As I heard the Scriptures proclaimed today I had an epiphany, seeing an Old Testament connection to this passage\u00a0which\u00a0I had not previously seen:<\/p>\n
And when [the priests]\u00a0go out into the outer court to the people, they shall put off the garments in which they have been ministering, and lay them in the holy chambers; and they shall put on other garments, lest they communicate holiness to the people with their garments<\/span><\/em> – Ezekiel 44:19<\/span><\/p>\n As you can see, in the Old Covenant the garments of the priests where to be kept away from the rest of Israel, but what a wonderful reversal\u00a0we have with the New Covenant! Jesus, “our Great High Priest”<\/span>,\u00a0goes about among His flock, freely available to the people, with His vestments bringing healing and holiness.<\/p>\n There’s a beautiful practice in the Eastern Churches which is inspired by today’s Gospel. I first saw it at my old Ruthenian parish, but I’m told that it’s more common in Melkite and Antiochian churches. As the priest passes along the aisles, you’ll occasionally see members of the congregation reach out and touch the priest’s vestments, made holy not by his own sanctity, but by virtue of the\u00a0office given to him by Christ through the Church.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m winding down for the evening, but I wanted to quickly share something from Divine Liturgy this morning. The Gospel today on the\u00a0Byzantine Calendar was the healing of the woman with a haemorrhage: \u00a0And there was a woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59894,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[37,3437,2969,1250,3436,835],"class_list":["post-59890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","tag-byzantine","tag-eastern-church","tag-featured","tag-hemorrhage","tag-vestements","tag-woman"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Vestments1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59890"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59949,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59890\/revisions\/59949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Vestments\"](\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Vestments.jpg\")
<\/p>\n