Orthodoxy Sunday 2025: What We Celebrate and Why It’s Named This Way

March 9, 2025, is a significant day for our Church as we celebrate the victory of Orthodox Faith over heresies that sought to distort the true understanding of icons throughout history. The first Sunday of Great Lent (1st Sunday of Fasting) is also known as Orthodoxy Sunday, commemorating the restoration of Holy Icons by Empress Theodora in 842, marking the end of Iconoclasm (726–843), a political-religious conflict that destabilized the Byzantine Empire and threatened its unity. In the Horologion (the liturgical book of the church), it states: ‘For more than a hundred years, the Church was disturbed by persecutions from heretical iconoclasts. It began with Emperor Leo III the Isaurian and ended with Theophilus, whose wife, the holy Empress Theodora, assumed power after his death and firmly re-established Orthodoxy with Patriarch Methodius. Empress Theodora publicly declared that we venerate icons—not worship them as gods—but as representations of their prototypes. In 842, on the first Sunday of Lent, Theodora, along with her son Emperor Michael, led a procession and restored the holy icons with clergy and people. Since then, every year we celebrate this event, affirming that we do not worship icons but honor and glorify all the saints they represent, worshiping only the Triune God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Orthodoxy Sunday is a special Christian triumphal feast, remembering the final restoration of sacred icons in Constantinople by Empress Theodora, ending the long-standing conflict between iconoclasts and iconophiles. The restoration was celebrated with great festivity and processions. Heretics and iconoclasts were condemned, and all those anathematized by the Ecumenical Councils were remembered. Every year since, this celebration has been repeated in Constantinople and other major cities of the Byzantine Empire. On Orthodoxy Sunday, the faithful participate in the festive Divine Liturgy and the procession of icons, during which the Symbol of Faith is read.