DVD #9 is on the Resurrection.
Christ brought back or "resuscitated" (was what Fr. David called these cases in the Scriptures) three people to life. (My own thought that came to mind was 'wasn't it interesting it was 3 people, and he rose on the 3rd day lol That special number 3!) But those people all had to die again, of course.
Are these foreshadows of His resurrection? What was to come?
"When we read the accounts of the Gospels, we can understand why there is no attempt to make them like the evening news broadcast, you know. No attempt to watch every last detail. I, for one, am very thankful for that. So the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the transformation of His flesh and blood existence in time, in history to a level of life for which there is as great a difference you could say, as if there is an immeasurable difference between the life of the human being as we know it, as we live in this world, and the life of non human creatures...so also there is that great and immeasurable difference between the life of Jesus Christ in the flesh before His crucifixion and the new life to which He is raised in the resurrection.
It is a life over which death, corruption, time, space have no more power that a whole new way of life has been revealed. It has been revealed in Him and in Him for everyone else. So the central profession of faith in the resurrection of Christ, when we read in the Acts of the Apostles of the sermon of St. Peter on Pentacost, 'men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attended to you by God with mighty works and signs and wonders which God did to Him in your midst you yourself know, this Jesus delivered up according to a definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. But God raised Him up having loosed the pains of death because it was not possible for Him to be held by it.'
It is not custom for icons to show Him coming forth from the grave because it doesn't show or record how He did so in the Gospels.
"Christ eating with His Apostles at the Last Supper was not, as some people imagine it to be, was not a passover meal. There was no lamb in there. It was a whole day before the lambs were sacrificed in the temple. It was eaten a day early with Jesus by His Apostles on purpose because He knew that on the next day on Friday, while the passover lambs were being sacrificed and, you see, that's all very significant because they began the sacrifice of the lambs in the temple on the 9th hour - at 3:00 in the afternoon - and that is precisely the time when all 4 Gospels tell us that the Lord died on the Cross. So that is to reveal this as the true passover sacrifice, not the sacrifice that reactualized the deliverance of Israel, but the sacrifice that released not just Israel, but the whole human race, from death and sin and brought them not into the promised land of this world, but unto the heavenly Kingdom of God. So that's why the early Church (the EOC) followed/continued to do what it's always done. That's why the Holy Eucharist in the Orthodox Church uses leaven bread, not unleaven bread, because the Last supper that Jesus had with His disciples was a whole day before passover when the unleavened bread would not have been used a day early, so we keep the tradition of the early Church by using the leaven bread.
Anyhow, Jesus is crucified and died on Friday. He is in the state of death in the tomb with the body and in hades with the soul as we say in the hymns of the Church on Saturday on the feast of the passover. And then on the first day of the week, on Sunday, He is risen and sometimes that's a confusion to people because when they hear the expression "on the third day," they don't understand how if Jesus was crucified on Friday and rises on Sunday - how three days are involved there, but the way of accounting time in the biblical counting and among the middle eastern people, and even still today, goes like this: If I were to say on the third day from now I'm going on a trip, you count in the three days both today and the day I'm going on the trip, you see, so the third day from today in that way of counting--today is Tuesday--would be Thursday--count Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So, when we say the Lord is risen on the third day, it's counting the day that He dies on Friday, and Saturday, and Sunday being the third day. Also, sometimes people ask questions like "Well, the Gospels record the words of Jesus saying just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, and yet we know the same Gospels make it very clear to us that the Lord is not three days and three nights in the state of death in the heart of the earth. That the Lord is in the state of death Friday afternoon until whenever it was between Saturday and Sunday, that He rose. So again, that's never been a problem trying to make some sort of claim that the Lord was really crucified on Wednesday or something. There are these fringe groups and cult groups like the the World Wide Church of God who make claims like that, but there is simply no verification to be found for such an idea in 2000 years of Christian history. It is clear that the Lord is crucified on the preparation day of the passover, which is before the Sabbath because the Gospel tells us they rested according to the Commandments, so it is Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
The Lord rises on the first day of the week, which the Christians from then describe as the Lord's day, and they also like to describe it--it's one of the favorite Christian vocabulary words--as the 8th day--the great love of the Church to speak of Sunday as the 8th day--why the 8th day? Well, because in the week that you measure according to this world's time, there are only 7 days, but in the resurrection is given the beginning of the age to come, that is completely beyond the time of this world.
I was wondering if the MODS should make this a sticky so people can see it when they come in and go to it.
