29 posts tagged “christ”
Today, Orthodox Sunday, is the 3rd anniversary of our being received into the Orthodox Church by Holy Chrismation and/or Baptism.
From Wikipedia, "The Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy is celebrated on the first Sunday of Great Lent. It is the celebration of the victory of the iconodules over the iconoclasts by the decision of the Seventh Ecumenical Council. Therefore, the service is to commemorate the restoration of icons for use in services and private devotional life of Christians.
Services often include the clergy or the faithful triumphantly processing around the church, holding icons of their patron or parish saints. In areas where multiple jurisdictions exist (such as the United States), Pan-Orthodox Vespers are also usually celebrated in the evening."
I'll repost the first icon I ever bonded with in memory of our son, Isaac.
George had to go back to work today, and the kids and I are back at school. Today was also trash day. Life is mostly work, isn't it.
Yesterday for Theophany and the Blessing of the Waters, I decided to vacuum the leaves off the bottom of the pool. Despite constant skimming of floating leaves, many sink to the bottom. I vacuumed them a couple of months ago and have been waiting for the trees to empty themselves before I did it again. A lot of water gets wasted in the process. I need to get a different net next time and see if one with more of a collection area will do better than my flat one so that I wont have to use the pump and tubes that are smaller than collections of acorns, sticks, decaying leaves and web worms. Thankfully George was available to help me this time as he had to keep disconnecting the hose to clear the clogs. Yesterday was also unseasonably warm or else it would have been a miserable job.
I haven't swam (swum?) in the pool for a couple of years as it's hard to get in and out of an above ground pool, but just seeing the blue circulating water out my window as well as messing with keeping it clean is relaxing and therapeutic. There is something special about water, and I'm glad the Orthodox celebrate Christ's making it that way.
Don, the eloquent story-teller, tagged me for to share my favorite Christmas memories in the circulating Meme. I'm going to cheat by using Youtube videos, but really, watching the movies and the shows depicted below have taken me to that warm, charmed, transcendent place better than about any real life memory I can think of. Not to say that watching movies isn't a real experience...
I especially liked Don's snow scene while driving alone in his car (but please read all four of his stories). I suppose that watching snow fall while alone takes me there too. When I first was rejoined with Andy Williams and the Williams Brothers Christmas album a few years ago, and listened to it alone in my tree-lit, but otherwise dark, living room, I was taken back to that place of my earliest memories of listening to it over and over. I can't share those songs because they are copied onto my CD, and besides I really want to stick with these scenes.
First, Linus sharing the true meaning of Christmas,
I love the debut of Irving Berlin's White Christmas in the movie, Holiday Inn. Please stick around for the second verse for the harmony and tinkling of the bells on the real candle-lit Christmas tree.
Judy Garland was never lovelier or heartfelt, except for Somewhere Over the Rainbow, than in this scene in Meet Me in St. Louis, where she sings Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
Merry Christmas! And God bless us every one.
I'll tag Matushka Elizabeth, her lovely daughter and her other lovely daughter and our friends Jo and Holly who have non-public blogs, my son and my other son and my other son, who have public blogs (that's 4 public ones so far), and the new blogger, Maxim.
I hope that some Christmas they come up with an Orthodox Nativity postage stamp.
When I first saw an Orthodox icon of Mary I was a bit put off by the way Jesus is portrayed. He isn't very babyish even though He's small. I later found out that this is to emphasize that He was still God, Creator of the universe even when He was an infant. I have appreciated the mutual tenderness between He and His Mother, though. Now when I see a Roman Catholic representation, Jesus seems too normal, as if He were any baby. He looks like He's holding a rattle in this one, though I bet the wand has other significance. And he looks kind of bored and distracted in Mary's lap. So it's interesting to me how my reactions have changed since becoming Orthodox.
