesture of penance while communing with the Lord expresses – falsely – that the holy communion has failed in its purpose, which is to unite us to the Lord, in whom death has been vanquished. We stand for communion in expression of this resurrectional faith. Resurrection, anastasis, means “to stand again.” St. Mary understood this.

St Mary of Egypt understood much, despite the fact that she never went to church again after her illumination. When she did receive the Eucharist that second and last time, it was brought to her by the priest. She did not go to church. This might astound us. We humans have a rule book and a script that we think must be followed in order to grow in union with God. But God doesn’t follow the script. He who can raise up children of Abraham out of the stones can make us saints even if we are distanced from the liturgy. And St Mary knew how to worship the Lord in the Eucharist better than the priest who brought him to her! This woman who didn’t go to church for 47 years understood the Eucharist better than the priest! Frequent communion is a good thing, but it is not the only way to holiness.

Here is a woman who defies all of our expectations. Living apart from church services, even apart from frequent reception of holy communion, and yet living a life filled with grace and faith. Mary demonstrates that God can and does act as he will. He is not confined by us or by our expectations. We do not limit his grace.

Jesus drew great crowds of people (e.g. Matt 4:25; 5:1) and those who were “afflicted with various diseases and pains,” he healed (4:24).

In these times, we are avoiding such crowds so as to avoid the spread of disease. Our way of life has been disrupted by this coronavirus epidemic. Yet still, Jesus Christ is our healer also in times like these.

Most of us have been forced by these circumstances into varying degrees of solitude. And there are some who find such solitude itself to be a kind of plague from which they seek deliverance. Some of us are more introverted and don’t mind being alone, but some of us are extroverted and draw our life’s energy from our relationships with others. For these people, these times are especially psychologically trying.

One of the most extroverted people I know lived for many years as a monk. Some people find this quite surprising. And they say to him, “Surely you know how to deal with the situation like this? You were a monk in a monastery for many years! You of all people should be prepared for this.” But he does not find himself at ease with this situation. He makes the excellent point that a monk lives in community with other monks. The word “monk” does come from the Greek word monos, which means “alone,” but only a hermit is truly alone. A hermit is a monk, but a monk is not necessarily or usually a hermit.

Every once in a great while a person will come to me, usually a young person, with the desire to be a hermit. This is usually a negative reaction to life in the world – primarily a desire to cut themselves off from the world that has given them so many problems, rather than a desire to unite more perfectly with God. They think, “If only I could be alone and away from other people, then I could grow in holiness.” I always observe to these young people that the vocation of a hermit is the rarest of vocations.

Hermits usually spend many years in a monastery before becoming hermits. It is usually only out of a monastery that one is called to radical solitude. Usually the monks that are called to it are quite elderly, with much experience of monasticism already. St. Basil the great even cautioned about the dangers of such solitude saying, “If you live alone, whose feet will you wash?” The new commandment of our Lord is to love one another as he loves us (John 13:34). And he washes feet (John 13:1-17). He serves others and is present to others – at least a good amount of time.

But he does also withdraw frequently into the wilderness in solitude for prayer (Luke 5:16). And he does also teach us not to pray on the street corners where we can be seen, but to go into our closets and close the door and pray in secret where only our Father can see us (Matt 6:5-6). To pray alone. To spend time alone with God. Perpetual solitude is the rarest vocation, but occasional solitude is a universal vocation – even if you don’t like it.

I do not believe that God is the author of any of evil. He does not make death he does not want us to suffer (Wisdom 1:13; 1 Thess 5:9). However, neither does he hesitate, when suffering comes into the world, to use it to bring about a greater good. I believe that a good he may be using this evil pandemic for, is to teach us all of our need for solitude with God.

There is of course no such thing as solitude without God. God is everywhere present and fills all things. So solitude is always really alone time with God. It can get quite uncomfortable without all of our comforting distractions. But this discomfort can teach us where we need to grow.

