Just when you think that finding another old master painting is impossible, a treasure is discovered.  In this case it is the great Renaissance man’s work, Salvator Mundi – meaning “Savior of the world.”  When I was a teen I used to clip all the art columns out of TIME Magazine and study them carefully.  By far, the old masters, and da Vinci especially, were my favorites.  This is why I am excited by this discovery.

The National Gallery of Art in London will be displaying Salvator Mundi later this year.  Numerous experts have authenticated it through comparison of paint colors, brush strokes, and other criteria.  Although other paintings similar to this one were done by da Vinci’s students, the art world is convinced that this was the original done by the master himself.

Nick Pisa of the Mail Online from the UK writes this:

Da Vinci painted the picture 500 years ago following a commission from Louis XII of France in 1506 and he finished it seven years later.

The image of Christ giving his blessing to the world was a popular subject in French and Flemish art and the half-length pose is typical of the Renaissance era.

During its long history the painting also ended up in the possession of Charles I of England and following his execution it went to Charles II and it remained in London for 400 years.

It eventually ended up in the collection of Sir Francis Cook and in 1958 it was sold by Sotheby’s for just £45 and attributed to a student of Da Vinci called Giovanni Boltraffio.

A source close to the panel added: ‘On the open market today the painting would easily fetch at least £120 million – it’s unique and nothing like this has emerged for decades.”

At this time in history when nation after nation is repudiating Christianity and the words of Jesus are twisted for various ideological purposes, up pops His image which attracts enormous attention simply because a great Renaissance painter fulfilled an important commission 500 years ago.  No, world, Jesus Christ is with us and will always be with us until we join Him at the end of time.  He is the Savior of the World. You may squelch His teachings, but you cannot erase Him from the memory or sight of all faithful Christians.

Read more interesting details about this painting: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2010309/Leonardo-Da-Vinci-Is-long-lost-120m-Salvator-Mundi-painting-authentic.html#ixzz1SUbWU3BK

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V. Praised be Jesus Christ!

R. Now and forever. Amen.

(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)

Descent of the Holy Spirit, 1365-68, Andrea da Firenze (active 1343-1377, Firenze), Fresco Cappella Spagnuolo, Santa Maria Novella, Florence

After the Ascension of Christ into heaven, the apostles and Mother Mary went back to the upper room where Jesus had celebrated the Passover before His passion and death.  They began the first novena of the Catholic Church – praying for the coming of the Holy Spirit.

By this time they had all seen Jesus die, met with Him after His resurrection, and witnessed Him rising to heaven.  Everything He had promised them He had delivered.  This time now was a time of faith and anticipation – a time to prepare themselves for the great mission Jesus had laid before them; time to prepare themselves to receive the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, who would help them live that mission.

Today many Catholics emulate the apostles and Mary by making a novena to the Holy Spirit in the nine days before Pentecost. Here is a beautiful consecration prayer that you can pray as part of any novena:

On my knees before the great multitude of heavenly witnesses, I offer myself soul and body to Thee, Eternal Spirit of God. I adore the brightness of Thy purity, the unerring keenness of Thy justice, and the might of Thy love. Thou art the Strength and Light of my soul. In Thee I live and move and am. I desire never to grieve Thee by unfaithfulness to grace, and I pray with all my heart to be kept from the smallest sin against Thee. Mercifully guard my every thought and grant that I may always watch for Thy light and listen to Thy voice and follow Thy gracious inspirations. I cling to Thee and give myself to Thee and ask Thee by Thy compassion to watch over me in my weakness. Holding the pierced Feet of Jesus and looking at His Five Wounds and trusting in His Precious Blood and adoring His opened Side and stricken Heart, I implore Thee Adorable Spirit, helper of my infirmity, so to keep me in Thy grace that I may never sin against Thee. Give me grace O Holy Ghost, Spirit of the Father and the Son, to say to Thee always and everywhere, Speak Lord, for Thy servant heareth. Amen.

