From the Armadio degli Argenti of Blessed John of Fiesole, OP (Fra Angelico), c. 1450
‘… he came, cherub-mounted, borne up on the wings of the wind….‘
‘… His Sepulchre Shall Be Glorious.’
April 7, 2023 by at 3:25 pm
From the Armadio degli Argenti of Blessed John of Fiesole, OP (Fra Angelico), c. 1450
‘In that day the root of Jesse, who stands for an ensign of the people, him the Gentiles shall beseech, and his sepulchre shall be glorious.’
‘Let Him Not Lose What He So Dear Hath Bought.’
April 7, 2023 by at 3:00 pm
From Cell 25 of the Convent of San Marco, by Blessed John of Fiesole, OP (Fra Angelico), 15th Century
Think on the very làmentable pain,
Think on the piteous cross of woeful Christ,
Think on His blood beat out at every vein,
Think on His precious heart carvèd in twain,
Think how for thy redemption all was wrought:
Let Him not lose what He so dear hath bought.
–Pico della Mirandola (translated by St Thomas More)
‘… Wounded for Our Iniquities …’
April 7, 2023 by at 12:00 pm
From the Armadio degli Argenti of Blessed John of Fiesole, OP (Fra Angelico), c. 1450
‘… he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins….‘
‘… He Shall Be Led as a Sheep to the Slaughter …’
April 7, 2023 by at 10:00 am
From the Armadio degli Argenti of Blessed John of Fiesole, OP (Fra Angelico), c. 1450
‘He was offered because it was his own will, and he opened not his mouth: he shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and shall be dumb as a lamb before his shearer, and he shall not open his mouth.’
Pending
July 12, 2014 by at 9:45 pm
12 July 2012
A slipper hangs from tiny toes: Our Lord –
A little child – has seen His cross and spear,
Has sped to her whose heart will know a sword.
She holds Him close. Her gaze is dark and clear.
They hang in golden silence…. Twitterings
Of careless birds bring day. Dawn fades the dark.
The clockwork clicks. The hammer hangs, then rings.
The planet turns, and swings along its arc….
The morning sun glides silent up the sky.
The moments pass beneath its sightless ray.
Some few hang solid like an ambered fly;
The rest, like Polaroids, fade fast away….
The noonday sun hangs high. Three things are all:
The point, the palm, the hammer poised to fall.
From the YouTube Music Video Archives: ‘Ave Maria’ by Giulio Caccini Vladimir Vavilov
May 31, 2014 by at 4:00 am
You’ve heard this lovely aria before, haven’t you? I’d probably heard it first in the movie Donnie Darko. Haunting, though it hadn’t really haunted me as much as it might have. (That could be said of the movie as well as the music.)
But one morning this week, during my commute, the DJ for the local classical station gave this piece a memorable introduction: This ‘Ave Maria’, though commonly attributed to the 16th-/17th-century Italian composer Giulio Caccini, is almost certainly a hoax. In fact (said the DJ), this piece was most likely composed around 1970 by a Russian who rejoiced in the name of Vladimir Vavilov… and who had a habit of publishing his original compositions as ‘Anonymous’, or under false attributions. Vavilov — a lutenist as well as a composer — evidently recorded his ‘Ave Maria’ for a Soviet state-owned record label, presenting it as some anonymous Baroque composition he had uncovered. After his death, it somehow picked up the Caccini attribution, and has been widely recorded since. (The fact that the aria’s only text consists of the two words ‘ave Maria’, rather than the full text of the prayer, seems to be a sign that it was written somewhere outside the spatio-temporal bounds of Latin Christendom — bogus as a three-rouble note.)
But the DJ, before he spun the record, gave this particular screw still another turn: He suggested that Vavilov might have borrowed the melody for his ‘anonymous’ aria from Jerome Kern’s 1939 standard ‘All the Things You Are’ — making this ‘Ave Maria’ not just a hoax, but a joke.
Credible? Judge for yourself:
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
- Text by Archangel Gabriel
- addressing mother of God Incarnate
- Latin
- translation from divinely-inspired Greek text of Saint Luke
- presumably translated from Gabriel’s Aramaic (Hebrew?) original
- translation from divinely-inspired Greek text of Saint Luke
- Composed and recorded by Russian lutenist circa 1970
- Published as anonymous work
- Distributed by Soviet state-owned record company
- Communist
- godless
- Communist
- Wrongly attributed to Baroque-era Italian composer
- Likely adapted from 1939 Broadway show-tune
Annuntiatio Domini
March 25, 2014 by at 12:00 am
Cell 3 of the Convent of San Marco
by Blessed John of Fiesole, OP (Fra Angelico), 15th Century
From the Office of Readings in today’s Liturgy of the Hours, an excerpt from a letter by Pope St Leo the Great:
To pay the debt of our sinful state, a nature that was incapable of suffering was joined to one that could suffer. Thus, in keeping with the healing that we needed, one and the same mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, was able to die in one nature, and unable to die in the other. [… ]
One and the same person – this must be said over and over again – is truly the Son of God and truly the son of man.
Happy, Happy, Happy Trinity Sunday
May 26, 2013 by at 12:00 pm
‘… called Emmanuel.’
April 8, 2013 by at 3:30 am
From the Armadio degli Argenti of Blessed John of Fiesole, OP (Fra Angelico), c. 1450
‘Sign you ask none, but sign the Lord will give you. Maid shall be with child, and shall bear a son, that shall be called Emmanuel.‘
‘I am the rod to their lightning.’
December 17, 2012 by at 4:00 am
In the December 2012 issue of Poetry Magazine, Mary Karr takes a crack at writing a poem in the voice of Our Lady.
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