Now, for hopefully a short time, the whole world is experiencing what is ordinarily the rarest of vocation – just a taste of it, but this could be a significant experience for us

Today is the Sunday of St John Climacus. He is the author of the Ladder of Divine Ascent – a book traditionally read every year during the Great Fast. That fact alone shows us how significant it is to our spirituality. It is a convicting book, with much to teach us about where we need to grow and how to do it. It is also a monastic book. This causes some to find it unhelpful. And, indeed, it would be unhelpful to apply all of it unthinkingly or too literally to our non-monastic lives. Very few of us are monks. And even fewer of us are hermits. But we are all one in the body of Christ, and we all have something to learn from the monks and from the hermits.

St John Climacus was a hermit for many years. While we’re getting a little taste of what it’s like to be a hermit, maybe we can learn something from a hermit. This would be a good time to read the Ladder. Even though we are not monks, maybe we can recognize that monasticism has something to teach the whole world.

One piece of practical wisdom we keep hearing during this time of staying at home, or at least I do, is that it is important to maintain a schedule even while we are in this radically disrupted way of life. It’s important for our psychological health. This is something the monks know very well – the importance of a schedule, especially for those living alone. Without any external worldly pressures to put life in order, we need the self-discipline of a schedule if we are to continue to flourish. First and foremost, this includes a schedule of prayer.

Each of us can have a simple rule of prayer we keep in our homes at all time. Too many of us have relegated Church to something we do at church, but not so much at home. This epidemic is an opportunity for us to give new life to our prayer corners in our homes, or to start to build a prayer corner if we don’t have one. Now is the time for the rebirth of the domestic Church.

Why have we decided to follow Jesus?

First of all, because his way is the way to life. He is the way and the life. I don’t know anyone else who gives life to the dead, do you? Or who is himself risen from the dead, or who gives us the bread of life to eat. Where else would we go?  It is it Jesus Christ who has the words of everlasting life.

Yet his message to us today makes clear how starkly paradoxical is this way to life. It is the way of the cross. If we are following Jesus Christ in order to save our lives, we need to listen to this: “Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35). Say what now? See what I mean about a paradox?

This is the message of the cross: life – but life out of death. And get this: It’s our life out of our death.

I am often struck by the fact that the words of Jesus we hear today on this Sunday of the Cross are his first words about the cross. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the first cross Jesus mentions is not his own cross. It is our cross.

“He who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Matt 10:38).

“If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34).

Or, as Luke has it: “”If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). Luke adds that “daily” in his recollection of the teaching. Not only is this our cross Jesus is talking about – it’s something we’re to take up daily – not only once and at the end of our lives, as the image of crucifixion may seem to suggest, but every day.

Later, according to Matthew, Jesus will prophesy that he will himself be crucified (Matt 20:17-19), but before that, how must this teaching about the cross have sounded to his first hearers?

The cross was a known instrument of torture, humiliation, and death. And it was not yet known as the life-bearing tree – the tree of life, upon which Christ, the life of all, conquered death by death. Yet Jesus is already teaching that this is what it is to deny ourselves and take up the cross – the paradoxical way to life through death. Later on, he will prove it – by dying on the cross and rising from the dead. But imagine the faith of those who accepted his teaching about the cross ahead of time! It’s almost unimaginable.

Here’s the thing, though: I promise, as we face our own cross – as we each assuredly will (and even do daily, as Luke reminds us) the promise of life through it is going to sound hollow to us – at least at times. The thing, the dream, the identity we’re going to have to give up to follow Jesus is going to seem to us like our true self and the life that Jesus is offering us is going to seem like less. Not worth it. There will be moments of feeling like this. I believe that Jesus himself felt this way upon the cross when he cried out to his Father, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” We will feel like God has forsaken us when we behold our cross.

If the cross we’re imagining don’t seem like denying everything – our very selves, our very lives – then I’m not sure we’re actually imagining our cross, but perhaps something else.

Now this doesn’t mean that we all need to be tortured to death for the sake of Christ – though many martyrs give even that witness. At every liturgy, the deacon leads us in prayer “for a Christian, painless, unashamed, peaceful end of our life.” But if we’re not to be tortured to death, we might find that we’d prefer that to the actual cross we must personally carry.

For example, perhaps we will be called upon to forgive an abuser. There’s an injustice as great as crucifying the innocent. If someone hurts one of my babies, I’m supposed to love and forgive that person? Believe me, I’d rather you nail me to the cross.

