Byzantine Catholic Mission
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Holy Resurrection Byzantine Catholic Mission |
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O ye incorporeal angels who stand before the throne of God, luminous with the brilliance thereof and everlastingly shining with radiance. As secondary luminaries, entreat Christ, that He grant unto our souls peace and great mercy. O immortal messengers of the truly incorruptible Life, ye most blessed ones who received life from the first Life, ye have become holy beholders of the eternal Wisdom, full of light, and reflecting lamps shown forth as is meet. O ye archangels and angels, principalities, thrones, dominions, six-winged seraphim, and divine, many-eyed cherubim, instruments of wisdom, virtues and powers most divine. Pray ye to Christ, that He grant our souls peace and great mercy. Archives:
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HOLY RESURRECTION BYZANTINE CATHOLIC MISSION
GLORY TO JESUS CHRIST! GLORY FOREVER!
DIVINE LITURGY BEGINS AT 4 P.M. EVERY SUNDAY
February 29, 2004 — Sunday of Orthodoxy
Divine Liturgy Intention: If you would like the Divine Liturgy offered for a loved one, deceased or living, please give your offering to Father O’Connell and obtain a Liturgy intention card from William Gogar. Please write down the intention so it can be printed in the bulletin.
Our Offerings
Special Liturgical Service on the Second All Souls Saturday
We will pray the Panichida, a memorial service for our deceased brothers and sisters, at noon on Saturday,
March 6, at Oak Ridge Memorial Cemetery. Please join us as we commemorate and pray for the faithful departed. Call Ed
Klages at 865-xxx-xxxx for details.
We Need Your Help
Holy Resurrection needs volunteers to help staff the CROSS (Christians Reaching Out Serving Seymour) office in Seymour. Hours
are 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays, 10 a.m. to noon on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Holy Family
volunteers work Thursday mornings. Call Donna Scripa, Holy Resurrection CROSS representative, at
865-xxx-xxxx, or Jay Craft, Holy Family CROSS representative, at
xxx-xxxx, for details.
Icons: Images of Glory
Icons play an important role in the spiritual life of Byzantine Christians, Catholic and Orthodox. An icon is not merely a
picture of Christ or a saint, nor a religious decoration, but an expression of the most fundamental realities of our faith.
Icons make present the heavenly reality they depict.
— God Truly with Us
The first reality of faith icons express is that the Word of God truly and completely became one of us in Jesus Christ. He
was not simply manlike: He was truly human, like us in all things except sin. Icons of Him proclaim the truth of His humanity
while also stressing His divinity. As St. John of Damascus noted, “Of old, God, the incorporeal and
uncircumscribed, was not depicted at all. But now that God has appeared in the flesh, I make an image of the God who can be
seen.” This is why icons are not symbolic designs but realistic images of the One who is truly one of us.
— We Shall Be Changed
Scripture promises us the Lord “will give a new form to this lowly body of ours and remake it according to the pattern
of His glorified body” (Phil 3:21). The second reality icons point to is the glorified body of the new
creation.
Icons are realistic images, but they do not depict the flesh of our fallen human nature. Instead, they depict bodies glorified
and filled with the Holy Spirit. Sanctity is possible, icons proclaim, and sanctity will fill our bodies with the light of
God. This is why the iconographer sets aside the realism of a photograph. Photographs reproduce only the physical reality of
this world. Icons suggest spiritual beauty, transfiguration, and deification. Furthermore, figures in icons are usually
heavily draped with clothing. Naturalistic art exposes the flesh and glorifies physical beauty. In icons, generally only the
face and the eyes — and through them the soul — are shown. In Byzantine icons, spiritual reality colors the
physical presentation, just as the body of Christ reflects divine glory in a physical way.
— Window to Heaven
The icon has nothing in common with the decorative art we have in our homes and offices. Icons call us to prayer, to an
encounter with the Lord they reveal. Therefore we pray before icons and fill our churches with them. We carry them in
procession and bow before them and even kiss them. In a Byzantine church, icons cover the walls and pull us out of
today’s mundane world and into the life of the world to come. We see the effect of the Holy Spirit, whom we receive in
the holy mysteries.
The most customary way to revere an icon is to make one or two bows, kiss the icon, and then make a final bow. Put your
candle in the sand and move away. In many places it is customary to kiss the feet of Christ, the hands of the Theotokos, and
the forehead of a saint.
A Special Intention:
For our Beloved Bishops and Continued Unity in the Faith
On this, the First Sunday of the Great Fast, we celebrate the oneness of the faith throughout the world. Let us remember in
our prayers today the hierarchs united in the faith and the churches under their pastoral care:
May God grant them all many years! Last updated: 7-Mar-2004 |
