The first Sunday of Great Lent is known as the “Triumph of Orthodoxy”. When we hear that word “Triumph”, we often think that this word means “victory”, but in Ancient Rome a “triumph” referred to the ceremonies that marked the celebration of victories! The emperor would parade and celebrate around the cities with the treasurers and spoils he captured from the enemy, and this is the action that millions of Orthodox Christians are taking today throughout the world!
History remembers this as the day in which Holy Icons, after years of persecutions from the iconoclasts, were restored to the entire Church in the 8th century. We thank God today for the victory of the Church over the heresy of iconoclasm! Look what icons do for our lives as Christians! When we come to the Church to see Christ and the Saints and his mother, depicted on the iconostasis, do they hinder the prosperity of the Gospel in our lives? Or is the Gospel enhanced for us? When we see and venerate (not worship!) icons, do we think more about the greatest miracle ever; that God became Man and conquered death so that we might have eternal life? Or does it cause us to think less about these saving truths?
Every First Sunday after Lent since the year 843, the Church celebrates the Triumph of Orthodoxy. Our victorious general, our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, came into the flesh to conquer death for us! We hold icons up as the spoils of war and as the treasure that displays that victory to the world!
One thing that we might notice if we are paying attention to the readings and hymns for today, is that both the Gospel and the Epistle don’t speak about icons at all! This is because before 843, before a time when Icons came under attack, the Church had dedicated this Sunday to another kind of victory. It was on this first Sunday of Lent that our ancestors remembered the victory of the Prophets and Saints who came before Christ and spent their lives pointing towards the coming of God into the world!
While we can spend several weeks contemplating the lives of these holy ones, let us follow the example that St. Paul leads us with in his epistle to the Hebrews, and speak about the life of one of the Greatest Prophets in Moses! We remember how he came into this world in the midst of the Egyptian’s persecution of the Hebrew people. Pharoah had ordered that all Hebrew males should be thrown into the Nile River in a cruel attempt to subdue the Hebrew population. Moses, who was a particularly beautiful baby as St. Gregory of Nyssa shares, was spared this evil by being placed in a little boat by his mother and sent down river. It was here that Pharoah’s daughter happened to see the little boat while walking near the river, saw the beautiful countenance of this little boy, and adopted the young Moses to raise him like a prince in the palace.
As he grew older, Moses had a choice to make. In the palace, he was surrounded by riches, food, glories, and honors! He lived the life that so many in our world dream of living…in material comfort and wealth! Despite all of that, he could not bear to see the plight of his own people, and so prefiguring what Christ had done for us, Moses gave up the riches of the Kingdom to live amongst the slaves as a shepherd. He chose poverty over riches, suffering over the easy life, and dishonor and scorn over glory.
Our entire lives as Orthodox Christians, especially during this period of Great Lent, is about following this same example! We are so inundated with the good life here in our country, yet there are so many people out there that have no food. In Ukraine today, there are people without the basic necessities of life (power, heat, a roof over our heads, food). In order to imitate Christ, we have to sometimes humble ourselves and in some way experience those same things our brothers and sisters are experiencing, in order to grow in our love and understanding of them. We fast, not just to control our bodies, but to also remember and to grow closer in understanding to those who don’t have food. We grow in our love for the poor by giving them money to buy food and clothes to warm themselves in. We do these things to grow in our love for our fellow men, so that our love for Christ can continue to grow! All these things Moses did out of love and compassion for his own people, and (as St. Paul says) was richly rewarded for doing so
If we fast forward in the life of this great prophet, we remember how Moses had led his people out of Egypt and out of the tyranny of Pharoah. While they were in the desert, they were led to the promise land by God in the form of a Divine Cloud that was beyond our human comprehension. It wasn’t a misty composition that we are used to when we hear “cloud”. Scripture tells us that when the rays of the Sun would show in the desert, making it extremely hot and unbearable, the cloud would shelter the people, and moisten them with a light dew. At night, when the desert would get extremely cold, the cloud would become like a fire, leading the Israelites in procession with its own light from sunset to sunrise![1] It was this cloud that guided them on their journey, and Moses and the Hebrews followed it with tremendous faith.
The cloud eventually led them to a place called Mount Sinai, and the people were ordered to keep themselves and their bodies pure of passions so that they could approach the mountain. On the third day, the mountain was shrouded with a dark cloud. Thunder, lightning, and the sound of a trumpet was heard booming over the people, who were awestruck and in fear! St. Gregory of Nyssa, who wrote the life of Moses (4th century) described this scene by saying:
“The manifestation was of such a nature that it not only caused consternation in their souls through what they saw, but it also struck fear in them through what they heard! A terrible sound ripped down from above, upon everything below. It’s first impact was harsh and intolerable to every ear. It’s sound was like a blaring of trumpets, but the intensity and terribleness of the sound surpassed any such comparison. As it drew nearer, it’s blaring steadily increased to a more terrifying volume. The sound was sharp and clear, the air articulating the word by divine power without using organs of speech. The word was not articulated without purpose but was laying down divine ordinances (the 10 commandments). As the sound drew nearer, it became louder, and the trumpet surpassed itself, the successive sounds exceeding in volume the preceding ones.”
The people were so frightened, that they sent Moses to go alone and to approach this incredible sight and be the mediator between God and the people. He ascended up the mountain and disappeared from their sight while the Thunder and Lightning continued…and it was there that He received the law.
St. Gregory says in his “Life of Moses”, that if we are going to associate intimately with God, we have to go beyond all that which is visible. We must lift our minds to the mountaintop towards the invisible and incomprehensible, and understand that God is there, where our understanding does not always reach.
Why does God allow his people to suffer? Why did he allow the Hebrews to remain in bondage for so long before sending Moses? Why does he permit a senseless war to continue to develop in Ukraine? What is it like to come into His presence at the judgment seat? How does bread and wine becoming the Body and Blood of God at the Divine Liturgy? How does an icon weep or a Gospel Book bleed? The life of Moses shows us how to navigate all of these doubts and questions that come up in our lives. We follow with faith the “Cloud of the Church", that is piloted by the Holy Spirit itself, which answers every need that we have in this life. We lower ourselves to the ground in humility, understanding that there are questions that we have that are simply beyond our human capacity to answer. We lift ourselves up by knowing and remembering the incredible gift of Love that our Lord offered us on the Cross and in the Tomb, because we understand that no matter what happens in this life, true victory and triumph is found in faith.
May God give us the courage to continue this triumph of faith in our own lives, showing the world what it means to be a part of the faith that has established the universe.
[1] Life of Moses, St. Gregory of Nyssa,1:31