Or sometimes we have to watch the one we love more than anything in the world suffer and die before our eyes. You know that’s a thousand times worse than being the one suffering and dying ourselves. May the Lord heal the sick throughout the world today.

Whatever it will be for us personally, if we have decided to follow Jesus, we will all have to deny ourselves and take up our cross. We will recognize it as the cross rather than as self-destruction because love will demand it – not pride or shame or some other foolishness. But remember the paradox: “Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.”

The life that the Lord is giving us through our crosses is our true life. The life he asks us to lay down is something else – an identity we’ve constructed rather than our created nature. It’s dear to us and seems to us to be our real life, and that is why it hurts as much as crucifixion to lay it down. But when we do, we will discover a joy on the other side of the cross greater than anything we can imagine – like the joy of Pascha morning – the sun rising on the empty tomb – the dawning realization that life has just begun.

Wisdom! Be attentive! Let us pay close attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it (Heb 2:1). Our Lord has declared our salvation as already begun! How will we escape a just requital if we neglect this declaration (Heb 2:2-3)?

Our salvation in our incarnate Lord and God Jesus Christ is preached to us today. The Lord declares our salvation and those who hear him, attest to that salvation (Heb 2:3). And this proclamation of our salvation is part of our salvation. Because, as St. John Chrysostom says, “I do not believe in the salvation of anyone who does not try to save others.”

We know our salvation because it has been shared with us. Those who knew Jesus, and witnessed his life, his teachings, his death, and his resurrection proclaim it to the world. And those who believe proclaim it to the next generation and so on and on until the present. This is tradition – traditio – that which is handed down to us from Jesus Christ through his apostles and their successors by the power of the Holy Spirit in unbroken continuity to us here today. This is the gospel to which God bears witness by signs and wonders and various miracles (Heb 2:4) such as the healing of the paralyzed man in today’s gospel (Mark 2:10-12).

A purpose of all of healings and miracles – including those that many of us here today have personally experienced – is to point to our new life in Christ – the everlasting life in Christ – that is, the resurrected and glorified life through death that awaits all of us who come to believe and live faithfully.

If we really hear and really believe the gospel, then we don’t stop with hearing. We can’t. Because it is the gospel that we must go and preach the gospel (Mark 16:15). We are to evangelize.

My, how we Catholics often loathe the thought sharing the gospel with our neighbors. Of admitting to people how in love we are with Jesus Christ. But if we don’t share, they won’t know.

We tend to cling to an old model of church growth through fertility – of passive proselytism by propagation if you will. We don’t mind sharing our faith with our children, but we’re terrified of sharing it with a neighbor who might disagree with us about it. I think our accommodation of our surrounding culture has become too deeply ingrained at this point.

We must learn again how to evangelize. How to preach the gospel to the world – to every creature – to the whole cosmos (Mark 16:15). It doesn’t involve casting our pearls before swine (Matt 7:6), but it also doesn’t involve hiding a light under a bushel basket (Matt 5:15). There is mystagogy only for the initiated, there is catechesis for the uninitiated, and there is evangelism for everybody. To all people, we preach Christ and him crucified (1 Cor 1:23).

The Philokalia, or the writings of holy father Gregory Palamas in defense of holy hesychasm probably don’t make a good opening salvo in our proclamation of the gospel to the world. These are like pearls before the world’s swine. These are treasures that aid in living the life in Christ, after we have answered his call and entered into his holy mysteries.

But our light shining before all – which comes from living this mystery – is our love for one another, for God, and for all. This is a word for all: Christ, and him crucified – that our God so loves us that he comes among us in every way but sin.

Faith comes by hearing (Rom 10:17). If we never hear this word, we never have an opportunity to believe it. So we must preach the gospel at all times, and use words constantly – not with wise-sounding words, but with the word of the cross (1 Cor 1:17-18).

The words of the gospel are good to speak. They need to be heard. And so they need to be preached – with words – but also with the example of life lived in Christ. The gospel is worth talking about, and it’s even more worth living. Without this, we can actually do a disservice to the gospel we preach. Our hypocrisy can be a bad witness.