Another prayer you might find useful is this one, asking God to fill you with seven gifts of the Holy Spirit:

O Lord Jesus Christ, Who, before ascending into heaven, didst promise to send the Holy Ghost to finish Thy work in the souls of Thy Apostles and Disciples, deign to grant the same Holy Spirit to me, that He may perfect in my soul the work of Thy grace and Thy love.
Grant me the Spirit of Wisdom that I may despise the perishable things of this world and aspire only after the things that are eternal,
the Spirit of Understanding to enlighten my mind with the light of Thy divine truth,
the Spirit of Counsel that I may ever choose the surest way of pleasing God and gaining Heaven,
the Spirit of Fortitude that I may bear my cross with Thee, and that I may overcome with courage all the obstacles that oppose my salvation,
the Spirit of Knowledge that I may know God and know myself and grow perfect in the science of the Saints,
the Spirit of Piety that I may find the service of God sweet and amiable,
the Spirit of Fear that I may be filled with a loving reverence towards God, and may dread in any way to displease Him. Mark me, dear Lord, with the sign of Thy true disciples and animate me in all things with Thy Spirit. Amen.

Just why the North American Bishops decided that forty days after Easter was unimportant and moved the great feast of the Ascension to Sunday, June 5, I don’t know. Most of the rest of the Catholic world celebrates it June 2.

I am convinced that the change is one more strike of the axe severing our sacred liturgy from its Biblical roots.  Forty days is forty days and it means something.  In the Bible something important always happened at the end of a time period of forty, whether days or years.  So for most of the Catholic world forty days after Easter really is, and always has been, Ascension Thursday.

This great feast commemorates Christ taking possession of the Kingdom of Heaven with the promise of His return to judge the living and the dead.  The introit strikes me as somewhat humorous in a way.  Perhaps it is because I can put myself in the shoes of the apostles and disciples so easily.  Acts 1:11 has angels telling the gawking apostles, “Ye men of Galilee, why wonder you, looking up to heaven?  He shall so come as you have seen Him going up into heaven.”

I can just see them staring into the heavens with their mouths agape as Jesus vanishes into the clouds.  This was truly wondrous, but sad, too, because they would never see Him again during their lifetime as He was with them on earth.  I can imagine them thinking, “What are we going to do without Him?”  At the same time, the joyful proof was right before their eyes that the kingdom of heaven belongs to all who believe in Jesus, our Head.  If the Head is the King of heaven, the Body, we, will follow and partake of the inheritance.  More proof of the faithfulness of our God.

The Ascension was both very joyful and full of hope, and at the same time, a little bitter for those who had walked along side Jesus on earth.

I love sacred art from the 12th to 16th centuries.  Please enjoy this lovely fresco by Giotto di Bodone and think of it when we celebrate the Mass of the Ascension Sunday, June 5.

The Ascension, 1304-06, Giotto di Bodone (b. 1267, Vespignano, d. 1337, Firenze), Fresco, Cappella Scrovegni (Arena Chapel), Padua

Our Lady of the Sign - The Star of Evangelization

May is Mary’s month and today I bring you an exquisite icon all of us Catholic bloggers can adopt as an image reflecting what we do in spreading the love of Christ to all.

In recent years I’ve really begun to appreciate icons.  Growing up I wasn’t exposed to them except for Our Lady of Perpetual Help.  Every Tuesday evening people would gather at the side altar of our parish church where her picture hung to pray a novena.  We children were taught to have a devotion to her in all our needs.

No one explained what an icon was and I thought they were strange images – so different from the beautiful Renaissance images of Our Lady and the lovely statue of Our Lady of Grace my parents gave me for First Communion.

At first I didn’t like icons at all.  But over the years I felt I was missing something about them and had no idea of their deep and ancient  symbolism.  So I set out to learn more, and doors to understanding our Eastern liturgies and the blessings of icons flew open.

Marek Czarnecki, owner of Seraphic Restorations and writer of the icon in today’s post says this about iconography:

Iconography is a fundamental liturgical art originating in the earliest days of the Christian Church. Developed, practiced and preserved primarily by the Eastern Rite, iconography provides authentic, meaningful and dignified images which exemplify the larger consciousness of the Christian Church. Icons carry a patrimony of both theology and art, conveying essential dogmatic and biographical information, embodying the presence of the holy ones depicted.

