The first Sunday of the fast is the Sunday of Orthodoxy. Even though the prevailing meaning here is that it is the Sunday of the triumph of Orthodoxy, the uprightness of faith, and the restoration of the icons, it certainly never means a triumph in the sense that we know. The first Sunday of the fast is the Sunday of the encounter with Jesus, where the disciple cries out: “«We have found the Messiah»” (Jn 1:41). “We have found the Messiah” does not mean we found a person, but that we found “the event,” we found the end of humanity — that which hungers and thirsts for the One who would quench for it that eternal thirst, the thirst for divinity, which for us is the breath of life. Saint Augustine says: “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart will not rest until it rests in You.”
The first Sunday is that we find the Lord at the beginning of our journey, in order to continue with Him — to find what we long for in the depths. If we do not find the Lord, then how shall we sail in our new worlds? If we do not find the Lord, we will undertake a journey with other aims and ends. And we, as human beings, strive toward many ends in our world (money, comfort, luxury, sex, power, and divinity). Man thirsts for divinity. This constant search did not come from a void, for each of us searches for what quenches his thirst. But even if we attain these things through money, power, and sex, we remain thirsty in the depths, for whatever we attain we rejoice in and then grow weary of, because we thirst for the deep overflow. And because man, if he is not satisfied, does not attempt to search for the face of God, he pants all the more after money, power, sex, and the like, and remains like one who drinks salt water — he thirsts and drinks and is not quenched. Man is lost without the face of God.
And certainty is not realized in him except in the vision of God. Therefore today the icon of the Teacher will be raised first, to clarify to us that He is our end. “We have found the Messiah” is “I found the one whom my soul loves” (Song 3:4). I found our eternal thirst. And what we will see today, that is, the faces of the saints in the icons, is the final transfiguration for us. The restoration of the icons is not a political triumph in the face of the war against icons, but rather a declaration that those who beheld the face of Jesus became the face of God looking down upon us. Metropolitan Paul Yazigi says: “Christ is the One whom we seek and whom we desire to see. This is the Christian stance toward life. And when the image of Christ and the images of His saints were raised high in the Seventh Council (842 A.D.), this aim was raised with them, clearly. And the icons raised in homes and churches… are nothing other than the declaration of this aim and the commitment to it.”
Therefore the question on this Sunday, after we have known that Jesus is here and has drawn near to us, is that we ask Him: “«Rabbi, where are You staying?»” (Jn 1:38). This question is for us to journey with Jesus, and to hear Him say: “«Come and see.»” (Jn 1:39). Today this journey begins with every one of us — a journey in which we hand ourselves over to Him without debate, following Him without thinking about what is to come.
And the question that will be posed is: how shall we undertake this journey with Jesus when we do not see Him? This journey with Jesus will begin in you — in you. In your interior you will discover Jesus, and He will guide you to Him. The inner chamber and the outer chamber are the two keys of this way: the inner chamber is the heart, and the outer chamber is the retreat, where man withdraws with himself and meets God there with his inner stillness.
Each one of us needs to sail with Jesus in stillness, prayer, and the reading of the Gospel; these three are the foundations of the journey with the Lord. Through the Gospel we walk with Him like the apostles — we come to know Him, we meet Him, we see how He addresses people, how He argues with the Pharisees and the scribes, how He defends the wronged. We see Him withdraw at times from confronting the Pharisees and at other times remain and confront them. The Gospel here is where we will be found — that is, the arena in which we are with the Lord.
And through prayer we are united with Him and address Him. Prayer here is not supplications, petition, and requests, but rather the moments in which we address Jesus, like a beloved after whom we run, as the Song of Songs says: ” My beloved answered and said to me: «Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away, for the winter is past, and the rain is over and gone…, show me your face, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet and your face is lovely… Return, my beloved»”. Prayer is not only a request, but a whispered conversation with the One whom the soul loves, calling upon Him at every moment: Come, O Lord Jesus; come, O You whom my soul loves, and take me, that we may ascend.
Today is the first Sunday of our journey with the Teacher; it is the Sunday in which we seek Jesus alone. We seek Him and ask Him where He is staying, that we may come and stay with You. Begin today the first step with the Teacher; meet Him as He is, that He may reveal Himself to you, that we may become His disciples, and then He will unite us to Himself in the Great Week.
The Sunday of Orthodoxy comes at the first of the week after the Sunday of the judgment, as though the secret word to us is: remember that judgment is according to works, and Orthodoxy will not intercede for you. For God, just as He is able to raise up children to Abraham from the stones, is able to raise up from these stones brothers and believers in Jesus. And the placing of the Sunday of the judgment outside the course of the Great Fast, that is, outside the Paschal precinct, carries within it the meaning that uprightness of faith is not the passageway to judgment; rather, active love is the criterion of the uprightness of faith, and not the reverse. Translate it into simple language for a sermon, and do not change anything in it.