I used to be a bumper sticker guy. So, I used to want to put bumper stickers on my car that express my Christian faith, and my own perspective on Christian faith. So I designed one that said, “Is the pope Orthodox?” – playing on the expression “Is the pope Catholic?” And I designed another one that said “Liturgy is Life,” playing off those old “Basketball is life” or “Football is life” stickers that I used to see. Anyway, I’ve always hesitated to actually put Christian bumper stickers on my car because I’m such a bad driver. I mean, I’m all over the road, and I have a lead foot, and I crash into things a lot. I probably shouldn’t have a license. I feared, you understand, being a bad witness. It’s one thing to share with people how much I love liturgical worship, it’s another thing to share it with them while I’m cutting them off in traffic, which is a selfish and unchristian thing to do. Lord, have mercy.

Let us share the gospel with words and with our way of life – and even with how we drive. Evangelism is all-encompassing and cannot be reduced to any technique.

But what is the gospel really – the εὐαγγέλιον – the good news?

Jesus gives a foretaste of the good news today in his healing of the paralytic (Mark 2:10-12). And he has been healing many people. As soon as Jesus begins his ministry, he immediately begins driving out unclean spirits (Mark 1:22-26, 34), lifting up those who lay fevered (Mark 1:29-31), cleansing lepers (Mark 1:40-42), and healing many with various diseases (Mark 1:34).

“What is the point of all of this?” some have objected. All these people that Jesus heals will only get sick again anyway and someday die. There is a seeming finality and inevitability about death. Well, these healings are signs pointing to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the gospel is that our coming healing is not temporary, but everlasting.

Imagine for a moment that you know a doctor who has a diet plan that is the cure for cancer. I’m talking about a cure. Cancer killed both my parents. And it’s killing people right now in its many and varied forms. So it is our enemy and we rightly seek to destroy it. Well, what if you knew a doctor who has the cure? Would you say, I need to tell everybody about this doctor, but only use words when necessary? No, I hope you would tell everyone by every means available to you. I hope you wouldn’t hesitate and worry, what people might think of you if you fail to keep this cancer-curing diet yourself at times. If the diet cures cancer, tell me about the diet, whether you keep it or not. If the diet cures cancer, tell me about the diet using spoken and written words and images and videos and Facebook and social media and everything available to you and yes keep the diet yourself, but even when you fail in some of this, don’t neglect the rest.

Well, the gospel is like this. I really do know a guy who has the cure for cancer. In fact, though my parents are already dead from cancer, he can still cure them. Not only can he, but he has cured them. He has risen them from the dead in the eschaton which is present, as well as future. And I can only see it with eyes of faith, but I can see it. I’ve been given eyes to see. I’m going to tell you about him. And I’m going to use words, which are at all times necessary.

“Some people reprove us for honoring images of the Savior, of the Mother of God and other holy servants of Christ.”

These are the words of St. John of Damascus[i] writing in the 8th century, but he might as well have written them today. I don’t know about you, but my whole life I have encountered rebukes from others against our veneration of holy images in the Catholic Church. The struggle against iconoclasm continues.

Today in the United States, we may hear these criticisms most often from some of our Protestant brothers and sisters, who accuse us of idolatry when they see us bowing down before the holy images. And criticism continues to come also from our Muslim brothers and sisters just as it has for around fourteen hundred years.

In fact, iconoclasm among Christians may well have initially grown as a movement at least partly in response to the influence of Islam. The truth is, iconography has had a place in Christian worship from as soon as it became feasible for us to make them. We have surviving examples of Christian imagery from as early as the 2^nd century. If we go to the catacombs where the early Christians worshipped, there on the walls we find iconography. The use of iconography among Christians was only criticized and threatened after the rise of Islam.

St. John of Damascus lived and worked among Muslims his whole life. It is an interesting irony of history actually that this was the means by which he was able (without being killed, that is) to defy the iconoclasm that had become so prevalent among Christians. The Emperor Leo forbade the use of icons, but St. John was immune to the persecutions of the iconoclasts because he lived under Muslim rule. That’s right, here is a Christian saint being protected… from Christians… by Muslims.

