Monday, 21 April 2014

Octave of Easter 24 April 2014

Monday within the Octave of Easter 
MEDITATION     OF THE      DAY from Magnificat com
SAINT GREGORY PALAMAS
Easter Monday
The Resurrection of the Lord is the renewal of human nature, and the renewal, re-creation, and return to im­mortality of the first Adam who was swallowed up by death because of sin, and through death went back to the earth from which he was formed. In the beginning nobody saw Adam being made and brought to life, for no one existed yet at that time. However, once he had received the breath of life breathed into him by God (Gn 2:7), a woman was the first to see him, for Eve was the first human being after him. In the same way, no one saw the second Adam, that is the Lord, rising from the dead, since none of his disciples were present and the soldiers keeping the tomb had been shaken with fear and became like dead men. But after the Resurrection it was a woman who saw him first of all ....

There is something which the Evangelists tell us in a veiled way, but which I shall reveal to your charity. As was right and just, the Mother of God was the first person to receive from the Lord the Good News of the Resurrection, and she saw him risen and had the joy of his divine words before anyone else. She not only beheld him with her eyes and heard him with her ears, but was the first and only person to touch with her hands his most pure feet. If the Evangelists do not say all this openly it is because they do not want to put for­ward his Mother as a witness, lest they give unbelievers grounds for suspicion.

Saint Gregory Palamas (+1359) was a monk and Archbishop of Thessalonica.

Grcgory Palamas (SaintFrom The Homilies, Christopher Veniamln, Ed. and Tr. The Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist, Essex, UK. Published by Mount Thabor Publishing, 2009. www.thaborian.corn. Used with pemission.




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