Behold the Man, His Name is the Dawn (Zechariah 6:12) No. 1 | Orthodox Christian Art Poster

“And you will say to Him: behold the man, Dayspring is His name, and He shall rise up from below the horizon, and He shall build the house of the Lord.”

- Zechariah 6:12 (Septuagint)

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Everyone who exercises diligence with regard to virtue has in mind the future life. Its beginning is called “the eighth,” for it follows this perceptible time when the number seven is dissolved. Therefore the [psalmic] inscription “For the eighth” [Ps 6, Ps 11] advises us not to set our minds on this present age but to look to the eighth. When this passing, transient time comes to a close in which some things are born and others are destroyed, the need to be born will pass away; nothing will be destroyed because the expected resurrection will transform our human nature. The transitory nature of time will cease because it is no longer subject to the effects of birth and corruption. The present time of the seventh number which is subject to measurement will remain; the eighth will succeed it, the full [immeasurable] day of the age to come. Some prophets name the expected life [of the resurrection] “that great day” (Mal 4.5, Jer 30.7, Jl 2.11). The physical sun does not illumine that day but the true light, the son of righteousness (Mal 4.2) which prophecy calls “rising” (Zech 6.12). It will not be obscured by the sun’s setting. 

+ St. Gregory of Nyssa

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Thy Nativity, O Christ our God, has shone to the world the light of wisdom! For by it, those who worshiped the stars were taught by a star to adore Thee, the Sun of Righteousness and to know Thee, the Dawn from on high.

- Troparion of Nativity, Tone 4