LOOK:Serenade: A Christmas Fantasy by Joseph Stella
Joseph Stella (Italian American, 1877–1946), Serenade: A Christmas Fantasy (La Fontaine), 1937. Oil on canvas, 43 1/8 × 37 1/8 in. (109.5 × 94.3 cm). Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC.
Joseph Stella (1877–1946) [previously] was an Italian American painter who became an important figure in modern art. His Serenade: A Christmas Fantasy is not overtly religious, but it does incorporate a few elements traditionally associated with Christmastime—a starry night sky, a holly branch, an ox and ass, a dove—and has a mystical quality. In the center, a flower emerges from what appears to be a conch shell, its pistil and stamen glowing. The flower’s stem shoots up past an abstract, mobile-like object that could be shards of colorful glass or pieces of cut paper. It’s a visionary composition that is open to multiple readings.
Art historian Judith Zilczer comments on the painting in the exhibition catalog Joseph Stella: The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Collection (Smithsonian Institution, 1983):
Serenade: A Christmas Fantasy typifies Stella’s mature symbolist style. Framed by an arch, a fantastic tree form bisects the composition and serves as the central image of the painting. The colors of the iridescent prism surrounding the central axis recall the abstract geometric style of Stella’s Futurist canvases.
The meaning of Stella’s complex imagery remains elusive. The ox and ass in the upper right spandrel traditionally appear together in paintings of the Nativity. The image of the dove in the center of the lower border is the symbol of the Holy Ghost. These Christian symbols are consistent with the painting’s subtitle, A Christmas Fantasy. The painting is also known as The Fountain (La Fontaine). The treelike form in the center may represent an abstraction of a jet of water. The image of the fountain often served as an attribute of the Virgin Mary, who was regarded as the “fountain of living waters.” It is possible that in this canvas Stella has fused the image of the tree of life with the fountain as the symbol of the Virgin. The nightingale perched on the tendril [of the purple iris] in the lower left is the source of the serenade. (54)
I see in Serenade the promise of Advent—light emerging out of darkness, wondrous new life growing out of dormancy. There’s a coming fullness here, a blossoming. The chromatic spectrum refracted by the center object evokes a rainbow, the sign of God’s covenant with all living creatures in Genesis 9.
Oooh, I wonder Oooh, I wonder Oooh, I wonder What is to come out of this darkness
I’ve been moving, moving, moving, moving through the darkness Moving, moving, moving, moving through the darkness Moving, moving, moving, moving through the darkness I wonder when the light is cracking open
Oooh, I wonder Oooh, I am filled with wonder Oooh, I wonder What is to come out of this darkness
I thought this candle had long gone out I thought this candle had long gone out I thought that it had long gone out But today, today, today, today I can see There’s still a flickering, flickering
Oooh, I wonder Oooh, I wonder Oooh, I wonder What is to come out of this darkness
Burn, burn, burn, burning on the inside Burn, burn, burn, burning like a bright light Burn, burn, burn, burning on the inside This light’s still burning, burning bright
I thought this candle had long gone out I thought that it was long gone out I thought that this candle had long gone out But today, today, today, today I can see There’s more than a flickering
Oooh, I wonder Oooh, I am filled with wonder Oooh, I wonder What is to come out of this darkness
This song was written by MaMuse [previously], an acoustic folk duo who I’d say are “spiritual but not religious,” several years ago on the winter solstice. Watch a live video recording from January 2019 at the Chico Women’s Club in Chico, California, the two’s hometown.
Advent is sometimes mischaracterized as glum, but actually, joyfulness is a key aspect of the season. There’s a somberness, for sure, but it’s married with excitement for what’s coming.
I hope to capture this dual tone of Advent in my selection of art and music over the next twenty-four days. This is the first post in a daily series that will run to the end of Advent on December 24, and then for the duration of Christmas, from December 25 to January 6. Many of the songs in the series can be listened to on the Art & TheologyAdvent Playlist, Christmastide Playlist, and Epiphany Playlist on Spotify.
In the liturgical calendar, Advent-Christmas-Epiphany is known as the cycle of light. Many churches and families light candles around an Advent wreath, progressively more until Christmas, symbolizing the Light of the World getting nearer, dispelling more of the darkness.
May you be blessed this Advent season as you wonder and explore what is to come out of December’s darkness. May you discern with delight those places where “the light is cracking open,” where God is shining through.
This is the third installment of my annual “25 Poems for Christmas” series. Included too, on the front end, are poems for Advent, the four-week season of preparation, hope, and expectation leading up to Christmas.
1. “Advent (III)” by W. H. Auden, from For the Time Being: Voiced by the Chorus, who cry out from “a dreadful wood / Of conscious evil,” this is the third section of part 1 of Auden’s book-length Christmas poem in nine parts, For the Time Being—“the only direct treatment of sacred subjects I shall ever attempt,” he said. He wrote the poem in 1941–42. He had originally conceived it as the libretto of an oratorio that Benjamin Britten would write the music for, but the text turned out to be too complex, and Britten abandoned the project. The final two lines of this section set us up for the seemingly impossible feat of divine incarnation: “Nothing can save us that is possible: / We who must die demand a miracle.”
3. “O Orient Light” by James Ryman: Loosely influenced by the O Antiphons (a set of short chants used in medieval Advent liturgies), this Middle English lyric is by the fifteenth-century Franciscan friar James Ryman of Canterbury; it’s one of 166 sacred poems he published in a 1492 collection. Each stanza consists of one rhyme repeated six times, and the Latin refrain translates to “O Christ, king of the nations, / O life of the living.” The fourth stanza is a standout, connecting the salvation wrought by Christ to the healing properties of plants: “O Jesse root, most sweet and sote, / In rind and root most full of bote, / To us be bote, bound hand and foot, / O vita viventium.”
Source: Cambridge University Library, MS Ee. 1.12; compiled in The Early English Carols, ed. Richard Leighton Greene, 2nd ed., revised and enlarged (The Clarendon Press, 1977). Public Domain.
Henk Helmantel (Dutch, 1945–), Nieuw Leven II (New Life II), 1999 (after the 1972 original that was stolen). Oil on canvas, 27 × 24 cm.
4.“Merger Poem”by Judy Chicago: “Merger Poem” is an aspiration that artist Judy Chicago wrote to accompany her 1979 monumental artwork The Dinner Party, a celebration of the richness of women’s heritage, expressed as place settings around a table, that is housed at the Brooklyn Museum. Her vision in the poem is not theistic, at least not explicitly so, but she uses the language of “Eden,” and her descriptions evoke passages from Isaiah about a future harmony, a merging of heaven and earth, in which justice and equity are achieved at last—not to mention the strong eschatological tones that feasting has in Christianity. Each line begins with “And then,” cumulatively generating a longing in the reader for “then” to arrive.
5.“truth”by Gwendolyn Brooks: “And if sun comes / How shall we greet him?” the speaker asks at the opening of this poem. The sun here represents truth, revelation, illumination, which we may seek with weeping and prayer but which can be dreadful when it actually comes. It’s often more comfortable to stay asleep in the dark than to confront the stark brightness of day. But oh, what we miss when we do! Gwendolyn Brooks uses the pronoun “him” for the sun, and it’s easy to read the poem Christologically: you can read it in the sense of any of Christ’s three comings—as a baby in Bethlehem, in personal, inner ways (he reveals himself, and seeks entrance, to human hearts), or as a king and judge at the end of time. Did you catch the reference to Revelation 3:20?
Source: Annie Allen (Harper & Row, 1949); compiled in Blacks (Third World Press, 1987)
P. Solomon Raj (Indian, 1921–2019), Waiting for My Lord, batik, published in Living Flame and Springing Fountain (ISPCK, 1993)
6. “Advent” by Mary Jo Salter: In this poem a mother and daughter are building a gingerbread house when a wintry gust tears a shutter on their actual house off its hinges, the shock of the thud causing, inside, a gingerbread wall to split. I think “house,” here, could be a metaphor for a faith structure; a house of belief. Shutters are doing a lot of work in the text: one falls off in a storm, and the daughter’s Advent calendar consists of twenty-five shutters, one opened each day until Christmas to reveal a Bible verse or narrative scene.