One who creates icons is called an “icon writer” and he must follow a prescribed set of rules or Canon.  Czarnecki lists these as:

• Proper compositional structure
• Proper development of a “schema” or design illustrating the historical likeness of the person depicted as well as expressing the truths realized by his or her life in symbols, without altering the integrity of the Canon.
• Proper development of the “schema” using traditionally prescribed colors.
• Use of natural and durable materials
• Development of harmonious, artistic immediacy and beauty without compromising symbolic depth.

If you have ever seen a video of icon writers, you will notice that they always make the sign of the cross before beginning and often fast ahead of time.  This is sacred work.

Our Lady of the Sign – the Star of Evangelization is an adaptation of the ancient Byzantine prototype, written to illustrate Pope John Paul II’s praise of Our Lady as the “star of evangelization”. I think it is the most beautiful icon of Our Lady I’ve ever seen and very fitting for our age when the Popes are repeatedly calling the laity to evangelize.  It was commissioned by Holy Spirit Friary, Franciscan University of Stuebenville OH.

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V.  Praised be Jesus Christ!

R.  Now and forever.  Amen.

(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)

Washing of the Feet, 1308-11, Buoninsegna (b. ca. 1255, Siena, d. 1319, Siena), Tempera on wood, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena

A significant part of the Holy Thursday liturgy is the washing of the feet.  We’ve all read the Bible verses describing this, but St. Thomas Aquinas has given us insights into the deep symbolism of Christ’s acts that are not obvious at first. In all my 65 years I’ve not heard a sermon that goes where St. Thomas takes us.

Something as mundane as washing dirty feet, Who does the washing, and the meaning behind it take us on a journey into the wonder of redemption.

Here is St. Thomas’s explanation from Meditations for Lent which I reviewed here.

After that, he putteth water into a basin, and began to wash the feet of the disciples, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded (John 13:5).

There are three things which this can be taken to symbolize.

1.  The pouring of the water into the basin is a symbol of the pouring out of His blood upon the earth. Since the blood of Jesus has a power of cleansing it may in a sense be called water.  The reason why water, as well as blood, came out of His side, was to show that this blood could wash away sin.

Again we might take the water as a figure of Christ’s Passion.  He putteth water into a basin, that is, by faith and devotion He stamped into the minds of faithful followers the memory of His passion. Remember my poverty, and transgression, the wormwood and the gall (Lam. 3:19).

2.  By the words and began to wash it is human imperfection that is symbolized.  For the Apostles, after their living with Christ, were certainly more perfect, and yet they needed to be washed; there were still stains upon them.  We are here made to understand that no matter what is the degree of any man’s perfection he still needs to be made more perfect still; He is still contracting uncleanness of some kind to some extent.  So in the Book of Proverbs we read, Who can say: My heart is clean, I am pure from sin (Prov. 20:9).

Nevertheless the Apostles and the just have this kind of uncleanness only in their feet.

There are however others who are infected, not only in their feet, but wholly and entirely.  Those who make their bed upon the soiling attractions of the world are made wholly unclean thereby. Those who wholly, that is to say, with their senses and with their wills, cleave to their desire of earthly things, these are wholly unclean.

But they who do not thus lie down, they who stand, that is, they who, in the mind and in desire are tending towards heavenly things, contract this uncleanness in their feet. Whoever stands must, necessarily, touch the earth at least with his feet.  And we, too, in this life, where we must, to maintain life, make use of earthly things, cannot but contract a certain uncleanness, at least as far as those desires and inclinations are concerned which begin in our senses.

Therefore Our Lord commanded His disciples to shake of the dust from their feet.  The text says, He began to wash, because this washing away on earth of the affection for earthly things is only a beginning.  It is only in the life to come that it will be really complete.

Thus by putting water into the basin, the pouring out of His blood is signified, and by His beginning to wash the feet of His disciples the washing away of our sins.

3.  There is symbolized finally Our Lord’s taking upon Him the punishment due to our sins.  Not only did He wash away our sins but He also took upon Himself the punishment that they had earned. For our pains and our penances would not suffice were they not founded in the merit and the power of the Passion of Christ.  And this is shown in His wiping the feet of the disciples with the linen towel, that is the towel which is His body.

