Category Archives: icons

You did unite Earth to Heaven.

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ascension _voznesenievnov

When You did fulfill the dispensation for our sake,
And unite earth to Heaven:
You did ascend in glory, O Christ our God,
Not being parted from those who love You,
But remaining with them and crying:
I am with you and no one will be against you.
–Hymn for the Feast of Ascension

It’s something I can’t grasp, with my very earthly mind, how Christ the God-Man is now in Heaven. As we heard in the homily this morning, when Christ ascends, “He takes created flesh to a place Creation has never gone before.” I understand that Heaven is not a place on a map somewhere, but just what or where is it?

In any case, if the heavenly realm is open to the Son of Man, it’s open to us. We were exhorted not to forget that it’s what our life is really about, this journey to the Kingdom. Or put another way, the Kingdom is in us already, if only as a seed. “Divine energies are working in us,” as our priest explained.

And getting back to historical events, Jesus had told his disciples that He would send the Holy Spirit, the Comforter. Ten days from now we will celebrate that event on The Feast of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit will help us on our heavenly journey!

The angels had something more to tell after Christ was received into a cloud, “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into Heaven? This same Jesus, Who is taken up from you into Heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into Heaven.”

I do understand this much: God is with us, and good things are up ahead. All the blessings of this feast to you all!

Myrrhbearers

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As St. Joanna was one of the women who bravely went to Christ’s tomb early in the morning to anoint his body, she is commemorated today as one of the Myrrhbearers — which makes today my name day!  I wrote a little more about this here; today I wanted to show an icon that was a gift from my husband, along with the eggs that daughter-in-law Joy knitted for me.

The angel came to the myrrhbearing women at the tomb and said, “Myrrh is meet for the dead; but Christ has shown Himself to be a stranger to corruption, so proclaim: The Lord is risen! Granting the world great mercy.”  — from the troparian of the day

myrrhbearers 14

Mystical Supper

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The Orthodox Church remembers so many events on Holy Thursday that it takes five mostly-long passages to comprise the Gospel reading. These events are: the washing of the disciples’ feet, the institution of the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper, the agony in the garden of Gethsemane, and the betrayal of Christ by Judas.

Icon Reader shares a 15th-century Russian icon that includes all of these events:

holythursday_15c_rus

This site explains at length all the commemorations of the day, including the Last Supper, which is our experience also in the Divine Liturgy as the article testifies: “In the Eucharist the Church remembers and enacts sacramentally the redemptive event of the Cross and participates in its saving grace.”

On his blog this week Fr. Stephen explores Judas’s “banal and prosaic” reason for betraying Jesus: the love of money. He writes: “Money is the anti-Eucharist. Like the Eucharist, it is a way of life.”

“Christ gives His disciples the Eucharist on the ‘night in which He was betrayed.’ … Christ loves the Father – and all that the Father has given to Him. The bread that Christ gives is life, and life more abundantly…God give us life!

mysticalsupper