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).In our conversation with iconographer Anatoly Aleshin, the instructor of the Icon Painting School of Moscow’s Theological Academy, one of the leading specialists in the area of fresco painting, we discussed why it is incorrect to speak about the icon painting canons; what inspires today’s iconographers in the absence of heated theological disputes of old times, and how to decorate a large church in two months. Among some of his projects are the wall paintings in the crypt of the Holy Hierarch St. Gregory of Novgorod in the St. Sophia Cathedral (Veliky Novgorod), the Trinity Cathedral of St. Pachomius monastery in Nerekhta, St. John of Kronstadt Cathedral in Hamburg (Germany), the church at the Russian Pilgrim’s Residence at the site of Baptism of Jesus Christ (Jordan), the churches in Diveyevo, and others
Anatoly Alyoshin, the iconographer
