From The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Antiochian Village is just up the road a bit)
On a wall behind the altar of an Orthodox camp chapel near Ligonier is a larger-than-life icon of Jesus freeing souls from Hades.
The 8-foot Jesus, robed in white, stands on his broken cross. Its shards also represent the shattered gates of Hades, which in Orthodox theology is where the righteous and unrighteous await judgment. Grasping the hands of Adam and Eve, he raises them from a dark pit.
The icon illustrates an ancient understanding of Jesus' resurrection as the gift he offers to all humanity on a renewed Earth. While all Orthodox churches are filled with icons, the Resurrection icon in the camp chapel at Antiochian Village retreat and conference center is one of the largest in Pennsylvania and possibly the United States.
"An icon is theology in color," said Mother Alexandra, founder of the Convent of St. Thekla, which also is on the grounds of Antiochian Village in Bolivar, Westmoreland County. The center, which also houses a museum and bookstore, is a ministry of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.
Today Eastern and Western Christians all celebrate Easter. Most years the Orthodox celebrate after Catholics and Protestants because they use a different formula to calculate the date of Easter and also observe it according to the Julian calendar. The Orthodox and Catholic churches were originally one, but split in 1054. Orthodoxy is dominant in the east, Catholicism in the west. Protestants split from Catholicism centuries later.
Read more:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10094/1047845-455.stm#ixzz0k7zPzGz7
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