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V.  Praised be Jesus Christ!

R.  Now and forever.  Amen.

(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)

Since I am spending time with St. Thomas Aquinas this Lent I rounded up a couple of paintings of him by Stefano di Giovanni ((b. 1394, Siena, d. 1450, Siena), also known as Sassetta, to share with readers.  Sacred art from the 12^th – 14^th centuries attracts me because, while not “realistic” as later art is, it’s simplicity and symbolism is easily accessible.

St. Thomas Inspired by the Dove of the Holy Ghost astonished me the first time I saw it a few years ago.  Painted in 1423, it clearly shows how the sacred liturgy was celebrated then – and the liturgy is my first love.  Seeing evidence from six centuries ago that the manner of celebrating the Extraordinary Form remains unchanged puts to rest many false claims made of this Mass, such as, “It’s only 500 years old”, “Pius V’s Mass”, etc.  Moreover, the saint kneeling reinforces that never is man so holy that he does not need to kneel before God.

Sassetta created this painting for the predella of the Altar of the Eucharist, known as the Arte della Lana Altarpiece and is his first known work.  It was commissioned by the woolmerchants’ (Arte della Lana) guild for the church of the Carmelite Order in Siena in 1423. The Carmelites most likely developed the schema for the various paintings in this project.  The altarpiece as a whole, was moveable yet elaborate, a gothic triptych that the guild used for its outdoor celebration on the feast of Corpus Christi and otherwise remained in its place in the chapel.

St. Thomas Aquinas is known for his devotion to the Holy Eucharist, for his many hours of prayer in front of the Blessed Sacrament.  Because of his clear theology and his Eucharistic-driven piety, he was asked by Pope Urban IV to write the entire liturgy for the feast of Corpus Christi – both Divine Office and Mass Propers.  Thus we have the link between the portrayal of St. Thomas as a subject and the purpose for which the altarpiece was commissioned.

This painting, then, shows St. Thomas deep in prayer in front of a marble altar in his monastery.  Above the altar are a series of panels, the center of which is a Madonna and Child.  Above that is God the Father surrounded by angels sending the Holy Spirit to the saint.  You can’t see it very well here because of the smallness of the image, but the Holy Spirit is painted on the door to the right of St. Thomas, with lines leading to the Father.

St. Thomas is rapt in prayer, oblivious to the monastery courtyard with fountain and the monastic library nearby which symbolizes his learning. The use of gold in the painting symbolizes heaven and holiness – the transcendent reality toward which we are all drawn.  A person kneeling at the predella before this painting would be inspired to have the same orientation towards God that St. Thomas had, the same sentiments of piety and love, the same desire to devote all his being to the Being who created us and sent His only Son to die for us.

I love Sassetta’s work because of the vivid colors, the use of flowing graceful lines, and the ability to convey deep things simply.  Although his later work became more decorative under Gothic influence, he kept the gift of transporting the viewer from earth to heaven without distraction.  This painting is tempura on wood and resides at the Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest.

If you want to learn more about Sassetta, visit Art in Tuscany.  If you would like to see a much larger image, visit The Web Gallery of Art and type in “St. Thomas Inspired by the Dove of the Holy Ghost” in the search box. (I can’t get a more direct link for you.) Then click on the painting.

Want to subscribe to posts by email? Visit the third box in the sidebar.

V.  Praised be Jesus Christ!

R.  Now and forever.  Amen.

(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)

As we officially enter Lent this week, most practicing Catholics are making lists of resolutions of things they will give up in the spirit of fasting.  But what about adding something? Carving out a few moments every day to ponder the mysteries of salvation?

This week I found a link to the Vatican’s virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel and was blown away by Michelangelo’s great work.  Interns from Villanova University assisted the Vatican in creating this tour, so kudos to them.

A click of the mouse takes you up close to every inch of the walls, floor and ceiling without craning your neck or getting dizzy – an exciting 360° view.  And you don’t have to get on a plane and fly to Rome – you can visit any time at no cost.