Another thing that's different is how I respond to "religious art" across the board. I used to be so prejudiced against it. In my Protestant background I had been taught that halo's are inappropriate because we are not supposed to worship other people. I was also taught that pictorial representations of Jesus were wrong because supposedly people worshipped them as idols and besides they were inaccurate. This carried over to my view of how Bible characters were portrayed as well, with or without halo's. After learning about how Orthodox view icons, I no longer object to depictions, but I do see significance in how Christ and His Saints are portrayed.
Theology of icons
Christianity believed that the immaterial God took flesh in the form of Jesus Christ, making it possible to depict in human form the Son of God. It is on this basis that the old prescriptions against images were changed for the early Christians. Also, the concept of archetype was redefined by the early church fathers in order to better understand that when a person shows veneration toward an image, the intention is rather to honor the person depicted, not the substance of the icon. As St. Basil the Great says, "The honor shown the image passes over to the archetype." He also illustrates the concept by saying, "If I point to a statue of Caesar and ask you 'Who is that?', your answer would properly be, 'It is Caesar.' When you say such you do not mean that the stone itself is Caesar, but rather, the name and honor you ascribe to the statue passes over to the original, the archetype, Caesar himself." So it is with an Icon.
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, only flat images or bas relief images are used. The Greeks,
having a long, pagan tradition of statuary, found the sensual quality
of three dimensional representations did more to glorify the human
aspect of the flesh rather than the divine nature of the spirit and so
prohibitions were created against statuary. The Romans, on the other hand, did not adopt these prohibitions and so we still have statuary among the Roman Catholics
to this day. Because the Greeks rejected statuary, the Byzantine style
of iconography was developed in which figures were stylized in a manner
that emphasized their holiness rather than their humanity. Symbolism
allowed the icon to present highly complex material in a very simple
way, making it possible to educate even the illiterate in theology. The
interiors of Orthodox Churches are often completely covered in icons." (see this Wikipedia page for more info)
Today is effectively the beginning of the Orthodox Christian Nativity fast. Officially it begins tomorrow, but we fast on Wednesdays and Fridays too so yesterday was our last day to eat meat.
Let every heart prepare Him room.
(for more information about the Nativity or the other 11 Great Feasts of the Church, see this page on oca.org.
"He [Christ] was invisible and became visible: incomprehensible and made comprehensible: impassible and made passible: The Word, and made man: comsummating all things in Himself. That, as in things above the heavens and in the spiritual and invisible world the Word of God is supreme, so in the visible and physical realm He may have pre-eminence, taking to Himself the primacy and appointing Himself the head of the Church, that He may "draw all things to Himself" St. John 12:32 in due time. - St. Irenaeus of Lyons
Here not only is Christ's recapitulation taken to refer to His preeminence in Deity and humanity, but, since His divine nature is spiritual and invisible, it also includes "the spiritual and invisible world", the world of the angels and also of man's soul and mind. And by the same token for St. Irenaeus the fact that Christ's humanity is physical and part of the physical creation, all of "the physical realm" is also effected by His Incarnation. Thus the "one Christ Jesus our Lord" came "in fulfillment of God's comprehensive design and consummates all things in Himself." In other terms, as the Word Himself in conjunction with His everlasting Father created "all things visible and invisible", so His Incarnation effects all things visible and invisible."
From "The Disputation with Pyrrhus of our Father among the Saints Maximus the Confessor" by Joseph P. Farrell, D. Phil (Oxon).
His father was away working on the Panama canal when he was growing up, and he was sent off at a young age to live atop a grocery store where he worked. He ran away to Mt. Athos when he was only 12 wanting to emulate Saint John the Hut Dweller - a hermit monk. I wonder if his upbringing contributes to his saying,
"There are often orphan children at a school. It's a hard thing to be an orphan. A child who's deprived of its parents, especially at an early age, becomes unhappy in life. But if it acquires spiritual parents in Christ and our Holy Lady, it becomes a saint. Treat orphan children with love and understanding, but above all bring them into contact with Christ and the Church."
from Wounded By Love
By the hand of Tatiana Romanova-Grant, 2002, [Russian-born American]