I’m not quite sure how to interpret the poem overall, but it seems to be addressing themes of (in)stability, brokenness and repair, the desire to believe versus the impulse to shut out belief, openness (“The house cannot be closed”), (dis)enchantment, the mother-child bond, and safety and danger (the Christmas story, like faith itself, characterized by both). I can’t decide if the “blank” in the final tercet sounds hopeful or bleak: does it connote possibility or lack? And is the mother suggesting in the final line (a repurposing of the final line from stanza 15) that what’s most real to her is not Mary and the baby Jesus but herself and her own child, right there in that moment?—or is she finding a point of kinship with Mother Mary in the love she feels for her offspring?
7. “Nativity”by Li-Young Lee: “What is the world?” asks a little boy in the darkness; and again as an adult. A poem of spiritual questing, Li-Young Lee’s “Nativity” deals with existential questions, ending with a tercet that evokes Isaac Watts’s famous carol line “Let every heart prepare him room.” Within us we must make a manger, a “safe place,” to receive the wild God.
8.“Nazareth” by Drew Jackson: Ancient Nazareth, where Jesus grew up, was an insignificant village that many believed no good could come out of (see John 1:46). This poem by public theologian Drew Jackson accentuates Jesus’s origins there, his identity as a “southsider” (Nazareth is in southern Galilee). Today some urban neighborhoods on the “South Side” are disparaged, their residents dismissed as poor and lacking education and potential. God chose to incarnate in a rural neighborhood with a similar reputation, not simply dropping in and then leaving but, as the second person of the Trinity, being formed and nurtured in that environment. “Nazareth” is from Jackson’s debut poetry collection, in which he works his way through the first eight chapters of Luke’s Gospel, drawing out the theme of liberation and making contemporary connections.
9. “The Visitation”by Calvin B. LeCompte Jr.: The poet imagines the fields that Mary passes on her way to her cousin Elizabeth’s house joining in the Magnificat, praising the Savior in her womb.
10.“My Darling” by Alexandra Barylski: Mary and Joseph are cuddling in bed as she reflects on the divine interventions that brought and kept them together. The poem references the legend, originating in the second-century Protoevangelium of James and repeated in the seventh-century Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, that Joseph was chosen to wed Mary when from his staff, submitted to the high priest along with those of other single men, there miraculously emerged a dove. Mary expresses appreciation for Joseph’s “visionary love,” patience, and courage in their relationship, his spiritual leadership and support.
Source: Reformed Journal, May 11, 2021
Nicholas Mynheer (British, 1958–), Annunciation, 2017. Oil on handmade paper, 20 × 20 cm.
11. “A Blessing for the New Baby” by Luci Shaw: The speakers of this poem give a lovely benediction over Christ—preincarnate and then embryonic in the first stanza, then out of the womb in the second and third.
12.“Love’s Delights” by Meister Eckhart, rendered by Jon M. Sweeney and Mark S. Burrows: The medieval German mystic Meister Eckhart didn’t write poetry, but many of his sermons have a poetic quality to them, so contemporary poet Mark S. Burrows and writer Jon M. Sweeney, working from an English translation of the Middle High German by Frank Tobin, reworked select excerpts into verse. Adapted from a sermon Meister Eckhart preached on Isaiah 60:1, this poem meditates on the downward movement of love that raises up.
13. “Word Become Flesh” by Seth Wieck: Pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing take a toll on the body. Voiced by Mary, this poem highlights the bodily realities of Jesus’s first coming—Mary swollen, bruised, cracked, and bleeding. She was wounded for our transgressions, in the sense that she endured kicks to the ribs, postpartum hemorrhoids, etc., in order to bring forth our Savior, and by these wounds, because they gave life to Jesus, our healing was made possible. The last sentence is a zinger. Mary gives (physical) birth to Jesus, and he gives (spiritual) birth to her.
14.“Prince of Peace” by Brian Volck: The poet provides his own introduction to this poem on his website: “Octavian Augustus, first emperor of Rome, was known by many titles, including Divi Filius (Son of God) and Princeps Pacis (Prince of Peace). An inscription in Asia Minor states that Augustus’s birth ‘has been for the whole world the beginning of the gospel (εύαγγέλιον) concerning him.’ How strange, then, to use the same names for a contemporaneous but obscure Palestinian Jew, whose understanding of peace, politics, and power was so radically different. How strange to have so long diluted the scandal of the gospel (good news) with accommodations to an Augustan vision of a peace built on the use or threat of lethal violence. Here’s a Christmas poem calling attention to that contrast in a conscious act against forgetting.”
15.“The Burning Babe” by Robert Southwell: Consisting of sixteen lines in iambic heptameter, this poem by the Jesuit martyr-saint Robert Southwell [previously] relates a mystical vision of the Christ child, who appears to the narrator on a cold winter’s night, enflamed and hovering in midair. The poem develops the metaphor of the love of Christ as a fiery furnace that both warms and purifies.
Source: St Peter’s Complaint, and Other Poems (London, 1595). Public Domain.
William Hart McNichols (American, 1949–), Holy Poet-Martyr St. Robert Southwell and the Burning Babe, 2015. Acrylic on wood. [purchase reproduction]
16.“Advent 1966” by Denise Levertov: This poem is shocking in its horror. Written in 1966, it picks up Southwell’s image of the Burning Babe and transposes it to the napalmed villages of Vietnam, where children were being physically (not symbolically or ethereally, as in Southwell’s poem) set on fire by chemical weapons deployed by the US military. Denise Levertov [previously], who was an antiwar activist as well as a poet, uses repetition to strong effect, conveying a sense of the seemingly relentless carnage (the war produced an estimated two million civilian casualties, more than half the total number). Though addressing a specific historical event, this elegy for the innocent provokes us to consider where similar atrocities are happening today.
Source: To Stay Alive (New Directions, 1971); compiled in Making Peace, ed. Peggy Rosenthal (New Directions, 2006)
17.“Christmas Eve”by Christina Rossetti: The Victorian poet Christina Rossetti [previously] opens this lyric with two paradoxes that characterize Christmas—bright darkness and chilly warmth—referencing the general mood of cheer and comfort that coexists with the bleak English midwinter. Why this mirth? Because “Christmas bringeth Jesus, / Brought for us so low.” Jesus was brought down from heaven in the Incarnation, but he would be brought lower still: his spirits sunken in Gethsemane, his body buried in a grave. The second stanza evokes a wedding: dressed in a bridal gown of gauzy snow, earth receives her heavenly Bridegroom.
Source: Time Flies: A Reading Diary (London, 1885); compiled in The Complete Poems (Penguin, 2001). Public Domain.
18. “Hill Christmas” by R. S. Thomas: In a poor rural Welsh village, parishioners make their way across snowy fields, weather-beaten, on Christmas to feed their bodies and souls with a snow-white bread loaf and crimson wine. In the celebration of the Eucharist, they hear love cry “in their heart’s manger.” Then they return to the day’s chores. I think the last line refers to a wayside crucifix.
Source: Laboratories of the Spirit (Macmillan, 1975); compiled in Collected Poems, 1945–1990 (Dent, 1993)
19.“back in the day” by Carl Winderl: In a practice known as “settinglambs on,” when a baby lamb dies in birth, sheep farmers will often take a live lamb (an orphan, or a twin or triplet from another ewe) and cover it in the skin of the deceased one so that, when the grieving mother smells the familiar scent of her deceased offspring, she accepts the lamb as her own. In Carl Winderl’s poem, Mother Mary reflects on that practice and has a premonition of a dead lamb.
Source: Christian Century, December 27, 2023
20.“Hymn 4 on the Nativity of Christ” by Ephrem the Syrian: St. Ephrem, a church father from the fourth century, wrote his theology in verse and is one of the most significant Early Christian hymnists. His Nativity hymns are my favorite; I’m particularly struck in Hymn IV by his meditation on how the Christ who suckles at Mary’s breast also gives suck to the whole world. “He is the Living Breast of living breath,” as Kathleen E. McVey translates the Syriac.
Source: Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns, trans. Kathleen E. McVey (Classics of Western Spirituality) (Paulist Press, 1989)
Maria lactans, late 18th century. Fresco, Church of Narga Selassie, Dek Island, Lake Tana, Ethiopia. Photo: Alan Davey.
