Sunday ~ Icons, Blessings and Beauty found there in

My far away church 

blesses icons at the end of the liturgy 

on the first official Sunday of Great Lent,

called the Sunday of Orthodoxy 

because of the final victory against 

the long struggle to affirm Christ's incarnation 

and the theology that upholds icons as 

being a needed part of the church ~ 

{Christ is the image of the Father made manifest,

so now images of Christ and of His life, His Mother 

and the many Martyrs and other Saints of the church,

are part of the visible church, the cloud of witnesses

that are with us in our Christian journey}~

It was a beautiful service 

and wonderful to get icons blessed.

All the icons there were so beautiful!

*

Mr. Husband and I are exhausted from

lack of sleep and the time change but were gladdened 

by our time at church.

*

Sadly my icon of St. Anna,

 that you can see in the second picture,

I damaged when I was putting the icons I had blessed away;

it was still in the small canvas bag I had all the icons in

when the bag fell off the couch and the glass in 

the picture frame cracked.

So that was disappointing. 

Not sure when/how to get that glass replaced as it

is an unusually shaped frame that we got second hand.

So St. Anna is back on my icon shelf with the cracked glass.

Thankfully it did not shatter and there were no shards on the rug 

where it fell.

*

And so begins Week 2 of Lent.

Exhausted but hopeful of Christ's mercy...