https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=jvR-0eL16jU
And then, uh, is one of the most intense books in scripture, like an extra revelation. Probably one of the most intense. Oh, yeah. And it’s so diverse, too, because then the next section is just, whoa, prophecies of, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, this is bad, things going to happen. Watch out, watch out. It’s cautionary telling. But then it ends with, like, a verbal architecture of how the new temple is going to be built. So it’s like super practical stuff. You’re like, what the heck? This is the same book. That’s more than practical. That’s actually a cosmic vision, too. It follows the structure of revelation. It’s basically the final temple that he’s describing is really like a version of the church, but it’s also like a version of the final vision of St. John when he sees the heavenly city, but how it’s connected also to the vision of the altar. And because it’s if you read what happened in Revelation, it’s a liturgical text. It’s talking, it’s describing like a ritual that’s happening in heaven. And Ezekiel had a glimpse of that, you know. And so a lot of the symbolism of the of the early Christians end up being related to Ezekiel, which is something people don’t understand very much. You know, for example, the earliest churches were the opposite of our churches. Like the earliest churches in Rome had the altar in the west, and they would have the holy place in the west, whereas we have now all churches, all traditional churches have the only place in the east. So they had the holy place in the west because that’s the temple. In the temple, in scripture, the holy place is in the east. No, it’s in the west, sorry. So you can imagine like the glory of God coming from the east and settling in the west. So it’s like, you know, it’s like the west is like a seat, and then the east is like the source, and then they kind of connect together. And in scripture, it talks about this closed gate. Ezekiel talks about this sealed gate in the east, and how that is the gate that the Messiah is going to come through, is this sealed gate in the east. And so now think of when you look at an Orthodox church, what you see in the aps, you see the mother of God like this, and you see Christ coming through her center, and she’s the sealed gate. That’s why they have that. She’s the sealed gate in Ezekiel, and here comes the Messiah through the sealed gate. So the early Christians, St. Augustine talks about how the early Christians would be turning west, like in the temple, and then at some point when like, let’s say, this moment of communion and Eucharistic moment, they would turn west, they would turn east, I keep flipping it, sorry, they would turn east and look to the coming Christ, like look to the coming Christ who’s coming. And then finally, it ended up that the whole architecture ended up flipping, where it’s like, well, we’re always, we’re actually going to turn east all the time. This is part of the confusion in the Catholic Church of the whole idea of whether the priest looks at the people, or looks at, or looks towards the altar, or looks towards the aps. It’s because in the early Roman Church, the priest would be looking at the people, but the priest would always be facing east. The priest would be facing east, the people would be facing west, then at some point during this service, the people would turn east, and they would all be facing east. Then what it ended up being is that they said, no, let’s just always face east. So now the priest is facing east, and the people are facing east, so you end up looking at the back of the priest, but they’re always facing towards this glory which is coming. The glory is coming. And it’s manifesting itself on us, because we’re the ark now. It’s us. We’re the one waiting for the glory to come down upon us. And so it’s like we have to face east. Anyway, it’s part of symbolism. What do you mean by that? That we are the ark? Well, we are the body of Christ. We are the body of God. We are the temple. We are the new temple. And so we have the same pattern as the temple itself. And so it ends up actually creating this interesting transformation in the holy space of the Christian, which is that it’s not just like the seed of God which is waiting for the glory to come down upon it. It’s like it’s you. The glory comes down on you. It doesn’t just come down on the altar. You also receive that. You also participate in that transformation. If you read St. Maxx as a confessor, he talks about how an aspect of deification is the actual participation in communion. When you take communion and you participate in the liturgy, you are deified. Even if you don’t fully realize it and you don’t completely, let’s say you also need to have that transformation fully realized in you. But it’s a process that’s already happening as you’re participating in this pattern. Wow, man. It just seems like every single subtle movement that happens in a liturgical service is just imbued with meaning. Yeah. Well, yes. I would say that’s that. Sometimes people overdo it, but I would say that it’s obviously when things start to have meaning, sometimes there’s a kind of insanity which can also kind of settle in and everything. You start to get paranoid about every detail because you struggle to know what’s truly meaningful and what is secondary. Sometimes meaning gets attached to things which are a little secondary, but usually that process organically sorts itself out. People get obsessed with little details and then they kind of let them go after a while.