21. “Nativity” by Scott Cairns: This is the first in a pair of ekphrastic poems called “Two Icons,” in which the poet, who is Greek Orthodox, describes an icon from his home prayer corner. The first three stanzas engage in constructive wordplay: Jesus is wrapped in swaddling bands by his mother, and she is rapt—enraptured, wholly absorbed—by him. She holds him in her gaze and in her hands, and is beholden to him. Icons are about just that: beholding Christ and the sacred mysteries and deepening our affection for the One who holds us in affection. In Nativity icons our gaze is directed to “the core / where all the journeys meet, appalling crux and hallowed cave and womb,” where we are beckoned, like the magi, to bow before the incarnate God.
22.“Star of the Nativity” by Joseph Brodsky: The Nobel Prize–winning Russian poet Joseph Brodsky was born into a Jewish family, but he was captivated by the story of Jesus’s birth and wrote many poems about it. The final stanza of this one gives us the unique perspective of the Star of Bethlehem, looking down—the Father’s beaming pride.
Source: Nativity Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001)
23. “Wise Women Also Came” by Jan Richardson: The Gospel of Matthew tells us that when Jesus was born, wise men came from the east to worship him. But wise women came too, Jan Richardson surmises. They came during Mary’s labor—midwives assisting with the birth. They came with lamps, fresh water, and blankets.
Jan Richardson (American, 1967–), Wise Women Also Came, 1995. Collage. [purchase reproduction]
24.“Green River Christmas” by John Shea: Theologian and storyteller John Shea reflects on how, after experiencing something scary or unpleasant (like getting a shot or a teeth cleaning), mothers often give their child a treat. Christmas is a kind of supreme treat after the penitential season of Advent, during which we confronted the state of our spiritual health and remedied any shortfalls. Think, too, of the liturgy of (somber) confession and (sweet) pardon every Sunday at church, a prelude to the feast of bread and wine. At the Lord’s Table, we are fed—the gifts of God for the people of God. The Eucharist is the subtext of the final stanza, where Shea describes the presentation of Jesus in the temple forty days after his birth. There he is received by “the long-starved arms / of Simeon and Anna.” They had hungered for salvation, endured a long period of waiting; now they are filled.
25.“Taking Down the Tree” by Jane Kenyon: “Tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop.” This poem is about the passing of time—the death of another year—and the glumness that often sets in after the holidays are over, but it’s also about the storage of memories. In many households, Christmas ornaments are a multigenerational collection of memories. As with hanging them on the tree, taking them off and packing them away is a ritual that may prompt us to revisit certain past experiences or periods in our life. After we unplug the stringed lights and wrap up the baubles for safekeeping, then what? How will we inhabit the twelve months until next Christmas?
VIDEO MEDITATION: “Yearning and Promise (Advent),” dir. Lauralee Farrer (2017): The first in the seven-part Liturgical Meditations series produced by Fuller Studio (a resource center affiliated with Fuller Theological Seminary), this four-minute video features Advent scripture readings by Fuller alum Paul Mpishi (MDiv, ’17) in his native Swahili, set to beautiful cinematography by Lindsey Sheets, Timothy Kay, and Jordan McMahon.
“Yearning and Promise” explores Advent and the expectant longing for the birth of Christ through cityscapes, wilderness, and water from Chicago and Malibu, with scriptures drawn from Isaiah 40 and Matthew 1. The audio for this video is in Swahili with subtitles in English, Spanish, Mandarin, and Korean—a poetic way to represent the primary tongues of our community. . . .
The liturgical calendar spans the life of Christ in a single year—from anticipation (Advent), to hope (Christmas), to transcendence (Epiphany), to lament (Lent), to redemption (Easter), to the birth of the church (Pentecost), and through long, numbered days (Ordinary Time) back to Advent. The liturgical meditation series to which this video belongs relies on nature to tell the story of God, accompanied by scriptures traditional to each season.
Piero della Francesca (Italian, ca. 1415–1492), Madonna del Parto, after 1457. Detached fresco, 100 × 80 in. (260 × 203 cm). Musei Civici Madonna del Parto, Monterchi, Italy.
>> “Lord, Remind Me” by Jon and Valerie Guerra: From their album It’s Almost Christmas! Jon Guerra writes in the YouTube video description about how most days, hope feels naive; about the narratives in which we misplace our trust; about how Jesus, in his coming, tells a different narrative and brings our hope to fruition.
At Christmastime, Guerra writes,
Christians . . . celebrat[e] the arrival of a “shoot from Jesse’s stump.” It’s a transgressive celebration of fragility and vulnerability. We wanted a fully matured tree—God gave us a shoot coming from a stump. We wanted a strong leader—God gave us a vulnerable baby. We wanted a strength that dominates—God gave us a weakness that submits. We wanted victory—God gave us defeat, destitution, death.
How is this defying of our expectations hopeful? Well, theology at its atomic level says this: God is love. God doesn’t love as a decisive action, as though tomorrow the decision could be reversed. God is, always, love.
That love is not only towards humanity—it becomes humanity. It is not only compassionate towards the broken—it becomes the broken. It is unconditional love that becomes death—and in so doing, defeats it. It defies our expectations only to exceed to them.
So here’s to remembering hope in God’s unconditional love towards the desolate stumpiness of ourselves and the world this season—and to believing that this is not the end of the story. Lord, remind me.
>> “His Name Is Jesus” by Keiko Ying: Released this month on YouTube, this children’s Advent song by Keiko Ying celebrates Jesus as Emmanuel, “God with us.” Here is the lead sheet. The drawings and animation in the music video are by the songwriter’s thirteen-year-old daughter, Clara. [HT: Global Christian Worship]
The law of growth is rest. We must be content in winter to wait patiently through the long bleak season in which we experience nothing whatever of the sweetness or realization of the Divine Presence, believing the truth, that these seasons which seem to be the most empty are the most pregnant with life. It is in them that the Christ-life is growing in us, laying hold of our soil with strong roots and thrust deeper and deeper, drawing down the blessed rain of mercy and the sun of Eternal Love through our darkness and heaviness and hardness, to irrigate and warm those roots. . . .
The seed must rest in the earth. We must allow the Christ-life to grow in us in rest. Our whole being must fold upon Christ’s rest in us, as the earth folds upon the seed.
Advent begins a week from Sunday, on December 1—a roughly four-week season leading up to Christmas, during which we prepare our hearts to receive the coming Christ. Here are a few resources.
Daily posts at Art & Theology: First I want to let you know that, as I’ve done for the past three years, I will be posting daily here on the Art & Theology blog for the duration of Advent and Christmastide, each day selecting a visual artwork and a piece of music that I feel dialogue fruitfully with each other about a seasonal theme. Many Christians like to read through a devotional book during Advent, and while I do appreciate good devotional writing, I sometimes grow bored of reading prose reflections on the Christmas story. For me, I’ve found that engaging the arts frequently opens up wonder and new angles of inquiry and deepens my longing and gratitude for Christ. Songs, art, and other creative expressions help me slow down and put me in a contemplative frame of mind, and that’s why I use them as companions throughout the liturgical year.
Though the United States (my country) is heavily represented in the selections, I’ve tried to be intentional about featuring works from a variety of geographic locales. So you’ll see contributions from Mexico, Peru, The Gambia, Kenya, Germany, Turkey, Croatia, Japan, India, the Philippines, and more—a reflection of the global nature of Christianity.
Sometimes I will provide some written context or explication for the song or artwork or relevant biographical details for its maker, but other times I will let the works stand entirely on their own.
I’m really excited to unroll this year’s series! Advent starts December 1, but tune in a day early on November 30 for a “prelude” post to kick things off. The final post in the series will be on Epiphany on January 6. You can view the archives from previous years here:
In addition to the daily posts in the music-art format, I have a few poems lined up and will continue doing periodic link roundups to direct you to other great Advent and Christmas content around the web.
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THE DAILY PRAYER PROJECT: Advent 2024: The Daily Prayer Project, a liturgical publishing nonprofit I work for as curator and copyeditor, is entering its seventh year, and our latest Advent edition is out! The cover art is Look forward to the coming of God by Stanley Fung, a pastor and photographer from Taipei; it’s one of three artworks that receive dedicated attention inside.