Having this Catholic world treasure to view stimulates my Lenten devotion, but I can also see this as a great opportunity for homeschoolers to teach both art and religion.  Click on the photo and you will be transported immediately to the Sistine.

Sistine Chapel

This link, http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/CSN/CSN_Main.html lets you access explanations of the paintings.

You can also find virtual tours of St. John Lateran and St. Paul outside the walls.

Want to subscribe to posts by email? Visit the third box in the sidebar.

V.  Praised be Jesus Christ!

R.  Now and forever.  Amen.

(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)

This is a close-up image with added special effects that I took of my brother’s Christmas tree a couple of years ago.  I did some tinkering to create a custom-made Christmas Card – just for you readers.

We are the ornaments hung lovingly on the Tree of Life by our heavenly Father, while Christ, the Light of the world, bathes us in His grace.  He brings joy and peace to all hearts who open themselves up to Him. No place is so dark that His light cannot penetrate. We are most beautiful in its rays.

This is what I pray for the whole world – to know Him, love Him, and serve Him now and for eternity.

Emmanuel is here.  Jesus is here. May He come again in glory soon. Merry Christmas and a very blessed New Year.

Magnificat Antiphon for the Second Sunday of Advent (Divine Office, Vespers):

Behold there shall come the Lord and King of the earth * and He shall take away our yoke of bondage.

This antiphon contains parts of the Rorate caeli desuper I covered yesterday.

*****

From my Advent reading, the book The Hidden Power of Kindness: A Practical Handbook for Souls Who Dare to Transform the World, One Deed at a Time by Father Lawrence Lovasik (1913-1986):

To do good to others in the hope that, in turn, our Lord will be good to you is a supernatural motive, even if it is self-centered. To do good to others with the consciousness that Christ asks it of you is less egoistic.  To do good to others because you are convinced that Christ will consider it as having been done to Him personally is a sign of pure love of God.  To do good to others because thereby you can please God, and you want to give Him the best you can, is perfect love of God.

Three Miracles of Zenobius, 1500-05, Sandro Botticelli (b. 1445, Firenze, d. 1510, Firenze), tempera on panel, Metropolitan Museum of New York

In front of an astonished crowd, St. Zenobius raises a young man already lying on his bier from the dead. He also saves a man who fell from his horse while transporting the relics of saints. The scene in the interior shows St. Zenobius healing his sick deacon. The latter gets up immediately in order to use the water St. Zenobius has blessed to bring a dead relative back to life. For enlargement, visit the Web Gallery of Art.

V.  Praised be Jesus Christ!

R.  Now and forever.  Amen.

(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)

Welcome to Sunday Snippets.  How about joining us at RAnn’s blog, This, That and the Other Thing, to read posts from other Catholic/Christian bloggers? Participating in the meme has been great for me this year because I’ve encountered many wonderful and talented people and I’m sure you will, too.

This week I wrote about one of my favorite saints on his feast day: St. Andrew, the Relationship Broker.

Another Catholic Blog I Like is an introduction to David’s Wheat for Paradise site.

Sabbath Moments and Praying the Psalms – Psalm 47 were two other posts.

This week was also a milestone for me because I went “live” with my new site, editing&proofing.com with a blog of tips for writers in addition to offering my services of editing and proofing.  If you know a writer who needs an editor, send them over – please!  No doubt I’ll have to do a little more tweaking on the appearance, but at least I’m not embarrassed to have others see it now.

V.  Praised be Jesus Christ!

R.  Now and forever.  Amen.

(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)

OK, now let’s really praise Him. Take a look at this striking video of time lapse photography by Tor Even Mathisen published here under the Creative Commons license. HT to APOD.

Flowing Auroras Over Norway

Patriots come in all sizes and shapes, in good health and infirmities, from all classes and occupations. What they have in common is love of country, a fine sense of justice, and resolute determination to prevail against tyranny.

November 12, 2010, God took to Himself a great Polish composer, Henryk Gorecki, who died of a lung infection in his home town of Katowice, located in beautiful Silesia of southern Poland. Gorecki had a long career as teacher, composer, and patriot, resisting the Communist government continuously over the years.

