Living Icons - Fr. Gregory - October 12, 2025

On this Sunday, the Church celebrates the Holy Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, who gathered in Nicaea in 787 to defend the veneration of the holy icons. In his sermon, Fr. Gregory discusses three main topics: seeing rightly, loving rightly, and being transfigured by the one whose image we bear.First, he shows how the holy icons teach us about the restoration of right vision. Through Christ, our eyes are healed to see creation as it truly is — a world filled with divine meaning, a veil that reveals God’s glory rather than conceals it. Second, he explains how the holy icons call us to move from objectification to communion, to resist the iconoclasm of our age that sees others as objects. Instead, we can recognize in every human person the living image or icon of God. Third, Fr. Gregory discusses how we are invited to become living icons to allow the grace of Christ to renew the image of God within us so that we ourselves may reflect his light into the world.