The Service of the Salutations to the Theotokos is celebrated in honor of her role as intercessor and celebrated to give us strength and joy during this time of prayer, fasting, repentance, and spiritual transformation. The Mother of our God and Savior Jesus Christ is our mother too. And there is no better person to lead us to Christ than the one who gave us Christ — the one who birthed, nurtured, and raised Him, and who stood by Him when He was crucified. In fact, it was from the Cross that Christ said to the Apostle John (representing the Church): “Behold your mother,” (John 19:27) and to the Theotokos: “Behold your son” (John 19:26) — representing the Church, which is the Body of Christ. The Service is celebrated in honor of the Theotokos’s role as “mediatress” — the mother who mediates on behalf of her Son to us and on our behalf to her Son. She is the greatest intercessor among the Saints in Heaven — the “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1) — praying to God to save those in great danger and need. We say “Rejoice!” because this is how the Archangel Gabriel greeted the Theotokos (Luke 1:28) to announce the Incarnation, which is the beginning of our salvation. This is called the “Angelic Salutation”. This Service is celebrated during the first five Friday evenings of Great Lent. The Akathist Hymn comprises 24 stanzas and is divided into four parts. One part is sung on each of the first four Fridays, and on the fifth Friday the entire set is sung.
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Sunday of Orthodoxy
For more than one hundred years the Church of Christ was troubled by the persecution of the Iconoclasts of evil belief, beginning in the reign of Leo the Isaurian (717-741) and ending in the reign of Theophilus (829-842). After Theophilus's death, his widow the Empress Theodora (celebrated Feb. 11), together with the Patriarch Methodius (June 14), established Orthodoxy anew. This ever-memorable Queen venerated the icon of the Mother of God in the presence of the Patriarch Methodius and the other confessors and righteous men, and openly cried out these holy words: "If anyone does not offer relative worship to the holy icons, not adoring them as though they were gods, but venerating them out of love as images of the archetype, let him be anathema." Then with common prayer and fasting during the whole first week of the Forty-day Fast, she asked God's forgiveness for her husband. After this, on the first Sunday of the Fast, she and her son, Michael the Emperor, made a procession with all the clergy and people and restored the holy icons, and again adorned the Church of Christ with them. This is the holy deed that all we the Orthodox commemorate today, and we call this radiant and venerable day the Sunday of Orthodoxy, that is, the triumph of true doctrine over heresy.
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