In 1975 Gorecki became Professor of Composition at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice where he became extremely aggravated at Communist interference with the academy.  He continually battled the Party, protecting the staff, students and the school itself from political pressures until he finally resigned in 1979 in protest over the government’s refusal to allow Pope John Paul II to visit Katowice.

This was not the end of his resistance, though, but the beginning of a new way of fighting the Communist Party. Gorecki founded the Catholic Intellectuals Club and remained a thorn in the side of the government through the 1980s while remaining an active but not prolific composer.

Although Gorecki began his career in the dissonant style of modernism, he, abandoned this approach to composition and began to turn out extraordinarily beautiful, ethereal works that sound like the soul straining for God. He, like Bela Bartok of Hungary, returned to his country’s folk roots for inspiration, and turned out one-of-a-kind compositions inspired by significant events or themes.

To me, the prevailing art, music, architecture, and literature of the western “intelligencia” of the 20th century expresses man’s hopeless self-centeredness and his subsequent disintegration in a falling away from a right relationship with God. As a devout Catholic, Gorecki did not remain a slave to the screeching dissonance and mad explosions of modern music that sound like a hellish and never-ending train wreck, but rather carved his own way into expressing beauty in sound. The harmony of a Christ-centered life produced works of passion and transcendent beauty that the Iron Curtain could not contain.

Westerners – and indeed the whole world – fell in love with Gorecki through his Third Symphony, composed in 1976. Also known as “The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs”, this three part work for orchestra and soprano links three themes of universal suffering.

Movement I’s libretto comes from a 15th century lament. Movement II’s libretto gives voice to a prayer invoking the protection of the Blessed Virgin, written on the wall of a Nazi prison cell in Zakopane by eighteen-year-old Helena Blazusiak, who was held there at the time.  Movement III’s libretto contains the words of a Polish folk song – the cry of a Silesian mother looking for her son who was killed in the Silesian uprising.

Gorecki never again composed in this style, leaving the symphony a unique jewel among many gems.  Perhaps he thought it was enough to give the frenetic world one hymn of mourning, a statement of grief, a pause in the disharmony of death, a stopping point for introspection that only music can provide.

I love Gorecki’s approach to his life’s work.  In a 1994 interview he said:

I do not choose my listeners. What I mean is, I never write for my listeners. I think about my audience, but I am not writing for them. I have something to tell them, but the audience must also put a certain effort into it. But I never wrote for an audience and never will write for because you have to give the listener something and he has to make an effort in order to understand certain things. If I were thinking of my audience and one likes this, one likes that, one likes another thing, I would never know what to write. Let every listener choose that which interests him. I have nothing against one person liking Mozart or Shostakovich or Leonard Bernstein, but doesn’t like Górecki. That’s fine with me. I, too, like certain things.

Gorecki’s Miserere, which he boldly composed for a large choir in response to police brutality against the Solidarity movement, is sung here by the 130 person Choir of the Silesian Philharmonic Orchestra. The visuals are paintings by artist Józef Stolorz, a fellow Silesian who also suffered under the Communist regime.

V.  Praised be Jesus Christ!

R.  Now and forever.  Amen.

(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)

Nativity, Lorenzo di Bicci (b 1373, Firenze, d. 1452, Firenze), Poplar, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne

Today is a significant feast day surrounding the doctrine of the Incarnation. In 1931, in commemoration of the 15th centenary of the Council of Ephesus, Pope Pius XI decreed that from that time forward a feast in the honor of the Motherhood of Mary would be celebrated on October eleventh throughout the entire Church.

Ephesus was Our Lady’s last known home, and her holy house is visited by throngs of Christians and Muslims every year. It was fitting that in 431 the bishops of the entire Church met in the Church of Mary, the Mother of God, to assert the truth that in His Person, Jesus Christ is true God and true man.

Why did the bishops need to hold this council?

Because the Patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorius, appointed by Emperor Theodosius II, was preaching that the title, Theotokos, which had been applied to Mary since the very early Church, should not be used. His false teaching, called the Nestorian heresy, asserted that Christ was a mere man, but united to God.  According to him, Jesus of Nazareth and the Word of God were two distinct persons.

