Resurrected Christ Crucifixes

[Waiting]

I used to avoid saying the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. It hurt too much to think of each pain Jesus had to endure. However, it finally dawned on me that Jesus wasn’t happy with this thinking. He wants us to know how important our salvation is to Him. He was willing to endure each torture inflicted on Him. It wasn’t easy for Him. Why should we try to lessen the pain for ourselves? How can we truly appreciate how much He loves us if we don’t meditate how how much He was willing to suffer to free us? I suspect my Guardian Angel set me straight on this point.

 

[MJford]

Well technically in the East it is his whole Passion, Death, and Resurrection that redeemed mankind, not only his Death. It is true that at the Death mankind had become perfected and the Church had taken its roots as Christ said it is consummated, but without the Resurrection then the Crucifixion would lose its purpose. Therefore from an Eastern perspective it is both his Resurrection and Death that gives humanity life, for instance the Paschal Hymn “By death, He conquered death, and to those in the tombs He granted life.” In this instance Death conquers Death, and Life through Death is ever present through His Resurrection.

Our Lord’s death defeated sin and His Resurrection gave us new life. I think St. Paul said that without the Resurrection then belief is in vain.

Peace
MFord

 

[Little_Boy_Lost]

Our Lord’s death defeated sin and His Resurrection gave us new life. I think St. Paul said that without the Resurrection then belief is in vain.

Peace
MFord

True, the Incarnation, Baptism, and Transfiguration are all in vain without the Resurrection.

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

I guess we have different perspectives. I think hiding from the pain that Christ endured doesn’t help us to unite with Him in his totality. He went through those things for us, each moment of pain He endured was pain meant for me. And that pain, though sad and awful and so sickening in so many ways, is the ultimate sign of love for us. To look away and not try to come to terms with it and “be there with Him” I like to think of it (my walking the Stations) is to just look at the outcome and not the journey. There is no Easter without Good Friday. Life is much more like the Stations than it is Easter. We endure pain through our entire lives.

Brother, I’ll share with you an experience of mine. When I first went into teaching, I was a YOUNG pup! I went to a school district about 20 miles from here. My first year was awesome, but my second one a nightmare as I got a new principal with an axe to grind. She was very open that she hated men (she had recently gone through a nasty divorce and took it out on all things male) and she fired every man at our campus, me being one of them. She played mind games with me. She told me she was re-hiring me and giving me tenure. So knowing I was rehired, I didn’t need to go to the local teacher hiring faire, right? After the faire was over, she asked me into her office and smiled and actually laughed as she told me “I change my mind. You’re terminated.”

She left cryptic mind-game notes in my box off and on. She interviewed my kids when I wasn’t around trying to get them to say something negative about me (none ever did), and gossiped about me to everyone who’d listen. She ostracized me and nobody on the staff would recognize I was alive for six straight months. I was persona non grata thanks to her.

It was the year from H E L L. No friends, ignored, you say “hi” and no one returns the favor. I was lied to, she admitted to watching me on yard duty from a storeroom window, timing my bathroom breaks, you name it. She was out to get me, had my number.

I felt blown away when she fired me. I’m a pretty tough 6’5" 240 lb. man. And I remember driving home crying my eyes out when she fired me like that, laughing at me, grinning at me. I was recently married and it was a huge blow to me in so many ways. My wife and I had put $$$$ down on buying our first home and now with me unemployed I had to pull out on that.

I went to the coast to a couple of Spanish missions. I felt a strong presence of Christ. I went to the Stations of the Cross and there I saw the human condition…

being rejected
being hated
being spurned
love and hope not reciprocated or wanted
courage
strength
falling and getting back up
one girl wiping your face when no one else would
not letting nakedness and humiliation conquer you
needing help from others
grabbing your Cross and not avoiding it
having faith that the end will bring hope

I prayed each station of the Cross that Lent in March and asked the Lord if I could share in the sufferings in a small way with him

It was a journey and I tried to be Simon with Him.

I adore the Stations, Little Boy Lost. I find them powerful, relevent, and to avoid them is to avoid the suffering He truly went through. Jesus calls us to embrace our Cross, not to just focus on the end game and transfigured life alone. We must enter into the darkness to come out into the light.

This is one of many reasons I am so Latin-minded. It was a powerful experience for me.

Just to let you know, I love the Stations of the Cross so much, I named my daughter Veronica…she has an icon of **Veronica **by her bedside. She loves her name at age 4 and she always makes the connection to the Stations. And she knows that her daddy hopes she will be just like Veronica and help the lowly when no one else will.

I wanted to name my youngest Simon but my wife wouldn’t go for it. We named him Caleb John (John stayed with the Blessed Virgin and took care of her, a part of the Stations in a way also).

The devotion is a memory of the passion. I did not like the focus on the imagery of pains, lashings, and sufferings that Christ endured as he walked to Golgotha. I am trying to obtain a copy from the passion from my friends though for this lent. I have not seen that movie since it came out in theaters years ago. Adding to my previous quote, I do think the Byzantine tradition emphasizes the Transfiguration more than the Latin tradition.

I recently went through a period of listnessness/doubt and my spiritual father suggested I read and meditate upon the Transfiguration in the gospels. So I did. I asked him what I should be looking for, and he said just to read it and meditate upon the mystery. So I did. I still have not found anything in the mystery itself to really help with some of my own doubts, but it did give me a greater appreciation for the event than I otherwise would have had. So I asked most of my Catholic friends who are Roman Catholic about the Transfiguration and most of them have never thought of it.