In addition to art, the magazine includes a poem, four song sheets, two mini-essays (one on the spiritual practice of encouragement, the other on nurturing the hidden life of Christ within us), and fourteen distinct liturgies, one for each morning and evening of the week (plus a different scripture reading for every day of the season). Here is one of the featured prayers in this edition, from the Christian Council of Nigeria:
Grant us, O God, a vision of our land that is as beautiful as it could be: a land of justice where none shall prey on others; a land of plenty where poverty shall cease to fester; a land of kinship where success shall be founded on service; a land of peace where order shall rest not on force but on the love of everyone for their community. Give us grace to put this vision into practice through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Our Christmas edition will also be ready for purchase soon. It covers December 25, 2024, through March 4, 2025.
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VIDEO INTERVIEW: “Advent: The Season of Hope” with Tish Harrison Warren, Trinity Forum, December 1, 2023: In Celebration of Discipline, Richard J. Foster writes, “In contemporary society our Adversary (the devil) majors in three things: noise, hurry, and crowds. If he can keep us engaged in ‘muchness’ and ‘manyness,’ he will rest satisfied.” The pull toward those things is particularly strong in December. But Advent calls us, counterculturally, to quietness, slowness, and moments of solitude.
Here Tish Harrison Warren, an Anglican priest and the author of Advent: The Season of Hope from IVP’s Fullness of Time series, discusses the character and history of Advent, the three traditional practices associated with it, and how to wait well. She also encourages us to ask ourselves: Where do we need Christ to come in the next year? Where do we need healing? Where do we need to find hope in the next season of our life?
The Q&A starts at 38:00 and includes questions such as: How might the theme of judgment shape our observance of Advent? How do we practice Advent during a time of jollity and indulgence and parties without being perceived as a Scrooge?
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SONG: “Come to Us, Emmanuel” by Ordinary Time: Made up of Peter La Grand, Jill McFadden, and Ben Keyes, Ordinary Time is a trio whose music blends elements of folk, Americana, and traditional hymnody. This original song is from their 2007 album In the Town of David, and the music video is shot around Vancouver, where the three band members met when they were students at Regent College.
** This is one of seven songs by Ordinary Time featured on Art & Theology’s Advent Playlist. Join 2,859 others in following the playlist on Spotify, which offers over twenty-one hours of music for the season.
Check out, too, Ordinary Time’s newest album, released Friday, titled You Are My Hiding Place. Favorite track: “All Shall Be Amen Alleluia.”
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ARTICLE: “My Favorite Advent Wreath Supplies” by Ashley Tumlin Wallace:The Liturgical Home is one of my favorite blogs to follow. It’s run by Ashley Tumlin Wallace, a pastor’s wife and mom of four from Florida who collects recipes and traditions from around the world and compiles them into liturgical living guidebooks to help families celebrate the seasons of the church in their homes. In this blog post she shares how to make your own Advent wreath, collecting greenery from outside and purchasing a few basic items.
Here’s her Instagram video showing you how to put it all together:
CARD PACK: The Light Has Come: 25 Illustrated Prayers with Activities for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany by W. David O. Taylor and Phaedra Jean Taylor: Each of the twenty-five, 4 × 6 prayer cards in this pack includes a watercolor illustration by Phaedra Taylor, and on the other side a Bible verse, a collect prayer by David Taylor, and a suggested activity (e.g., stargazing, baking or buying a treat for a friend) or prayer prompt. Included are familiar themes, such as Hope, Joy, Shepherds, and Light, but also less familiar ones, like Feasting, Sorrow, Fear, and the Fantastical. There are also cards for Saint Nicholas Day, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, and Epiphany. They are all held together in a cardstock sleeve.
The cards would work well in personal or family devotions, in a small group, or with church staff. “Our hope is that this box of cards will invite you to stop, look and listen afresh to the nativity narratives and to discover a story that truly heals and restores this very broken and beloved world of ours,” David writes in a blog post introducing the product.
You can order reproductions of the watercolors from this collection and others at Phaedra’s online shop.
In Antwerp sometime around 1600, the Flemish printmaker Anton Wierix II (whose name is alternatively rendered as Antonie, Anthony, Antoine, or Antonius) engraved a series of seventeen* cardiomorphic emblems called the Cor Jesu amanti sacrum (The Heart Consecrated to the Loving Jesus), which portray the human heart as the dwelling-place, schoolroom, and throne of Christ. Commissioned by the Jesuit order, the series shows the Christ child cutting through the net that has ensnared the heart, knocking at the heart’s door, shining a light inside, sweeping out the monsters and vices, purging it with his blood, establishing his throne therein, teaching it, adorning it, making music in it, defending it from hostile invasion, piercing it with the arrows of love, and setting it aflame with desire.
These prints circulated as loose sheets and inside books, and various artists copied Wierix’s designs throughout the seventeenth century. The most famous book that uses the Cor Jesus images is Le coeur dévot, throsne royal de Iesus, Pacifique Salomon (The Devout Heart, Royal Throne of Jesus, Pacific Salomon) by Etienne Luzvic, SJ, originally written for a religious community, perhaps one devoted to the Sacred Heart. The book’s initial publication—in Paris in 1626—was without illustrations, but an enlarged edition was reissued in Douai and Antwerp the following year, containing twenty Cor Jesu engravings adapted by Martin Baes from Wierix’s originals, as well as additional meditations called “Incentives” by Fr. Etienne Binet, SJ.
Also in 1627, Le coeur dévot was translated into Latin, which became the basis for a number of vernacular translations throughout Europe, including an English version translated by Henry Hawkins in 1634, titled The Devout Hart, or Royal Throne of the Pacifical Salomon. This English edition includes a hymn by Hawkins for each emblem.
The odd-sounding subtitle of the book is a reference to King Solomon of the Old Testament, whom Luzvic apparently read a type of Christ in his majesty. “Pacifical” is an archaic word meaning conciliatory, peaceable.
Below I reproduce Wierix’s seventeen emblems, a loose-leaf edition held by the Wellcome Collection in London; you can click on the image to be taken to its object page.
Each engraving contains at the bottom a rhyming Latin verse in two stanzas of three lines each, interpreting the picture. The English translations provided below are sourced from the Wellcome Collection website, unless otherwise noted.
The engravings are not numbered, and their order was not fixed; they show up in variable sequences in different books. I’ve ordered them as they appear in Hawkins’s The Devout Hart. Scholars and editors have given them different descriptive titles over the years. I use Hawkins’s titles, only I’ve modernized the spellings. I’ve also provided a few quotes from Hawkins’s translation of Luzvic’s meditational texts that accompany the images in The Devout Hart, with page numbers provided in parentheses.
1. The world, the flesh, and the devil assail the heart, but Jesus saves it for himself
Anton Wierix II (Flemish, ca. 1555–1604), The world, the flesh, and the devil assail the heart, but Jesus saves it for himself, ca. 1600. Engraving, with etching, image 7.7 × 5.6 cm.
Fallax mundus ornat vultus, dolus latet sed occultus: ne crede blanditiis.
Hoc vitare si vis rete; cito Christi sinus pete procul ab insidiis.
(The deceptive world makes up its face, yet trickery lurks concealed. Do not trust in blandishments if you want to avoid this net! Quickly seek the breast of Christ, far from ambushes.)
2. The most amorous Jesus knocks at the door of the heart
Anton Wierix II (Flemish, ca. 1555–1604), The most amorous Jesus knocks at the door of the heart, ca. 1600. Engraving, image 7.8 × 5.5 cm.
Ultro cordis portam pultat Iesus, silet et auscultate vocem sui corculi.
Cor exsurge, vectem solve: Quid sit opus factu, volve in adventum sponsuli.
(Outside the door of the heart Jesus knocks, is silent, and listens for the voice of his little heart. Heart, rise up! throw back the bolt! think what needs to be done at the arrival of the little betrothed one!)
This image is rooted in Revelation 3:20: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him . . .” (KJV).
