“Jesus goes before us to show us the way, both up the mountain and into heaven.”
"And, behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elias: who appeared in glory, and spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem." A ripidion from the altar depicts the Holy Transfiguration to which the Sinai church was dedicated.
At the foot of the God-trodden Mountain of Sinai, Emperor Justinian built the great basilica of St. Catherine's Monastery to the Transfiguration of Christ—the “Feast of monastic feasts.”
Meditations on Great Lent
Brethren, already we are at the first harbor of Great Lent, the Sunday of Orthodoxy. The Church stops here after one week of fasting and ascetic struggles for piety’s sake to celebrate an important victory: the Triumph of the Orthodox Faith. This occurred in the eighth and ninth centuries when a terrible heresy overtook the Church and shattered the peace of Christians. This heresy was called Iconoclasm and those who followed it were called Iconoclasts, that is, “those who break or destroy icons.”
Saints Archippus, Philemon and Apphia, Apostles of the Seventy were students and companions of the holy Apostle Paul. In the Epistle to Philemon, the Apostle Paul names Saint Archippus as his companion, and mentions him again in the Epistle to the Colossians (Col. 4:17).
Anatoly Alyoshin, the iconographer
