![]() Let the confused Asterios, then, cease to forbid and argue against the salvific portrayal of Christ in these two forms (i.e., images and words), that is, let him cease thinking that the glory of the Lord is dishonorable, and that his voluntary humiliation was involuntary. When Christ is depicted in an icon, it is as if he is being described in Scripture, and our hearing is never sated with the sound of him neither can our eyes ever be filled with seeing him, because we are hearing and seeing God who became man the eternal one who appeared on earth as a child the one who sustains the universe drinking milk from his mother the one who cannot be contained being contained in her arms the one who is beyond divinity and yet became man the Depth of Wisdom immersed in the water of baptism, doing the things that are proper both to God and to man, though he is beyond all essence and being the Lord of glory nailed to the cross the life of the world buried and resurrected he whom the universe cannot contain assumed into heaven as man. And there is one Christ, not two or more, even if, in the same way, his form is reproduced in countless images. ![]() And there is only one Gospel, and not another, even if innumerable copies of it exist. ![]() And since both are reproduced and copied continuously, there are countless crosses and countless Gospels, and not simply one! At the same time, there is only one cross, and not another, even if it is reproduced thousands of times. Consider, for example, that a second image of the one cross is another cross, which is also true of the Gospel. His last words were: “Keep your faith unshaken and your life pure.”Īnd how would he avoid repudiating the recollection of Christ’s Passion, which the written account offers to our hearing, if he denigrates the recollection by sight for being a replication of the event? For seeing and hearing are equal capacities, each one working in conjunction with the other, as the divine mouth, Basil the Great, has declared. He also wrote numerous rules and regulations concerning monastic life, and a large number of poems, hymns and canons, including the first canon in the Theotokarion, as well as more than 500 letters, many of which are important theological treatises. Among his works are three Refutations of the Iconoclasts a Small and Great Catechesis more than a dozen homilies on various feasts and saints a funeral oration for his mother and a celebrated Paschal Homily incorporating the Paschal Homily of St John Chrysostom. A zealous opponent of Iconoclasm, he spent more than fifteen years in exile largely for his defense of the holy icons, and was given the title of Confessor of the Faith. As a monastic reformer, Theodore’s aim was to free monastic life from government influence and control. Under his direction, the Stoudios monastery became a major center of social and cultural change. Following his example, most of his family members became monks and nuns. Born to a wealthy and socially connected family, his father was an official of the imperial treasury, his mother was from a senatorial family, and one of her cousins became the second wife of Constantine VI (sed. 11 November 826, was a theologian, monastic reformer, and the abbot of the Stoudios Monastery in Constantinople.
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