Perhaps the focus on the passion in Latin spirituality works for Roman Catholics. I think stations of the cross can help people acquire a spirit of genuine sorrow and joy for the Resurrection which they may not have had. But I cringed when I heard of a man who said the stations of the cross every day of his life since he survived a Uboat attack in World War II.

Maybe it’s fulfilling what Saint Silouan of the Mountain said “Keep your mind in hell, but do not despair.”.

= /

 

[patrick457]

I guess we have different perspectives. I think hiding from the pain that Christ endured doesn’t help us to unite with Him in his totality. He went through those things for us, each moment of pain He endured was pain meant for me. And that pain, though sad and awful and so sickening in so many ways, is the ultimate sign of love for us. To look away and not try to come to terms with it and “be there with Him” I like to think of it (my walking the Stations) is to just look at the outcome and not the journey. There is no Easter without Good Friday. Life is much more like the Stations than it is Easter. We endure pain through our entire lives.

Thanks for sharing that story.

Sorry if I derail the thread (further), but I wish here to mention another Filipino Lenten custom: that of the non-stop (by ‘non-stop’ I mean: even if takes a full twenty-four hours and some days! ) recitation of the Pasyon, a recounting of sacred history from Genesis to Judgment, but more specifically, the life and passion of our Lord (which forms the core of the Pasyon) in octosyllabic verse. These verses are interpersed with aral (“lessons”), a sort of mini-sermon/commentary/exhortation which emphasizes the fulfillment of conventional Christian duties and values, at irregular - they are placed rather awkwardly at some points: at times the aral have nothing to do with or have just a very faint relation with the event just recounted, not to mention that at a few points they tend to break the flow of the story! - intervals.

As soon as Holy Week hits, you can be certain that a few families will bring out all the statues and icons of the saints that they have and whip out their copies of the Pasyon (which, for many laypeople, serve as a Reader’s Digest version of the Bible) and perhaps start chanting things like: “Ang unang letra’y Asuncion*, ere nama’y Resurreccion: Ang Ikatlo’y Adoracion, el*e nama’y Lamentacion…” The interesting part is, when you open a standard copy of the Pasyon (I have one with me now; a PDF version is available online), you’ll never find those lyrics. The heading ARAL which appears at the beginning of every ‘lesson’ is often interpreted and broken down in many mystical ways (the above example is just one variant among many): here, they are taken as an acrostic for Asuncion, Resurreccion, Adoracion and Lamentacion.

As I’ve said, if the East has its Epitaphios and the Twelve Passion Gospels and whatnot, we have the Santo Entierro and the Pasyon. Sometimes in fact I wonder if Filipinos are actually Westernized Easterners at heart.

 

[Cecilianus]

Well, by this reasoning, some of the earliest icons would not be considered icons, because they don’t have any writing on them. Or are they exempt from this rule?

Take for example, these icons now at St. Catherine’s Monastery at Sinai: the famous icon of the Pantocrator, another (short-haired) Pantocrator, the Theotokos, St. Peter, and the Ascension. All of these date from the 6th century, and they do not have any writing.

I ran this by with the iconographer that had told me this, and he explained that these were originally surrounded by a wooden frame which had the writing on them. The frames are no longer in existence, but they are still considered icons - they originally had writing.

He also pointed out to me that the prototypes of the holy icons - the imprint of Christ’s face on the cloth sent to King Abgar, and the three (lost, dangit!) icons written by St. Luke, most likely did not have labels on them. But labeling or writing is part of the canons of iconography (something I can’t reference for you because they were handed down orally, and whatever written references to them that the Soviets could find were destroyed).

 

[Cecilianus]

I am guessing that the “Ascension” icon is not in its original frame then.

 

[Formosus]

To my understanding, the canons on iconography weren’t firmly put in place until after the Seventh Council. So it may be that before the seventh council, writing wasn’t a requirement for an icon.

I do not know much of the specifics for the canons of iconography, but an image does not need to have writing on it in order to be didactic.

 

[patrick457]

I ran this by with the iconographer that had told me this, and he explained that these were originally surrounded by a wooden frame which had the writing on them. The frames are no longer in existence, but they are still considered icons - they originally had writing.

Indeed this seems to be the case, - that inscriptions either identifying the saint/s depicted or dedicatory inscriptions giving the names of the donors or whatnot were written on a wooden frame attached to the panel, usually by nails. Although, most of the frames that were once attached to early icons are now either missing or badly damaged so we can’t see them anymore.

He also pointed out to me that the prototypes of the holy icons - the imprint of Christ’s face on the cloth sent to King Abgar, and the three (lost, dangit!) icons written by St. Luke, most likely did not have labels on them. But labeling or writing is part of the canons of iconography (something I can’t reference for you because they were handed down orally, and whatever written references to them that the Soviets could find were destroyed).

Reminds me. Just how many icons are there in the whole world which are attributed to St. Luke?

 

[Cecilianus]

Indeed this seems to be the case, - that inscriptions either identifying the saint/s depicted or dedicatory inscriptions giving the names of the donors or whatnot were written on a wooden frame attached to the panel, usually by nails. Although, most of the frames that were once attached to early icons are now either missing or badly damaged so we can’t see them anymore.

Reminds me. Just how many icons are there in the whole world which are attributed to St. Luke?

Three. All lost.