Ornament - Ladder
Materials - Sticks, hot glue, raffia and twine
Read Genesis 28:10-17
28th Sunday After Pentecost, Third Antiphon
Rejoice, O portal of God, through which the incarnate Creator passed without breaking thy seal!
Rejoice, thou light cloud that bore Christ, the divine Rain! Rejoice, ladder and throne of heaven!
Rejoice, honored mountain of God, fruitful and unquarried!
The Royal Hours of the Nativity, Prophet Jeremiah (Baruch 3:35-4:4)
This is our God, and there shall none other be accounted of in comparison of Him He hath found out
all the way of knowledge, and hath given it unto Jacob His servant, and to Israel His beloved.
Afterward did He show himself upon earth, and conversed with men. This is the book of the
commandments of God, and the law that endureth forever: all they that keep it shall come to life; but
such as leave it shall die. Turn thee, O Jacob, and take hold of it: walk in the presence of the light
thereof, that thou mayest be illuminated. Give not thine honor to another, nor the things that are
profitable unto thee to a strange nation. O Israel, happy are we: for things that are pleasing to God are
made known unto us.
(From the website of The Orthodox Church in America, www.oca.org)
At the Vespers [of the Nativity of the Theotokos], the three Old Testamental readings are
"mariological" in their New Testamental interpretation. Thus, Jacob's Ladder which unites heaven and
earth and the place which is named "the house of God" and the "gate of heaven" (Genesis 28:10-17) are
taken, to indicate the union of God with men which is realized most fully and perfectly-both spiritually
and physically-in Mary the Theotokos, Bearer of God. So also the vision of the temple with the "door
'to the East" perpetually closed and filled with the "glory of the Lord" symbolizes Mary, called in the
hymns of the feast "the living temple of God filled with the divine Glory." (Ezekiel 43:27-44:4) Mary is
also identified with the "house" which the Divine Wisdom has built for himself according to the
reading from Proverbs 9:1-11.
(Psalm 83/84 The Psalter Ninth Hour)
Blessed is the man whose help is from Thee; he hath made ascents in his heart, in the vale of weeping,
in the place which he hath appointed. Yea, for the lawgiver will give blessings; they shall go from
strength to strength, the God of gods shall be seen in Sion. O Lord of hosts, hearken unto my prayer;
give ear, O God of Jacob.
From the Prologue from Ohrid, by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich, December 14
For I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved (Genesis 32:30).
The God of Abraham and Isaac is also the God of Jacob the faithful, the obedient, the merciful and the
meek. The meek beholder of God, Jacob, can be called the "one who saw God.'' For in truth he was
meek, and he saw God and spoke with God, and he saw the angels of God and the ladder from earth to
heaven. By his meekness he defeated Laban his father-in-law, and Esau his brother; by his meekness he
made peace between his wives, Leah and Rachel; for his meekness he was even dear to pharaoh.
Jacob's meekness is a prefiguration of the meekness of Christ. Blessed are the meek, said the Lord, for
they shall inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5). These words were also realized in Jacob. He inherited the
land of his fathers; his descendants were delivered from Egypt and inherited the Promised Land;
through Christ the Lord, his descendant according to the flesh, he inherited the whole earth, that is, the
Church of God which spread over the entire world. I have seen God face to face. Jacob saw God in the
form of man but not as true man. And even this vision was only a prefiguring of the true Incarnation of
God as man. And my life is preserved. His soul was preserved from fear and from every
unrighteousness. If Jacob was preserved by only seeing a vision of God, how much easier is it for us to
be preserved who know God as true man and as the God-man.
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