The Sunday of Orthodoxy

The first Sunday of Lent keeps the day the icons came back to the churches.

The Sunday of Orthodoxy, or Triumph of Orthodoxy, is kept on the first Sunday of Great Lent. It remembers the restoration of the holy icons in 843, when the regent Empress Theodora, her son Michael III, and Patriarch Methodios ended iconoclasm and the icons were carried back into Hagia Sophia. Many churches keep it with a procession of icons.

The Sunday of Orthodoxy 2027

Sunday, March 21, 2027, the same day on the New and Old calendars (the Church of Finland keeps the Western Easter). The year after: Sunday, March 5, 2028.

For more than a century the Church was torn by iconoclasm, the teaching that holy images must be destroyed. The Seventh Ecumenical Council, in 787, upheld the icons and taught that the honour given to an icon passes to the one it shows. Iconoclasm returned, and ended only in 843.

That year, after the death of the last iconoclast emperor, his young son Michael III, his mother the regent Theodora, and Patriarch Methodios called a synod in Constantinople. On the first Sunday of Lent the faithful carried the icons in procession from the Church of Blachernae to Hagia Sophia, and set them back in their place.

The Church has kept that Sunday ever since. After the Liturgy, especially in cathedrals and monasteries, the clergy and people process with icons, and the Synodikon of Orthodoxy, the synod's decree, is read.

Questions about the Sunday of Orthodoxy

When is the Sunday of Orthodoxy?

On the first Sunday of Great Lent, six days after Clean Monday and forty-two days before Pascha. It falls on the same day on the New and Old calendars, except in the Church of Finland, which keeps the Western date of Easter.

What happened in 843?

A synod in Constantinople, called by the regent Empress Theodora, her son Michael III, and Patriarch Methodios, restored the holy icons and ended iconoclasm. The icons were carried back into Hagia Sophia on the first Sunday of Lent.

What is the Synodikon of Orthodoxy?

The decree of the synod of 843, read aloud on the Sunday of Orthodoxy after the procession. It remembers the saints and confessors who defended the faith.

More questions about the Orthodox Church, answered ›

“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”

John 1:14 (King James Version, public domain)

In Orthros

In Orthros a holy icon appears whole and framed, one at a time, as it would stand in a church; the Sunday of Orthodoxy is kept in the calendar with its readings.