In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

As I mentioned last week, the Fast is compared to the 40 years the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, and the weekends are like the rest stops where we get to refresh ourselves. So you’ve finished one week, and this weekend, the Saturday and Sunday, are days of rejoicing where we celebrate the Triumph of Orthodox. Today it’s a double feast, because we also commemorate the first and second finding of the head of St. John the Baptist.

If you’ve been Orthodox for any length of time, one thing that you probably have become aware of is the idea that there’s such a thing as lenten temptations. These are things that the demons do to try to distract you and knock you off your balance so that you don’t really focus spiritually on the fast. In this last week, we had Super Tuesday, so that was a time to where we could have been distracted by politics; it’s always a temptation, and particularly as people get further and further away from belief in God, a lot of people have made politics their replacement for religion, and they’ve become fanatics that would surpass some of the most extreme fundamentalists that you could imagine in any religion in terms of their fervency and their intolerance of anybody else’s opinion. But we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be distracted by these things.

Another distraction that we have right now is the coronavirus—which of course is not something that we should ignore; it’s something that we should take reasonable precautions—but we have people who are talking about not going to church for the next month, which means they’re going to miss the fast, basically. We have people who are talking about not taking Communion because they’re afraid they’re going to get sick. We have people who are saying you shouldn’t kiss the icons because you might get sick from that. This is not an Orthodox way of looking at things, and if you think about how our forefathers have approached the sacred things of the Church, you see that they would not have ever batted an eye at such concerns as those.

There was an incident that happened during the Great Persecution, the last Great Persecution of the Church under Diocletian in North Africa, where, for a long period of time, the churches were prevented from having any kind of service, and people weren’t able to take Communion as a result of that. But there was a bishop and a group of clergy and people who gathered together, and they served the Liturgy, knowing that they would be arrested and knowing that if they were lucky they would be sent to work in some copper mine in a desert somewhere, and if they were less fortunate, they would be tortured and put to death. But they so longed to take Communion that they were willing to risk that. Do you think that those martyrs would have said, “Well, I might get sick because there’s a virus going around, and I’m not going to go to church.” I don’t think that that would happen.

Today happens to be International Women’s Day, so I’m going to talk about one of the first martyrs for the icons, since we’re celebrating the Triumph of Orthodoxy specifically over iconoclasm, although we talk about the Triumph of Orthodoxy over all heresies. I want to talk about the Martyr Theodosia of Constantinople. St. Theodosia was born to pious parents in Constantinople, and her mother had been praying for a child for a long period of time. Then the Martyr Anastasia appeared to her and told her that her prayers would be answered, and then she conceived and later gave birth to St. Theodosia, whose name means given by God, appropriately. St. Theodosia’s father died when she was seven years old. Her mother placed her in the Convent of the Resurrection, which was in Constantinople, and then her mother also died and left her a large fortune. Out of that fortune she commissioned three icons: an icon of Christ, an icon of the Theotokos, and an icon of the martyr Anastasia, and then she gave the rest of her fortune to the poor.

Iconoclasm was a heresy that was inspired by Islam. Prior to the advent of Islam, there was no one in the Church that was talking about how you can’t venerate icons, you can’t make icons. This was something that people did and didn’t think about it. As a matter of fact, at the Sixth Ecumenical Council, there was a canon that mentioned icons that were being incorrectly painted and said how they should be painted, and it was mentioned in passing without any hint that it was a controversial thing that people would have icons that they would paint or that they would venerate. As a matter of fact, if you go to the catacombs in Rome where the early Christians often went to have services, you’ll find that they’re covered with icons from floor to ceiling. So this was something that Christians always did.

But you had a series of emperors who came from areas where Islam had made a lot of inroads, so they were influenced by the iconoclasm that the Muslims practiced. The first of these was the emperor Leo the Isaurian. He became the emperor in the year 717, and he remained the emperor until 741. He issued a series of edicts against the veneration of icons starting in the year 726 through the year 729. Then in the year 730, he removed by force St. Germanus, who was the Patriarch of Constantinople, because he refused to go along with these things, and he replaced with Anastasios, who was an iconoclast, so a psuedo-patriarch.

In that same year, the emperor ordered that a very famous icon of Christ be removed that hung on the Halki Gate, or the Bronze Gate, which was the primary entrance, the ceremonial entrance to the imperial palace. So an imperial guard climbed up a ladder with an axe, and he was about to knock the icon to the ground, and St. Theodosia, along with a group of women, ran, and they shook the ladder, and he fell to his death. Then there were a group of monks that took the ladder away. Then St. Theodosia took a group of pious women of Constantinople, both high and modest stations in society, and they had rocks and clubs in their hands, and they went to the patriarchate, and they showered the pseudo-patriarch, Anastasios, with rocks. He escaped with his life so he continued on with his heresy, but these were women not to be trifled with. When it came to someone trying to desecrate an icon of the Savior, they weren’t just going to sit idly by and let that happen.

No doubt they knew that it was not likely to go well for them when they did this. So the emperor ordered that the women with her were to be beheaded. St. Theodosia, however, was tortured for a period of time. She was locked in prison for a week, and they gave her a hundred lashes every day. Then on the eighth day they led her about the city, and they beat her as they dragged her through the streets. Then they took her to a place that was called the ox field, which was a place of public execution. Then one of the soldiers took a ram’s horn and hammered it into her throat, and she received the crown of martyrdom.

I don’t think St. Theodosia would have said, “You know what? I’m not going to kiss the icons, because there’s a virus going around.” I don’t think she would have said, “I’m not going to go to church, because there’s a virus going around.” I know she wouldn’t say, “I’m not going to take Communion because I might get sick,” because how can you possibly get sick from partaking of the body and blood of Christ? Now, if you don’t believe it’s the body and blood of Christ, stay home, because maybe you will get sick if you don’t believe it. If you’re an atheist, there’s no point in coming to church anyway. Why bother? But if you really believe it’s the body and blood of Christ, if you really believe that God is who he says he is, then you ought to be able to just trust God, that he’s going to take care of you, and that his will will be done.

We have a faith today, we have a Church that still exists, and we are all here today as Orthodox Christians because thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions of our forebears were willing to lay down their life for their faith. So we shouldn’t allow these kinds of temptations to distract us from our focus. They shouldn’t keep us from coming to church; they shouldn’t keep us from praying. We owe it to them, and we certainly owe it to the Savior, to remain focused and to keep doing the things that we know we’re supposed to be doing as Orthodox Christians, and to trust God, because, after all, what’s the worst that could happen? You could die, and you could be with Christ. So what are you worried about? Don’t be concerned about these things; trust God, and God will take care of the rest. Amen.