His Grace Bishop Basil and the community of St. Luke Antiochian Orthodox Church of Erie, CO.The Liturgical Texts for October, blessed by His Eminence, Metropolitan Joseph, are now ready for clergy and laity to download from the Online Liturgical Guide.
Every year, on the Sunday that falls from October 11-17, inclusive, the Orthodox Church celebrates the 350 Holy Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, convened in Nicaea in 787. They refuted the Iconoclast heresy, whose camp believed that all depictions of Christ, His Mother and the saints should be destroyed. The council decreed that the veneration of icons was not idolatry because the honor shown to them is not directed to the wood or paint, but passes to the prototype depicted therein.
The founder of Christian iconography, St. Luke the Apostle and Evangelist, is commemorated on October 18. In addition to his fame for writing a gospel and the Acts of the Apostles that appear in the Holy Bible, St. Luke painted the first three icons of the Most-holy Theotokos, one of which is protected by the nuns of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Convent of Our Lady of Saydnaya in Syria. With Cleopas, St. Luke saw the resurrected Lord on the road to Emmaus, as he recounts in chapter 24 of his gospel.
The Online Liturgical Guide, produced by the Department of Liturgics, provides the official, uniform word-for-word texts to be used for the divine services in all parishes across the Archdiocese. Should you have any questions, please email Subdeacon Peter Samore at service_texts@antiochianladiocese.org.