When I saw the iconography shown above – at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church’s chapel in Seattle – I was drawn to it. Then, drawn back to it again and again. This iconographpy depicts Anastasis: Jesus descending into Hades to retrieve Adam and Eve between his own death on Friday and his resurrection on Sunday. Compelling. I am still coming back to this imagery.
This imagery gets to the heart of Christianity. Christianity is about God’s love for us, God’s grace in our lives, our surrender to allow God to transform us into the people we are meant to be. W are meant to be God’s daughters and sons who live in God’s love and who love one another.
I had already encountered God’s loving grace – starting at an Irish-language mass in 2016 (that story is told here) – and have continued moving through a faith transformation… including when I came across the Anastasis image above. We humans surrendering to God’s transformative grace is redemptive – when we experience this, we then want to grow in faith. As a result of such experience, I am now learning to talk about God’s transformative nature (I’m such an introvert that I’m having to take workshops to “come out of my shell” and more outwardly demonstrate what I’m learning and experiencing).
More recently, I came upon French artist James Tissot’s depiction of Jesus praying alone at night on a mountaintop:
This image of the illuminated Christ is also compelling. Jesus is shown illumined on a mountain top in prayer, illumined in his relationship with God the father. Further, God transforms us through Christ. God the father transforms us – transforms our faith experience in prayer. This is an image through which I yearn to continue experiencing God’s transformative grace. How can one not want to grow in faith – connect with God’s love for us – when seeing this depiction of Christ illumined in prayer? ”It is in him that we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
Prayer gets to the heart of having a faith in we have a relationship with God and allow God to turn us into the people God wants us to be. I wrote more on prayer in my recent monks-in-training post.
Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages (and a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them (thank you!). You can also support this blog by clicking here when you are going to shop on Amazon (that lands A Parish Catechist a commission on Amazon sales).
