Description
Christ is the “Pantocrator” (from the Greek word for “Ruler of All”) and here appears as a young man on a 16th century fresco on the dome over the proskomede table at the Holy Monastery of Koutloumousiou on Mount Athos. The living Tradition in the Orthodox Church has preserved in both word and form the continuum of what has been passed down to us over all these generations since Christ revealed Himself to His Disciples and Apostles during His Life, and then afterwards. From the very first icon that He Himself made and sent to King Abgar of Edessa, we have a continuous history of what Christ really looked like, and we have kept this iconographic Tradition most carefully.
In the frescoes from Meteora in the same period, we see depicted Adam (in our F112 icon “Adam Naming the Animals”) who was also a son of God, with a very similar face. What the first Adam lacked in obedience and humility, the “second Adam” Christ brought to heal the wounds of man, and bring the fullness of Life to us by making us “partakers of the Divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4 ) so that by Divinization or Theosis, we too might become sons of God.