If you cannot hear the knocking, Etienne Luzvic encourages you to consider,
Is it the noise perhaps of the guests thou hast admitted in already, which so tacked up, and stupefies thine ears, as thou canst not hear thy beloved’s voice? Oh guests, or haunting ghosts, I may call you, rather! Oh sinister affections! Oh inordinate appetites! What a tumult have you made here? (49)
He further exhorts:
Hasten, therefore, O fairest of all beauties; what? Sleepest thou yet? Shake off this sluggishness. Is there a mutiny at home, then quiet the tumults, command silence, bid the door be set open. And if thy spouse now wearied with thy demurs should chance to divert from thee, and go his ways, follow him at the heels with cries, and prayers, and tiring him outright, urge him hard, that he would deign to return again to his sanctuary. (50)
3. Jesus searcheth out the monsters lurking in the dark corners of the heart
Anton Wierix II (Flemish, ca. 1555–1604), Jesus searcheth out the monsters lurking in the dark corners of the heart, ca. 1600. Engraving, image 7.8 × 5.7 cm.
Dum scrutaris in lucernis et vestigas cum laternis cor peccatis obsitum;
o quot monstra deprehendis! Iesus, scopas ni prehendis, manet culpis perditum.
(While you search among the lights and track the heart besieged by sins, oh how many monsters do you find! Jesus, if you do not find a broom, [the heart] remains lost in wrongs.)
From Luzvic:
So long as Jesus is absent from my heart. Ah me! what monsters? what sordidies? what Gorgons? what wicked fiends? what hells are centered there?
When Jesus enters into the heart, and therein pours his light, good God? what foul, what horrible prodigies of vices the mind discovers there which the eyes had never yet detected? I say while Jesus puts forth his rays, what bestial manners? what perfidiousness? what blots of an ungrateful mind? what heinous crimes are represented in this detestable heart?
At these portents the very angels tremble. Yet go thou on, my most sweet Jesus: illuminate the darksome corners of the soul; cleanse this foul, infamous stable. Amid this Cimmerian darkness, with glimpse of thy light bewray [reveal] me to myself that . . . at length [I] may fly to thee, love nothing else but thee. Oh the only Darling of my soul! O only love of my heart, my little Jesus! (60–61)
Oh how I tremble at it, to see how many snakes there are! What spiders, what scorpions, and other such like plagues . . . (65)
Consider, then, how powerfully Jesus, as soon as admitted to enter into the heart, expels and banisheth all sins from the secretes nooks thereof. (68)
4. Jesus sweeps the dust of sins from the heart
Anton Wierix II (Flemish, ca. 1555–1604), Jesus sweeps the dust of sins from the heart, ca. 1600. Engraving, 7.8 × 5.6 cm.
O beatam cordis aedem! Te cui caelum dedit sedem purgat suis manibus.
Animose puer verre, monstra tuo vultu terre, tere tuis pedibus.
(O blessed temple of the heart! Let him to whom heaven has given his abode clean you with his own hands. Spirited boy, sweep away! Frighten the monsters with your look! Crush them under your feet!)
Once Jesus locates the toads, snakes, and other slimy creatures (symbols of sin) hiding in the heart’s cave, he sweeps them out. Luzvic welcomes this purging:
Go on, my little Jesus, and oh! expel, tread, crush under thy holy feet this poisonous virulence of serpents, which with their venom intoxicate and kill my soul. Destroy them quite, and so frame me a heart wholly according to thy heart. (73–74)
He asks Jesus that, once he banishes the monsters, he keep them out for good:
Thou, most Blessed Darling of my heart, fortify and prevent all the ways and passages of the enemy, and place strong guards at the entrance and gates thereof, lest happily they steal or rush in anywhere . . . (77)
But he also owns his own responsibility in keeping them out:
Oh what dullness of mind is this, what stupidity of heart, that we should so long suffer these monsters to rest and abide with us, as if they were some friends and familiars of ours! Oh truly admirable goodness of God! who hath attended and expected us so long to return to the duty and office of good men; and now at last most powerfully hath brought us into liberty, wherefore we will steadfastly purpose, and determine hereafter, to die rather than once to afford any place in our heart to sins. (82)
5. Jesus the Living Fountain in the heart
Anton Wierix II (Flemish, ca. 1555–1604), Jesus the Living Fountain in the heart, ca. 1600. Engraving, with etching, image 7.9 × 5.6 cm.
Bone Iesu fontes fluant, in cor nostrum toti ruant, gratiarum rivuli.
Illis animam mundare, a peccatis expiare, Ecce gaudent angeli.
(Good Jesus, into the heart let fountains flow, let all the streams of graces [flow]. With them to clean the soul and expiate [it] from sin, behold angels rejoice.)
In this image, blood flows out of the nail wounds in Christ’s hands and feet—a cleansing, refreshing fount.
Luzvic rhapsodizes,
If Jesus be absent, I am arid, dry, and without juice, so as neither I feel God, nor anything of God. Oh cruel aridity! O fatal drought!
If Jesus be present, he sheds divine dews of graces; he opens springs of incredible sweetness; the heart floats only and swims and sinks in these torrents of celestial delights. Oh grateful dews! O blessed springs! O ineffable delights!
Angelical hands laid hither those waters of life; sprinkle therewith my heart and soul, cleanse, and water them with endless springs of paradise. (85)
He asks God’s angels to “plunge this my dry and thirsty heart, drown it in the ocean of love” (91).
6. Jesus purgeth the heart with expiatory blood
Anton Wierix II (Flemish, ca. 1555–1604), Jesus purgeth the heart with expiatory blood, ca. 1600. Engraving, with etching, image 7.8 × 5.6 cm.
Eia Iesu tibi notum cor, si lubet, lustra totum, pia tuo sanguine.
An non cernis? tota patet ara cordis, nil te latet: Fove tuo lumine.
(Ahh, Jesus, the heart which you know, clean it all, if you like, purify it with your blood! Or do you not see? The whole altar of the heart lies open, nothing is hidden from you. Sustain it with your light.)
“Purge me with hyssop,” prays David the psalmist (Ps. 51:7). In this image Jesus uses an aspergillum to sprinkle his blood on the believer’s heart, much like Moses did with the blood of oxen (Exod. 24:1–8)—sprinkling it on the altar and on God’s covenant people—and like the Levitical priests did with the blood of bulls and goats before the mercy seat (Lev. 16).
Binet writes of the immediate effect: “Lo, the heart came presently to itself again, as soon as it felt but one little drop of thy divine love to be sprinkled on it” (98). I love that phrase: “the heart came presently to itself again.” Jesus reconciles us not only to God but also to ourselves, taking away our guilt so that we can live in the freedom we were always meant to have. He brings us home to our truest selves.
There’s power in the blood! Luzvic beseeches Jesus for just a few drops:
Take, therefore, O Jesus, love of my soul, from this infinite bath of thine some few little drops, at least, and sprinkle thy sanctuary therewith, I say—the ample field of my heart, whose sure possession thou hast taken to thyself long since. (99–100)
7. Jesus rules and reigns in the loving and devout heart
Anton Wierix II (Flemish, ca. 1555–1604), Jesus rules and reigns in the loving and devout heart, ca. 1600. Engraving, with etching, image 7.8 × 5.7 cm.
Quis hic vultum non serenet? Iesus ecce sceptra tenet cordis in palatio.
Iesu tantum ora pandas, manda quod vis, da quod mandas; adsumus obsequio.
(Who would not here have a serene expression? Behold, Jesus holds the scepter in the palace of the heart. Jesus, just open your mouth, order what you want, give what you order: we are present to obey.)
Here’s a beautiful prayer by Luzvic. Its last line is a quotation from Song of Solomon 6:3, a book that Christians have read, on one level, as an allegory of the love between Christ and the human soul:
The heart . . . is hungry and thirsty, nor lives contented with any owner, unless thou fix the seat of thy kingdom in its precincts. If thou beest present with, it desires no more; if absent, come in all created things at once and woo it never so much, there will yet be place enough for more. If thou gettest from thence, all felicity departs with thee: if thou abides, all beatitude comes suddenly thither. Reign, therefore, and eternally reign in my heart, O love of my heart. Quiet the motion of perturbations, nor ever suffer the unhappy heart to thrust the king out of his seat, then which cannot happen a greater disaster to it. Nor suffer, I say, O darling and delight of my heart, that one heart should be shared into many parts. For thou sufferest no rival. Oh suffer it not ever to be enticed with the allurements of worldly pleasure, which gate being once set open, I see how easily the enemy will rush in. Be thou to it a brazen, yea, a wall of fire, which may so roundly girt the tower, as that no passage may be found unto it. But that only the Holy Ghost may come down from heaven, whereto the heart lies open, and enter therein with a full gale, and occupy the whole heart, that so I may truly profess and glory, My beloved to me and I to him. (116–18)
8. Jesus teacheth the devout heart
Anton Wierix II (Flemish, ca. 1555–1604), Jesus teacheth the devout heart, ca. 1600. Engraving, with etching, image 7.7 × 5.5 cm.
