Categories: spiritual-writings, other-churches
Date: 28 April 2006 13:19:07
My dear friend Anthony, from San José (or near enough thereunto), California, sent me a link to a lively verse dialogue that is used in his Church, the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East, on the week after Easter. It takes the form of a dispute between the Cherub guarding Paradise and the Penitent Thief.
Click here to read the dialogue [the English text is about half-way down the page], as well as some background information on the text. I do hope I am able to hear this recited as part of the service one year: it is a wonderful exchange, with vivid imagery, clear Scriptural allusions, and meditations on the salvation and hope we have in Christ and His Triumph over death and sin throughout. As I mentioned in recent entry, I adore St Ephrem the Syrian's work, and I find similarity here: no doubt as this is also a Syriac work. I gain great pleasure, and also, I pray, great profit, in reading and meditating on such works. Poetry communicates to me in a deep way: thay may sound odd, but it is the only way I can express it. Thanks be to God for the translators who bring these works to a new audience.
Thief: "His sign is upon the Chariot above,
but look, His Cross is on Golgotha below,
and with His own blood He has written a new missive
permitting Adam to come back into the Garden"....
Thief: Resurrection has occurred for the race of humankind
that had been thrust out of their home.
You cherubim and angels, rejoice with us, [cf Luke 15:10]
for we have returned now to your city"....
Thanks be to You, at whose word
the thief entered into the Garden of Eden,
and there was good hope for Adam again
and he returned to the place from which he had gone out.