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| Source: legacyicons.com |
The passage below is from Fr. Alexander Schmemann's book Of Water and the Spirit. The context of the passage is the Sacrament of Baptism, through which a human person enters intothe grace-filled life of the Church. Yet, it is equally applied to whenever we actually "bow down" before Christ, as when we venerate the Cross of the Lord, as on the current Feast of the Elevation which we are saying farewell to today. Again, the question: Just what are willing to "bow down" before?
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"Bowing down" is an immemorial and universal symbol of reverence, love and obedience ... And how truly noble truly human and genuinely free are those who still know what it meansto bow before the High and Holy, the True and the Beautiful; who know what reverence and respect are; who know that bowing down before God is the true condition of freedom anddignity. Indeed Christ is the one truly free man, because He was obedient to His Father to the end and did nothing but the Father's will. To join the Church always meant to enter intoChrist's obedience and to find in it the truly divine freedom of man.
Fr. Alexander Schmemann
