My encounter with the Icon of Extreme Humility continues. I purchased the icons I mentioned in yesterday's post, and this morning added them to my too-crowded bookshelf which functions as my "icon corner".
One description of this icon reads:
"Extreme Humility" is primarily an Icon of Christ following His Passion and Death on the Cross. The icon I have portrays Christ in death with the Cross behind Him and the Tomb in front of Him, with His major Wounds on His Hands and Side exposed, Head bowed and Eyes closed.
As St Paul writes, although Christ is God, He emptied Himself and took the form of a Servant, a Suffering Servant, Who characterizes perfect humility.
We often experience humility as an "accident" of life. Circumstances force us to feel humble as a kind of unavoidable aftermath or outcome of an event we undergo.
And yet Christ, God Incarnate, shows us the Divine way of humility by undergoing suffering, insults and torture at the hands of those Whom He Himself created.
This is what the Eastern Church celebrates in this icon.
As I venerated and thought on this icon and what it has to reveal to me of God, I couldn't help but be mindful of the passage in Ephesians 5:21ff on the structure and ministry of married life that God has ordained for the Christian home. Whatever one may say about the text concerning wives, my responsibility has to do with the text on husbands. I need to "mind my own business." "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church, and gave himself up for her . . . ." As I prayed with the icon this morning I couldn't help but note that this was my ministry in my home. This same sacrificial love, this same extreme zeal for the sanctification of my household, is my path as Anna's husband. It is the emptying of self, the carrying daily of my cross in imitation of and obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a pathway that does not lead merely to the cross of suffering, but through it to the repose of the tomb, and then, by God's grace and under his dynamic working, through the Resurrection. If only I was more faithful in this path of emptying!
According to the Church, marriage is not just for this life, but is for eternity. Marriage is an emptying of self for the sake of the holiness of the other. A process that does not end on one's death, but continues into the in-breaking Kingdom of God. "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." "Without holiness no one will see the Lord."
So much to consider and pray about. God have mercy on me a sinner.
Posted by Clifton at February 14, 2003 01:22 PM | TrackBack