https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=_d5rVs3a0eM
One of the secrets to kind of understanding why Christ has to be born in a cave is if you look at the manger. So, look at the manger. What does it look like? Sorry? Yes, that’s exactly what it looks like. And so, the manger is already a tomb. And so, this descent into the cave, this image of Christ being born in a cave is already showing us what the whole story is about. What the whole story is about, which is it is already this descent into death. And the descent into death appears, you know, we symbolize the imagery of the manger as a tomb, but the manger itself is already an image of that. This idea of descending down into animality, descending down into the place of animals, that is the state of the fall itself. When Adam and Eve fell in the garden, God gave them these garments of animal skins to cover them. And so, this idea of descending into the place of the animal is this descent into death. And the early Christians knew that very, very well. They would actually create images which would link all of those things together. A good example here in the, these are images taken from the catacombs. So, these are images taken from literally from the graves of Christians. And so, what do they represent in the space of death? They represent something which is akin to what we saw. That is, these three images, this is, can anybody guess what that image is of up there? Yeah, it’s Noah’s Ark. It’s a very strange Noah’s Ark. But that’s Noah’s Ark. You can tell because you see he’s got a bird and he’s got this giant box floating in water. Who can guess what this one is? Yes, Jonah. And then this one, you can read his name is written so it’s not that hard. So, there’s Daniel in the lion’s den. So, there are three images, three images from the Old Testament which help us see what it is that’s going on. This descent into death. This descent into a cave. This descent into the place of animals, into the animal existence you could say. Which is that existence of death. And so, the image of Christ, it’s, you know, and I talk about that and I feel like maybe I’m actually ruining Christmas for you. Because Christmas, you know, we celebrate, and it’s fine, we should celebrate Christmas. We should, but in our icon we have a reminder of something which is far more austere. Something which is far more serious than just this kind of celebration of the birth of a child. There are other images of Christ, other icons of Christ which happened underground you would say. And we’ve got two of them. One is this one, everybody know what this is? The baptism of Christ. And the other, I’ll show it later. The other is the Anastasis. Which is Christ descending into death. Those two images happened underground. And those two images are also images of Christ descending into death. So, you have this like repeated pattern from the nativity of Christ descending into death. And then the baptism of Christ and the Anastasis. Here in this version of the Anastasis, of the baptism, he’s actually standing on the doors of death. Just like in the icon of the resurrection. Yeah? I feel a little silly asking, but the underground baptism. Yeah. There’s a figure there in the bottom. The two strange disturbing figures? Yeah, it’s like a pig. I will tell you what they are. Let’s put them up and I’ll tell you what they are. These guys? Yeah. Okay. So that is the sea and the Jordan. It’s actually their representations of the waters. So there’s a Psalm in which it is said that the sea and the Jordan receded before the Lord. That they kind of made way for the Lord. And so this is a representation of the Jordan and the sea kind of making way for their Lord who’s coming down. But there’s something very interesting about this as well is that the way in which they’re represented, they’re represented as old gods. They’re like old river gods. These are Roman river gods and river nymphs and whatever. It’s all these kind of weird Roman gods. And so what happens is that not only are the seas and the rivers kind of making way for Christ, but the old gods are making way for Christ as well. And they’re kind of getting out of the way to make way for Christ. And you have this image. We talk about baptism. You go in to baptism and then you come out and you person and you leave something down in the waters. You leave the chaotic aspect of yourself or the aspect of yourself which was not, could not be brought in into union with Christ. You leave it down in the waters. And that’s in terms of civilization, it’s the same. We talk about how orthodoxy baptizes cultures, right? Orthodoxy went into Russia, baptized Russia, baptized Rome, baptized different cultures. But there are some aspects of that culture which got to stay in the waters. And so this is a kind of very elaborate way to show all these different things at the same time. Yep? Oh, so the axe refers to St. John the Baptist. St. John the Baptist when he’s preaching out in the desert, he says the axe, he talks about how people need to repent and need to be baptized. And he says the axe is at the foot of the tree. And he’s saying basically the judgment is coming. You need to repent because soon everything that doesn’t bear fruit is going to be cut off. So that’s what that represents. Well the snakes underneath the door have more to do with kind of these, you know in the baptism prayers, if you’ve heard the baptism prayers, we talk about these, they’re great, they’re my favorite prayers by the way, where it’s like we chase away the dragons that are in the water and we chase away the serpent that’s hiding at the bottom of the waters. And so this ancient idea of these chaotic beings, you know the Leviathan or sea monsters that hide in the waters, and they kind of represent all of this, all of these things that we exercise, all of these fringe elements of ourselves that need to be cleansed. And so that’s what that is. So he’s kind of pushing down the serpents. Yeah. The sea serpents.