Christ is Risen! And Welcome!

Welcome to my blog, Summer and Spring: Orthodoxy through the Seasons. Before introducing my blog, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Ioannis, and I am a Reader in the Russian Orthodox Church. I'm fully Greek however, and have grown up within the Greek tradition of Orthodoxy. I'm also majoring in History, and as you'd suspect, I'm interested in History in the very broad sense of the word. 

While I will occasionally write articles centered around historical topics, the main focus of this blog will be the Divine Services of the Orthodox Church, how they have developed throughout the ages, how they were served in the past, and how they are served today. 

The title of the blog itself is a hint at the liturgical year of the Orthodox Church, and it is taken from the Synodikon of the 7th Ecumenical Council which proclaimed Orthodoxy victorious over the heresy of Iconoclasm. The Synodikon, in brief, likens the heresy of Iconoclasm - which not only forbade the veneration of Icons - but also condemned the veneration of Saints, hymns composed to the Saints, and divine services served in their honour. The Fathers liken the heresy of Iconoclasm to a noetic winter which came upon the Church. Indeed, this heresy had spread throughout the Eastern Roman Empire at a time when defeats at the hands of Islamic Persia had been seen as a result of Orthodoxy's Iconophilsm, one of the main tenants of Islam being Iconoclasm. A fierce battle was waged within the Empire over the Icons, and many Saints such as John of Damascus fought and suffered for the veneration of Icons, as well as, for the composition of Divine Services in the honour of Holy men and women who had contested for the True Faith. And from this period of strife great works were born: the Octoechos, the Triodion, Pentecostarion, and Menea all came about more or less as a retaliation to the Iconoclasts. Or, perhaps more percisly, as an outflowing of the zeal and love of God and the Kingdom of Heaven which came about due to the persecution.

God did not abandon His Church, and after a long and terrible winter, finally the triumph of Orthodoxy came on the 1st Sunday of Great Lent in 787 at Nicea, henceforth to this day honoured as "The Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy." Not only were the Holy Icons restored to their proper place, but also the Fathers of that Council instructed that the Saints are to be honoured as faithful imitators of Christ, with Churches dedicated to their honour, with hymns written and sung to their glory, and with other acts of piety. 

By now, summer and spring had dawned on the Orthodox Church. About the winter which came, and the spring and summer which followed, the Fathers say the following:

There are the words of the Lord, which are to be taken prophetically: "It was," He said, "the feast of the dedication in Jerusalem, and it was winter." By winter is signified, either the spiritual winter, according to which the nation of the Jews stirred up storms of bloodthirstiness and trouble against the Saviour of us all, or that which affects the bodily senses when the air changes to being icy-cold.

For there was a winter with us — along hard winter, and not just a fleeting season — one of great wickedness, spewing out savagery, but now there has blossomed forth for us the first of seasons, the spring of the graces of God, in which we have gathered together to make a thank-offering to God, a harvest of good works; or, to express it rather in the words of the psalm: "Summer and spring, Thou hast made them, remember this."