Friday, April 3, 2015

Good Friday


"And Adam, when he left the Garden where life was to have been eucharistic–an offering of the world in thanksgiving to God–Adam led the whole world, as it were, into darkness. In one of the beautiful pieces of Byzantine hymnology Adam is pictured sitting outside, facing Paradise, weeping. It is the figure of man himself."

-For the Life of the World, by Alexander Schmemann


"If Christ had died only a bodily death, it would have been ineffectual. No–it was expedient at the same time for him to undergo the severity of God's vengeance, to appease his wrath and satisfy his just judgment. For this reason, he must also grapple hand to hand with the armies of hell and the dread of everlasting death."

-The Institutes of the Christian Religion, by John Calvin