Sunt auscultent qui Platoni, aut facundo Ciceroni, aut mundi stultitiae.
Tu ne verba vitae sperne: Audi patris aeviterne dicta sapientiae.
(Some listen to Plato or to eloquent Cicero, or to the stupidity of the world. [But] you, do not scorn the words of life! Listen to the Father’s sayings of everlasting wisdom!)
In this image Christ is portrayed as the heart’s instructor. He sits with an open book that reads, “Erunt omnes docibiles Dei” (All shall be the pupils of God).
Luzvic imagines one of the directives he gives:
Hear, my child (for so Jesus advises from the pulpit of the heart): Do thou give thyself to me. Let me be thy possession, thy nurse, thy food, for nothing can satiate thine appetite without me. My child, throw away those leeks and garlic of Egypt, turn thy face from the stinking waters of [vain] pleasure, and put thy mouth rather to my side, the wine-cellar of graces, whence at ease thou mayest draw and derive to thyself most sovereign and incomparable joys. (128–29)
9. Jesus paints the images of the last things in the table of the heart
Anton Wierix II (Flemish, ca. 1555–1604), Jesus paints the images of the last things in the table of the heart, ca. 1600. Engraving, with etching, image 7.8 × 5.7 cm.
Sume Iesu penicilla, corque totum conscribilla piis imaginibus:
sic nec Venus prophanabit, nec Voluptas inquinabit vanis phantasmatibus.
(Take, Jesus, your paintbrushes and daub over the whole heart with holy images. Thus neither shall Venus profane it nor shall pleasure pollute it with empty fantasies.)
The four last things, clockwise from bottom left inside the heart, are death, judgment, heaven, and hell. The image asks Jesus to make these future realities vivid in our minds so that we would live blamelessly until then.
10. Jesus brings the cross into the heart, and easily imprints it in the lover
Anton Wierix II (Flemish, ca. 1555–1604), Jesus brings the cross into the heart, and easily imprints it in the lover, ca. 1600. Engraving, with etching, image 7.8 × 5.6 cm.
Bone Iesu conde crucem, virgam, Ianceamque trucem, conde in imo corculo.
Nulla praevalebit lues, amuleta quando strues hoc myrrhae fasciculo.
(Good Jesus, stow the cross, the lash, and the cruel lance, stow it at the bottom of the little heart. No sin shall prevail when you pile up this preservative on a gathering of myrrh.)
In this image, Christ deposits the instruments of his passion in the heart of the believer, where they serve as a reminder of the cross-shaped ethic we are to adopt—giving ourselves for others—as well as a call to gratitude for Christ’s sacrifice and a source of strength in times of suffering.
Go in, lovely cross; enter, lance, sponge, nails, scourge; bloody thorns, get you into the closet of the heart. Welcome still, but on this condition that Jesus bring you in himself; for myrrh with Jesus is admirable, and mere sweetness.
Thou sayest thou lovest Jesus; then needs must thou his cross, for if otherwise thou boast to love Jesus, thou deceivest thyself and others.
Most sweet child, what have you and I to do with this lumber here? Scarce art thou come into the world, but thou art oppressed with the weight of punishments. Oh plant thy seat in my heart! and then shall I challenge hell itself: for if Jesus and I hold together, what Hercules can stand against us both? (150–51)
11. The heart consecrated to the love of Jesus is a flourishing garden
Anton Wierix II (Flemish, ca. 1555–1604), The heart consecrated to the love of Jesus is a flourishing garden, ca. 1600. Engraving, with etching, image 7.7 × 5.9 cm.
Euge puer, rosis pinge, latus hoc, et illud cinge, totum cinge corculum.
(Bravo, boy! paint this side and that and surround it with roses, surround the entire little heart! Spread the fruit of the spring dew, spread the entire harvest of the realm of flowers: you are [thus] laying a cot for yourself.)
(Alt translation by Walter S. Mellion: Bravo, lad! Embroider with roses now this side, now that, encompass them. Wreath the little heart, all of it. Strew it with the progeny of the springtime dew, with the whole harvest of Chloris: spread for yourself a [flowery] bed.)
Jesus bedecks the heart with roses in this image—makes it beautiful and fragrant. Again, this image evokes the Song of Solomon, with its scenes of lovers in the garden.
12. Jesus sings in the choir of the heart, to the angels playing on musical instruments
Anton Wierix II (Flemish, ca. 1555–1604), Jesus sings in the choir of the heart, to the angels playing on musical instruments, ca. 1600. Engraving, with etching, image 7.8 × 5.5 cm.
Cor exulta quid moraris? Gaude, plaude, invitaris piis Iesu cantibus.
Sonat chelys angelorum, sonant tubae beatorum mixtis Iesu vocibus.
(Heart, exult! Why do you hesitate? Rejoice! Applaud! Invite Jesus with sacred songs! The [name of] Jesus sounds forth in the lyre of angels, it sounds in the trumpets of the blessed mixed with voices [singing].)
Luzvic fancifully develops the image of Jesus as singer and choir conductor in the sanctum of our hearts, making sweet, melodious music:
I will chant the mercies of the Lord forever. For to this purpose Jesus, the prime Christ, records his ancient loves to the human heart, and now mixing with admirable skill flats with sharps, sharps with flats, the tenor with the bass, and running diversely divisions he touches with a sweet remembrance now with a moderate, now remiss, now slow, and now with a quick voice, the innumerable number of his benefits wherewith heretofore he hath wooed the heart . . . (176)
13. Jesus, the son of David, plays on the harp in the heart, while angels sing
Anton Wierix II (Flemish, ca. 1555–1604), Jesus, the son of David, plays on the harp in the heart, while angels sing, ca. 1600. Engraving, with etching, image 7.5 × 5.7 cm.
Pulsa chordas, sonet chelys, dum nos recreas de caelis Iesu cordis gaudium.
Dulce melos intonabunt, novum nobis excitabunt angeli tripudium.
(Strike the strings! Let the lyre sound forth! While from heaven you renew us, Jesus, joy of the heart. A sweet tune angels shall intone [and they] shall arouse a new dance within us.)
14. Jesus rests in the lover’s heart
Anton Wierix II (Flemish, ca. 1555–1604), Jesus rests in the lover’s heart, ca. 1600. Engraving, with etching, image 7.8 × 5.6 cm.
dum in corde lectum stravit, atque sponsus dormitavit, tuta ridet sponsula.
(In vain the north wind threatens, in vain the thunder runs wild, in vain the sea foams: while in the heart the betrothed has spread his bed and gone to sleep, the bride elect smiles in safety.)
What a moving image—the heart as a place of rest for Jesus. From the four corners the four winds blow, but Jesus is not perturbed, so why should we be? He still has the world in his hands (well, in his lap!).
The image is an allusion to the episode in all three Synoptic Gospels where a storm arises on the Sea of Galilee while Jesus and the disciples are in a boat; the disciples are frantic, and exasperated that Jesus is snoozing, but he tells them not to worry, and then he silences the wind and waves with a command: “Peace, be still!”
The image projects peace and stillness onto our troubled hearts.
15. Jesus wounds and pierces the heart with the shafts of love
Anton Wierix II (Flemish, ca. 1555–1604), Jesus wounds and pierces the heart with the shafts of love, ca. 1600. Engraving, image 7.8 × 5.7 cm.
Sat est, Iesu, vulnerasti, sat est, totum penetrasti sagittis ardentibus.
Procul, procul hinc libido: nam caelestis hic Cupido vincet ignes ignibus.
(Enough, Jesus, enough! You have shot through the whole heart with flaming arrows. Lust, [be gone] far, far from here! For here is a heavenly Cupid who will conquer fire with fire.)
Luzvic quotes from chapter 2 of Augustine’s Confessions in this section: “Lord, thou hast pierced our hearts with thy charity.”
