The Shepherd, May 2008
4. THE HOLY RESURRECTION of Our Savior, as a mystery, was invisible and outside the laws and processes of other resurrections, since through the Resurrection and in the Resurrection we do not have a simple resuscitation of the Master’s Body and its egress from the sepulchre, as, for example, in the case of St. Lazarus (a miracle perceptible to all and the [eventual] return of his body to corruption), but its transition, as being henceforth “one with God” [omoqeoV] and, in an ineffable mystery, to uncreated reality; that is, we have an ontological transformation:
“O Lord, while the grave was sealed by the lawless ones, Thou camest forth from the sepulchre even as Thou wast born of the Theotokos. Thy bodiless Angels knew not how Thou becamest incarnate; the soldiers who guarded Thee did not perceive when Thou didst arise. For both these things were kept sealed for those who inquired, but the wonders were made manifest unto those who worship the mystery with faith. Do Thou grant unto us who praise it exultation and great mercy.”29
• Since the Resurrection of Christ was a victory that abolished death,
“[i]t...constituted an ontological change and henceforth the spiritual body of glory could reappear in this world without being restrained by its laws.”30
5. ST NIKODEMOS the Hagiorite, in his commentary on the “prefiguration” and “foreshadowing” of the saving Passion and “supramundane Resurrection” of Our Lord, makes the following very pertinent observations:
“Why does [St. Cosmas] the Melodist call the Resurrection of the Lord ‘supramundane’? Because it is above all comprehension and knowledge of the people of this world, to say nothing of the Angels; for it transcends all of the bounds and laws of nature, and is a work and accomplishment of God’s omnipotence.”31
• A lucid commentary on this Patristic viewpoint is provided by Leonid Ouspensky, who writes, inter alia, as follows:
“The unfathomable character of this event for the human mind, and the consequent impossibility of depicting it, is the reason for the absence, in traditional Orthodox iconography, [of any depiction] of the actual moment of the Resurrection.”32
6. SINCE, therefore, the Resurrection of Our Lord is unquestionably “supramundane,” as being “above all comprehension and knowledge,” we may likewise characterize as “supramundane” the “co-resurrection” [sun-anastasiV], that is, the “universal redemption” of the human race, which was accomplished through the Resurrection of Our Savior, the God-Man. However, as a universal, cosmic, and supramundane event, it cannot be circumscribed and captured photographically in a definite, temporal instant.
• As Professor Constantine Kalokyris so very aptly writes, since “the Orthodox [Iconographic] type” of the Resurrection expresses simultaneously these two “supramundane” events,
“[it] is not merely, as in the Latin type (exit from the grave), a visible declaration of that very instant in time only, when the event of rising from the grave took place”; “for the manifestation of the event of the Resurrection in the visible world, that is, for its more empirical representation, Orthodox iconography has the type of the Myrrh-bearers by the tomb, where the exastraptwn aggeloV (shining angel) sits (o liqoV).”33
7. LET US reiterate that the so-called Byzantine type, as the authentically Orthodox dogmatic Icon of the Resurrection, has always borne the inscription, “The Resurrection,” and not, “The Descent into Hades,” in order to represent symbolically the twofold “supramundane” event and to render perceptible the Resurrectional Apolytikion:
Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death,
and upon those in the tombs bestowing life.
• In this case, we have an identity of Icon, hymnography, and theology.
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