Pilgrimage

Theotokos icon painted by St Luke

by

 

Today is the feast day of St Luke in the Western churches. At the small Syrian Orthodox Church of St Mark in the Armenian quarter of Jerusalem is this icon of Mary, said to have be painted by St Luke himself. If you visit, ask sister Justina to sing the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic – her native language and our Lord’s – a direct link, down the centuries.

The Collect from the Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty God, who calledst Luke, the Physician, whose praise is in the Gospel, to be an Evangelist, the Physician of the Soul: May it please thee that, by the wholesome medicines of the doctrine delivered by him, all the diseases of our souls may be healed; through the merits of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

Holy Cross

by

Today is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross which commemorates the day in 335 A.D. when Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre was dedicated. Built on the site where St Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, is said to have found the true cross.  Holy Cross is seen as a feast and symbol of Christ’s triumph over death.

Crosses in the courtyard outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which I visited in March 2011:

Courtyard of Holy Sepulchre
Crosses in Jerusalem

 

The Collect for Holy Cross day in the Church of England:

Almighty God,
who in the passion of your blessed Son
made an instrument of painful death
to be for us the means of life and peace:
grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ
that we may gladly suffer for his sake;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.