The logical corollary to this was that Mary was only the mother of the human person, Christ.

This attack on the Personhood of Christ was also, then, an attack on the person and dignity God gave the Blessed Mother. Moreover, we can see that this dual person idea would have lead to all sorts of other problems, not the least of which would be the question, when Jesus is quoted in the Bible, is it Jesus, the man, or Jesus, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity? Many questions would be raised, then, about the weight and truth of His words.

During these times the Church was battling the heresies of Arianism, Apollinarianism, Pelagianism, Monophysitism, and Ebionitism among others. Pope Celestine ordered St. Cyril of Alexandria, a doctor of the Church, to draw up a form for Nestorius’s recantation of his errors. With the help of an Egyptian council he formulated a set of twelve anathematisms which simply epitomize the errors he had pointed out in his five books “Against Nestorius”. Unfortunately, Nestorius wouldn’t retract his mistakes and answered St. Cyril’s twelve anathemas with twelve contra-anathemas.

For the sake of the Faith this situation could not be allowed to continue, so the Pope called the council of Ephesus where the bishops declared the true teaching of the Church as we find it in the Athanasian Creed:

This is true faith, to believe and confess that Our Lord Jesus Christ is God and man.  Although at the same time God and man, yet He is one and the same Person.

It follows logically from this, that Mary, in becoming the human mother of the Person of Christ is the Mother of God.

Unfortunately because of his bullheadedness, Nestorius was the cause of the Nestorian Schism, one of the splits that occurred in the Church at this time, the effects we still find today in the Assyrian Church of the East.

Pius XI in his 1931 decree commended to the whole Church Mary and the Holy Family of Nazareth as models of the dignity and holiness of chaste wedlock, and as patterns of the holy education of youth.

At the right is a detail from the above image.  On Our Lady’s shoulder is a star, the ancient symbol of her as Theotokos, “God-bearer”, the Mother of God. We find it in many icons from ancient times up to the present, and frequently in paintings up to the 1500s.

V.  Praised be Jesus Christ!

R.  Now and forever.  Amen.

(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)

For centuries, Catholics have used inspirational art in the form of holy cards to deepen our prayer life.  I’ve got a couple of blogs that have holy card images I like very much.

This first blog no longer posts entries, but I’m glad the blogger has left it up:

Holy Cards for Your Inspiration

The following site has many antique holy cards you might enjoy:

Holy Card Heaven

Are there other holy card sites you know of that I should add to this list?

V.  Praised be Jesus Christ!

R.  Now and forever.  Amen.

(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)

Today I harvested the last of the asparagus beans and tore out the remaining four plants. The old body was very sore and tired after what would be for many people an easy job.  So tonight I decided to escape to Japan for a spell and found this video at YouTube.

The music is a particularly beautiful arrangement of “Sakura”, the well-known Japanese folk melody, played with koto and a typical Japanese rhythm.  Sakura means cherry blossom.

Photographer Sreejith went to Japan in the fall and photographed Japanese maples (“momiji”) and other trees.  Blending his photos of the countryside with the Sakura arrangement treats both eyes and ears.  Excellent synergy.  In Japan maple trees are a symbol of peace, which is exactly how I felt looking at this.

God created many beautiful places in this world and for me, the Japanese countryside is right up at the top.  Take a break from the frenetic pace of life and escape with me to Japan.

V.  Praised be Jesus Christ!

R.  Now and forever.  Amen.

(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)

In the past week or so I’ve been looking at blogs that are new(er) to me, accessing them from the comment section on blogs I visit fairly often.  I’ve found a couple I’d like to recommend to my readers who also may like to visit, especially if you are into art, poetry, creative writing, or photography.  So here they are:

Moonflowers and A Trail of Flowers both by Kindred Spirit.

Moments of Mine by Wanda.

For the adventures of Father Ignatius visit Victor at Time for Reflections.

I hope you enjoy these blogs as much as I do.

V.  Praised be Jesus Christ!

R.  Now and forever.  Amen.

(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)