Yet St. John was surely intimately familiar with the criticism leveled against our veneration of the holy images. Of these critics he says,

“But let them think for a moment. In the beginning God created humanity in his own image. Why ever should we have such respect for one another, if not because we are made in the image of God? In Basil’s words, ‘the honor paid to the image is in reality paid to its prototype,’ that is to say, to what the image represents. Thus, the Jewish people revered the Tabernacle because that, much more than the rest of creation, was an image of God. The making and the veneration of images are not a novelty. They are based on a very ancient tradition. God made the first human being as an image of himself.”

Note this: God himself is the first and best iconographer – the first image-maker. He makes us in his image. Each of us are icons of God made by God. How can that not be worthy of veneration?

St. John continues: “Abraham, Moses, Isaiah and all the prophets saw God, not in his true being, but in his image.”

God reveals and gives himself to us through image as much as through word. As an artist, this is especially important to me. God joins himself to us through all of our faculties and encounters the whole human person. He does not limit himself to our verbal headspace, or to propositions and ideas.

Yet, to the diminishment of the power of the image, sometimes people insist that icons are not “painted” so much as “written.” And they will point to the etymology of the Greek word, “iconography.” Ikon means “image” and graphí means “to write”. “Calligraphy” is “beautiful writing” and “iconography” is “image writing.” So the claim goes. And I’m sure the intention of this is good – it’s thought by some that saying that icons are “written” gives them a more spiritual or theological sense – but there are two problems with this.

Firstly, it’s really just a bad translation. You see, iconography could be used in Greek to speak of depiction with images in general. It could be said of the Mona Lisa or any street sign as must as of our icons of the Lord and his saints. Icons are painted (or assembled in the case of mosaics).

Secondly, and more importantly, this is really a kind of subtle iconoclasm, if you ask me. What they’re claiming is that “writing” is more spiritual or theological than “painting,” which suggests that words are more spiritual or theological than images. And the whole point of what we’re celebrating today – the veneration of the holy images – is that this is very much not true. God reveals himself through image just as much as through word. Image is just as spiritual and theological as is word. This is the iconodulia we celebrate today.

The whole human experience – and not just part of it – is divinized by God becoming the man Jesus Christ. And even before this, as St. John observes, the prophets were seeing the image of God as well as hearing his voice.

Today we remember these holy prophets. There are actually two commemorations on this first Sunday of the Great Fast. Today is the Sunday of Orthodoxy, which celebrates the restoration of the holy icons after the triumph of orthodoxy over iconoclasm. But even before that, this Sunday was set aside in memory of the holy prophets. That is why our readings today make mention of the prophets. Philip says to Nathanael of Jesus, “We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote” (John 1:45). I daresay our lectionary is older that the Sunday of Orthodoxy. But God is with us in the Church, and so I also daresay that the bringing together of the prophets and the icons is no meaningless thing. St. John of Damascus is showing us a way that these two commemorations are related. The prophets, you see, were the first to see God in images, as well as to hear his word. They were the first iconodules, the first to venerate icons.

For example, St. John points out that “the burning bush was an image of the Mother of God.”

You see, the bush burned but was not consumed and the Theotokos conceived and bore God, yet remained a virgin.

“When Moses wanted to approach [the burning bush], God said to him: ‘Put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ [Exod. 3:5] If the ground on which Moses saw the image of the Mother of God was holy, how much more holy will the image itself be!”

The holy images are worthy of great veneration. They are a means through which we can experience God, by his grace.

Moses we also call the God-seer, for he saw the back of the Lord when his glory had passed by him (Ex 33:18-23). The fact that the Lord would not let Moses see his “face” but only his “back” is a metaphor for the reality that the prophets could not “see God in his true being,” as St. John writes, “but in his image.” The image becomes the way for us to venerate God without being destroyed by the power of his glory. “No one may see the face of God and live” (Ex 33:20). The honor we pay to the image passes to what the image represents, as says St. Basil, to God himself. Therefore, the image is a necessary part of our worship.

 

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[i] St. John Damascene, On the Orthodox Faith, 4, 16 (PG94, 1168ff.); Discourses on Images, 2, 16ff. (PG94, 1301ff.)