He elaborates with his own ecstatic words:
My good Archer, shoot, ah, shoot again! shoot through this heart of mine, with a million shafts, this refractory and rebellious heart, to thy divine love: slay and kill all love that is not thine, or is adversary to it. O sweet wounds! O dear to me! O arrows dipped and tipped with honey. . . .
The heart is never in so good a plight as when it is transfixed with a thousand points of sharpest love. (216)
16. The heart enflamed with the love of Jesus shines with light and flames
Anton Wierix II (Flemish, ca. 1555–1604), The heart enflamed with the love of Jesus shines with light and flames, ca. 1600. Engraving, with etching, image 7.8 × 5.7 cm.
En armatas flammis tendit Iesus manus, cor accendit hinc et illinc facibus.
Age, totum comburatur, in favillam redigatur cor amoris ignibus.
(Behold, Jesus holds out his hands armed with flames, and sets alight the heart with torches on this side and that. Come, let it all burn, let the heart be reduced to an ember by the fires of love.)
17. Jesus crowns his dear heart with palms and laurels
Anton Wierix II (Flemish, ca. 1555–1604), Jesus crowns his dear heart with palms and laurels, ca. 1600. Engraving, with etching, image 7.8 × 5.5 cm.
O beata sors amoris! Post tot lusus, tot honoris signa, tot laetitiae,
diadema regni datur, et cor palmis exornatur immortalis gloriae.
(O blessed fortune of love! After so many games, so many tokens of honor, so many of joy, the crown of the kingdom is bestowed, and the heart is adorned with the palms of immortal glory.)
* I am excluding the title page engraving from the count, which shows a flaming heart, inscribed with the words Cor Jesu amanti sacrum, held up by a Jesuit and a Franciscan friar; Jesus is not pictured, and there is no corresponding verse. And it appears that the Wellcome Collection does not own (or has not digitized) this print.
FURTHER READING
Daly, Peter M. The Emblem in Early Modern Europe: Contributions to the Theory of the Emblem. Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2014.
The RFP is open to interested individual artists, artist collaboratives, church leaders, scholars/theologians, arts-affiliated organizations, faith-based nonprofit organizations, or institutions who reside or operate in the United States. Eligible applicants may submit proposals with requests ranging from $50,000 to $250,000 that may be used over one year. Chosen applications will then be requested to submit a full grant proposal for the competitive 2025 Spring Grant Program.
The 2025 grant-seeking theme is “Performing Shalom.” Applicants are invited to reflect the theme in their project or program, but it is not a requirement when applying for a grant. Please click here for more information.
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SUBSTACK POST: “On Artists, Kings, and Mending the Multiverse” by Houston Coley: A wise and rousing reflection after the US presidential election. Houston Coley is an Atlanta-based documentary filmmaker, video essayist (YouTube @houston-coley), podcaster, and writer on TV and film, who “cultivat[es] spiritual imagination around art and pop culture,” as one person put it.
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POEM: “What to Do After Voting” by James A. Pearson: The poet James Pearson shared this poem from his collection The Wilderness That Bears Your Name (Goat Tail Press, 2024) on Instagram on Election Day last Tuesday. He writes, “What’s driving [all our voting] are two things: Our common needs for love, safety, and belonging. And our often conflicting attempts to meet them. Rumi wrote: ‘Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.’ History is offering us a fork in the road. Let’s turn towards what we can do—vote. Then let’s find each other in that field and do the long, slow work of building a world where everyone has access to the love, safety, and belonging they need.” [HT: Amy Peterson]
He writes further on his website, “This poem doesn’t pretend to be a full prescription for what our country needs. It’s just my way of acknowledging that all electoral choices are imperfect. Because even more important is what happens between elections—the long, slow work of building a culture of love and justice for our politicians to live up to. And the better we do that work, the better our options will be next time elections come around.”
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SONG: “Apsáalooke Praise Song,” sung by Sarah Redwolf (née Bullchief):Sarah Redwolf is a member of Crow Nation in Montana and a follower of the Jesus Way whose Apsáalooke name is Baawaalatbaaxpesh (Holy Word). Here she sings a praise song by her grandmother Xáxxeáakinnee (Rides the Painted Horse). The Apsáalooke lyrics are below; I couldn’t find an English translation, and the artist has not yet returned a message I sent ten days ago, but I believe the song was written with Christian intent, as Christianity has been in Sarah’s family for generations. Her father, Duane Bull Chief, is a traveling Pentecostal preacher and the leader, with his wife, Anita, of Bull Chief Ministries, and Sarah has often led worship for church services and other Christian gatherings. What a beautiful voice!
In conversation with Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man, Milliner explores contact points between Christianity and Indigenous North American art, symbol, ritual, and history. The discussion touches on pre-contact petroglyphs carved into Teaching Rocks near Peterborough, Ontario (one of them, a sun figure, quite possibly representing Gitchie Manitou, the Great Spirit—Christ incarnate?), the Sun Dance (which many Native Christians interpret as a prophecy of the Crucifixion), the Ghost Dance (about resurrection and renewal), the Mishipeshu (an underwater panther often representing death, which some Native Americans used to characterize white settlers), the Thunderbird, Black Elk’s vision of a mysterious figure with holes in the palms of his hands, and the cross as an axial tree conjoining the above and below worlds. Just as ancient Hebrew culture contained pointers to Christ, so too, Milliner argues, do the Indigenous cultures of North America. Artists, preachers, and visionaries from among the Ojibwe, Kiowa, Lakota, and other peoples are “our North American Virgils,” he says—Virgil being a Latin poet whose Fourth Eclogue, written around 40 BCE, prophesied the birth of a divine savior who would usher in a golden age.
Sun Dance Scene, Teton Lakota, Central Plains or Northern Plains, Wyoming, ca. 1885. Muslin cloth with watercolor paint, 36 × 91 1/2 in. (91.5 × 232.5 cm). Art Institute of Chicago. See 32:55 of Milliner’s lecture.Vision of a Kiowa man named Fiqi (Eater), received during the revived Ghost Dance, of Christ blessing the ceremony, collected by ethnologist James Mooney, ca. 1890. Pencil and crayon drawing from MS 2538, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. See 38:49 of Milliner’s lecture and pages 11–12, 130, 142–44 of his book The Everlasting People.See 59:24 of Milliner’s lecture and page 8 of his book The Everlasting People
There’s much more I could say, as there’s certainly more nuance and complexity to this, but instead let me simply refer you to Milliner’s lecture and finely footnoted book. There’s also a great audio interview with Milliner about The Everlasting People from November 2021, conducted by Jason Micheli for the Crackers and Grape Juice podcast.
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VIDEO: Chapel service led by Terry Wildman, November 6, 2023, Azusa Pacific University, California: Earlier this year I got to have dinner with Terry Wildman [previously] and his wife, Darlene, who form the Nammy Award–winning musical duo RainSong. It was exciting to hear all about their work with Native InterVarsity and other projects. They live in Maricopa, Arizona, on the traditional lands of the Pima and Tohono O’odham peoples. Wildman, who has both Ojibwe and Yaqui ancestry, was the lead translator, general editor, and project manager of the First Nations Version: An Indigenous Bible Translation of the New Testament. (The nativity narrative from the FNV translation of the Gospel of Luke, you may be interested to know, was adapted into an illustrated book titled Birth of the Chosen One: A First Nations Retelling of the Christmas Story, which just released this fall.)
Last November Wildman led a worship service for Azusa Pacific University students. Here are the key elements:
The opening three minutes are an animated video of the gospel story, narrated by Terry Wildman to a flute accompaniment by Darlene Wildman
8:12: Blessing of the Gabrielino-Tongva people
9:38: The Lord’s Prayer (FNV)
10:57: Sermon: “Worship in Spirit and in Truth” (John 4:1–42)
21:17: Reading of Psalm 8 (FNV)
23:48: Song: “Lift Up Your Heads” by Terry and Darlene Wildman, based on Psalm 24
28:40: Song: “Hoop of Life” by Terry Wildman – Native American powwows often feature hoop dancers, who dance a prayer that Creator will bring harmony and goodwill to all the gathered people. Wildman says, “I look at Jesus and I call him the Great Hooper Dancer. Because he’s the one who ever lives to pray for us, to make intercession for us, and when he dances his prayer, he is bringing harmony and balance to the whole world, to the whole universe. And if we follow him, if we give our hearts to him, he will produce that harmony and balance in us and with each other.”
