The Ukrainian National Association Branch 414 New Haven will hold their 17th Annual Easter Egg Hunt on Sunday, April 5, after the second Divine Liturgy on the church grounds. Young U N A members, Ridna Shkola students and New Haven area Ukrainian youth are invited to participate. For more information contact Gloria Horbaty (203)269-5909, Branch Financial Secretary.

ICON SUNDAY – THE TRIUMPH OF ORTHODOXY

“Let us venerate the holy icons of Christ; of the all-pure Virgin and the saints,
whether depicted on walls, on wooden panels or on holy vessels,
rejecting the impious teachings of the heretics.”

The Sunday of Orthodoxy or the Triumph of Orthodoxy is celebrated on the First Sunday of Great Lent in the Byzantine Rite Eastern Catholic Churches, commemorating the memory of the final defeat of iconoclasm and the restoration of icons to the churches.

The Seventh Ecumenical Council, held in Nicea, Asia Minor in 787 AD, centered around the use of icons in the Church and the controversy between the iconoclasts and iconophiles. The iconoclasts were suspicious of religious art; they demanded that the Church rid itself of such art and that it be destroyed or broken (as the name “iconoclast” implies). The iconophiles believed that icons served to preserve the doctrinal teachings of the Church; they considered icons to be man’s dynamic way of expressing the Divine through art and beauty.

The Council proclaimed “We define that holy icons, whether in color, mosaic, or some other material, should be exhibited in the holy churches of God, on the sacred vessels and liturgical vestments, on the walls, furnishings, and in houses and along the roads, namely the icons of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, that of Our Lady the Theotokos, those of the venerable angels and those of all saintly people. Whenever these representations are contemplated, they will cause those who look at them to commemorate and love their prototype. We define also that they should be kissed and that they are an object of veneration and honor, but not of real worship, which is reserved for Him Who is the subject of our faith and is proper for the divine nature, … which is in effect transmitted to the prototype; he who venerates the icon, venerated in it the reality for which it stands.”