Dom Donald's Blog

Christ Mandylion Novgorod 1500

COMMENT:
Christ Mandylion Novgorod 1500. Icon rescued from rubbish tip. The icon may have from an outside Market. The image was scarred and evident the the candle wax was used in front of prayer. The effort is to restore the lovely Mandylion.   

TWO YEAR PATRISTIC VIGILS LECTIONARY

Ordinary Time Year 2 Weeks 1 – 17  

 

Friday 11 Zec. 1:1-2:4 St Gregory the Great, Hom. 2 in Ez. 1.5 W. S. 7

Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time Year 2

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON EZEKIEL

BY ST GREGORY THE GREAT

It is precisely because the vision of inward peace is made up of a community of saints as its citizens that the heavenly Jerusalem is built as a city. Even while, in this earthly life, its citizens are lashed by whips and subjected to oppression, its stones are being quarried every day.

It is also the city, namely, the holy Church, which is to reign in heaven but is still toiling on earth. It is to its citizens that Peter says: And you are being built up like living stones. Paul also says: You are God’s land, God’s building. Clearly the city already has its great building here on earth in the lives of the saints. In a building, of course, one stone supports another, since they are placed one on top of another, and one supporting another is itself supported by another. So in the same way, in the holy Church, every member both supports and is supported by the other. For neighbours give each other mutual support, so that the building of love may rise through them. Hence too Paul’s instruction to us: Bear each other’s burdens, and in that way you will fulfil the law of Christ; and he claims the virtue of this law, saying: It is love which fulfils the law.

For if I neglect to support you in the way you live, and you pay little attention to supporting me in mine, how will the building of love rise among us? He alone who supports the whole fabric of the holy Church supports us in our good ways and our faults as well. But in a building, as we have said, the supporting stone is itself supported. For just as I already support the ways of those whose behaviour in the matter of good works is still unformed, so I too am supported by those who have surpassed me in the fear of the Lord, and yet have supported me, so that I myself should learn to support through being supported. But they have also been supported by their predecessors.

However the stones placed at the top of the building to finish it off, though supported of course by others, have no one to support in turn. For those, too, who are born at the Church’s end, that is, at the end of the world, will certainly be supported by their prede­cessors, to dispose them to behave in a way that leads to good works; but when they have none to follow them who could profit by them, they have no more stones to support for the building of the faithful above them. So for the time being they are supported by us, and we are supported by others. However it is the founda­tion that carries the entire weight of the building, because our Redeemer alone supports the lives of all of us together. As Paul says of him: For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid, which is Christ Jesus. The foundation supports the stones and is not supported by the stones, because our Redeemer supports us in all our troubles, but in himself there was no evil demanding support.

St Gregory the Great, Hom. in Ez., 2.1.5 (CCL 142:210-212); Word in Season VII.

 

The Holy Mandylion (Napkin) of Christ (Not-made-by-hands)