This Lent, I Have Decided

The Purpose of Life

And We Will Make It Well

It Is Finished

Can You Watch One Hour.?

Painting: Nikolaj Nikolajewitsch, Christus betritt mit seinen Jüngern den Garten Gethsemane

When Anything Displeasing Happens...

But Ourselves

What Path We Must Take

No Other Road

Painting used: Briton Rivière, The Temptation in the Wilderness

May We Not Ignore

My preference for realistic religious art, I have realized, goes beyond just personal taste.  Some years ago, I wrote the following … 

It is easy to accept shining, sterile depictions of Jesus’s passion.  It’s easy to prefer silvered crosses with a victorious Christ upon them, for these do not ask much of us.  ‘Take up your cross and follow Me’ can be distant words then, words from which we are insulated by a safe coating of bronze.

His body did not shine that day, so long ago.  He hung from a very real wood cross, He hung bruised and sweating and blood-stained.  His knees were scraped, His face contorted with pain.  Smells were of blood and dust and just-hammered metal.  There was no upbeat music that day; there were no songbooks, no guitars.  There were just the moans of people dying and friends watching them die.  There were crowd-sounds, possibly a joke or two, the occasional slap of a whip striking the ground.  Soldiers held back mourners and yelled out commands and probably thought about what they would do after work.

Overhead, a few clouds gathered.  Rain came then, soaking onlookers and washing rivulets of blood into the ground.  Three men hung dying that day, on crosses not made of silver.  They were pierced through with nails not coated with gold.  Three men writhed in pain, they sweated and bled, two of them were heard praying, and all of them died.

And how grateful we can be that the scene has been removed from us, safely tucked away in time, safely burnished.  How safe it is to hear the words ‘take up your cross and follow Me’ when looking at a cross made of silver, when meditating on a resurrected, stylized and sterile Jesus.  Yes, He was resurrected and yes He is crowned.  Yes, He lives today; He is not dead any longer.  Yes, it is appropriate to celebrate His rising, for risen is how He lives now among us.

But no, it is not appropriate to totally forget the price He paid for our redemption.  No, it is not appropriate to ignore the love poured out on us at Calvary, nor to ignore at what cost we answer the call to ‘come, follow Me…'

It is easy to count the cost when that cost is only Mass on Sunday and no meat on Good Friday.  It’s easy to embrace crosses of silver.  It is easy to forget to repent, to forget the love of so great a Lover, to forget to reform my life and allow my own selfish will to be crucified today...

This is a repost from The Cloistered Heart © 2012 Nancy Shuman.


Painting: James Tissot 

Will I Walk With Him?

'O Christians, it is time to defend your King
and to accompany Him in such great solitude.'

St. Teresa of Avila

Painting: James Tissot 

With Works of Piety

'Rise now,
O handmaid of the Lord,
and go in the procession
of the daughters of Zion
to see your true king....
Accompany the Lord
of heaven and earth,
sitting on the back of the colt,
follow Him with
olive branches and palms,
with works of piety
and triumphant virtues.'

St. Bonaventure 








 





Painting: James Tissot

To Cling to What is True

'Christian abnegation
is not composed
completely of renunciation; 
it leads to something
tangible and definite.
We abandon what is false 
to cling to what is true. 
We empty our hearts
of earthly things 
to make room for eternal. 
We lose our selves 
to gain Christ.'

Father William Doyle

















Painting: Jules-Joseph Lefebvre

Him, Whom We Have Pierced

Painting: The Avignon Pieta, 1460

40 Day Road

'O Jesus, Who were obedient unto death, You would not have one

that loves You well take any other road than that which You Yourself took.'  

St.  Teresa of Avila

Painting: David Friedrich Caspar

Beneath Your Cross, I Adore You

 

'O Christ Jesus, prostrate beneath Your cross, I adore You.  Power of God, You show Yourself overwhelmed with weakness so as to teach us humility and confound our pride.  O High Priest, full of holiness, Who passed through our trials in order to be like unto us and to have compassion on our infirmities, do not leave me to myself, for I am but frailty.  May Your power dwell in me, so that I may not fall into evil.'           C.  Marmion

Obediently Accepting

"He was known to be of human estate, 

and it was thus that He humbled Himself,

obediently accepting even death, death on a cross."  

Philippians 2:8

It is Time

'O Christians, it is time to defend your King

and to accompany Him in such great solitude.'

St. Teresa of Avila


Painting:  James Tissot, My Soul is Sorrowful Unto Death

But Obedience

'I don't demand mortification from you, but obedience.  

By obedience, you give great glory to Me 

and gain merit for yourself.'  Jesus to St. Faustina

____________________________________________________________________________________

Painting:  William Adolphe Bourguereau, The Haymaker

Holy Words Are Pearls

'We will not spend Lent well unless we are determined to make the best of it.

  Let us, therefore, spend this Lent as if it were our last, and we will make it well...

Holy words are pearls; they are ships of infinite mercy - the true ocean of the east.'

St. Francis de Sales

Painting: William Margetson, The Sea Hath its Pearls, Google Art Project