35:56: Song: “Nia:wen” (Mohawk for “Thank You”) by Jonathan Maracle of Broken Walls
The final Sunday of the liturgical year—which this year is November 24—marks the Feast of Christ the King. This festival celebrates the reign of Jesus Christ over all of creation and every aspect of our lives.
“The belief in Christ as King finds its roots in the Christian understanding of Jesus as the Messiah, whose reign exists as both a present reality and a future hope,” writes Ashley Tumlin Wallace on her blog The Liturgical Home. “In the here and now, his reign manifests in the lives of believers who seek to live under his lordship. But the Feast of Christ the King also carries a sense of eschatological anticipation, signaling the ultimate culmination of time when the reign of Christ is fully realized.”
Unlike some who sit on earthly thrones, Christ is no tyrant; he’s a benevolent ruler who leads with love and perfect wisdom. He is high and lifted up, and yet he stoops down to us and attends to our cries. He’s so committed to our flourishing that he became one of us and sacrificed himself to save us from the Evil One and reconcile us to God. We owe him our praise, our deference, our all.
For Christ the King Sunday, I put together a Spotify playlist of songs that extol Christ as king of the cosmos and of our own hearts.
It includes traditional hymns like “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name” (below, sung by Paul Zach), “Come, Christians, Join to Sing,” “All Creatures of Our God and King,” “All People That on Earth Do Dwell,” “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty,” “O Worship the King,” “Crown Him with Many Crowns” . . .
In looking up hymns, I was delighted to find a new-to-me one from the nineteenth century by Josiah Conder called “The Lord Is King,” which Navy Jones set to a buoyant new tune:
There’s one song on the list whose text dates all the way back to the fifth century. Written in Latin by the Christian poet Sedulius, “Regnavit Dominus” (The Lord Is King) combines praises to the One who conquered death and feeds us with himself with the humble plea, “Kyrie eleison” (Lord, have mercy). Owen and Moley Ó Súilleabháin sing it to a twelfth-century melody:
The playlist also features several psalm settings, including two of Psalm 93, which opens,
The LORD is king; he is robed in majesty; the LORD is robed; he is girded with strength. He has established the world; it shall never be moved; your throne is established from of old; you are from everlasting.
One is by Jacob Mwosuko, a member of the Abayudaya (People of Judah) Jewish community near Mbale in eastern Uganda. The text is in Luganda. Though Jews would read “LORD” as referring to God the Father, ever since the early church Christians have confessed Jesus not only as Lord (Master) but also as LORD (YHWH), consubstantial and co-eternal with the Father, sharing with him all rule, authority, power, and dominion.
Also from Africa, there’s the Resurrection-rooted salsa song “Jesus Reigns” by Joe Mettle of Ghana, which I learned while attending worship at a Nigerian friend’s church plant for African Christians in Maryland:
On a softer note, there’s the piano ballad “Wondrous Things” by Sandra McCracken, Patsy Clairmont, and JJ Heller of FAITHFUL, a collective of female Christian authors and artists formed in 2019. It lauds Jesus as king to the poor, the oppressed, and the brokenhearted. Heller and McCracken perform it with Sarah Macintosh in the following video:
This next one is more of a nostalgic pick for me: “Make My Heart Your Throne”:
Over two decades ago, when I was a young high schooler, I attended a Christian retreat. The worship leader for the weekend was a man named Carl Cartee, and I remember being struck by this original song of his that we all sang one night. Its words and melody imprinted on me, and all these years later I still find myself sometimes singing them in private as a prayer that Christ would be foremost in my affections and that I would cede control to him.
One of the keenest depictions of Christ’s kingship in scripture is in the book of Revelation, where his glory and triumph are on full display and he’s surrounded by worshipping throngs. Chapter 19, where the exiled John describes “the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven,” is the source text of the song “He Is Wonderful,” sung by Lowana Wallace with Lana Winterhalt and Josh Richert:
These three overlaid, harmonized vocal lines are so enthralling!
Wallace’s song is a simplified arrangement of “Revelation 19:1” by A. Jeffrey LaValley, who wrote it in 1984 for the gospel choir of New Jerusalem Baptist Church in Flint, Michigan, where he served as music director. You can listen to a more recent performance of “Revelation 19:1” on the album Jesus Is King (2019) by the Sunday Service Choir under the direction of Jason White, or in this Mav City Gospel Choir video from 2021, which features soloist Naomi Raine. The choir is directed by Jason McGee:
The build to such fullness of sound . . . wow! It really is evocative of the ample rejoicing in heaven around God’s throne that John the Revelator narrates—“like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunderpeals” (Rev. 19:6).
For a multilingual (English-Korean-Spanish) arrangement performed by students and staff at Fuller Theological Seminary in California, see here.
This is just a sampling of the eighty-plus songs on Art & Theology’s “Christ the King” playlist, exalting the One who lives and reigns supreme in the heavens and who will one day bring his kingdom to full fruition on earth.
Cover art: John Piper (British, 1903–1992), Christ in Majesty, 1984, East Window, Chapel of St John Baptist without the Barrs, St John’s Hospital, Lichfield, Staffordshire, England
In addition to the new, nonthematic playlist above, I also have a Thanksgiving Playlistthat I published in 2021 and have been adding to sporadically. Here are three new songs, among others, that you can hear on it:
>> “I Just Want to Thank You, Lord” by Lynda Randle: Singer-songwriter Lynda Randle has been performing on the Gaither Homecoming videos and tours since 1993. Here she sings one of her original gospel songs with Gayle Mayes and Angela Primm.
>> “Thanks a Lot” by Raffi:Raffi Cavoukian, who goes by his first name only, is an Armenian Canadian children’s singer-songwriter and book author, best known for his song “Baby Beluga.” “Thanks a Lot” expresses gratitude—presumably to God, though God is not named—for the sun, clouds, wind, birds, stars, “the wondering me,” and so on. This live recording is on the 1984 release A Young Children’s Concert with Raffi. I’m guessing he told the kids in the audience to close their eyes, to help cultivate a prayerful state.
>> “Herraa Hyvää Kiittäkää” (Thank the Good Lord) by Herännäisnuorten kuoro: This hymn was originally written in Swedish by Jesper Swedberg in 1694 and was translated into Finnish six years later. It uses an older (1640) tune—nice and hearty! and in a minor key—by the German composer Heinrich Albert. You can follow along with the Finnish lyrics here.
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VIDEO: Jazz Vespers Worship Service, Duke Chapel, November 19, 2019: Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, has hosted a Jazz Vespers worship service nearly every March and November since 2014, a collaboration between Duke Chapel and the Duke Jazz Program. In this recorded service from the fall 2019 semester, Rev. Dr. Luke Powery (the chapel dean) leads the liturgy and Rev. Joshua Lawrence Lazard (the chapel’s minister for student engagement) delivers the sermon, which is from 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” The music is led by Duke music professor John Brown, a Grammy-nominated jazz bassist and composer, and his Little Big Band. I can’t find the names of the two vocalists.
List of songs:
“Every Day Is a Day of Thanksgiving” by Shelby Wills
“Glory, Glory (Since I Laid My Burden Down)”
“Because of Who You Are” by Vicki Yohe
“I Feel Like Praising Him” by Shirley Caesar
“Amazing Grace” by John Newton
“Perfect Love Song” by Anita Wilson
“You Can’t Beat God Giving” by Billy Preston
“Thank You, Lord, for All You’ve Done for Me” by Walter Hawkins
LITANY: “Celebrating the Gifts of Immigrants” by Rev. Maren C. Tirabassi: “A prayer for the United States which has come to a time of conflict, when the discussion of immigration seems to be limited to a choice of two – fears of burden or pity for the vulnerable – ignoring the third truth – deep gratefulness.”
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VIRTUAL WORKSHOP: “Evocations: Advent Responsive Writing” with Marilyn McEntyre, Nov 26, Dec 3, Dec 10, Dec 17, 2024: Each Tuesday over the course of a month, from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. ET, Marilyn McEntyre will be leading an online gathering of writers in reflecting on and working with words and images gleaned from centuries of song, poetry, and paintings that celebrate Advent, the season of waiting. Participants will engage in lectio divina and visio divina as a foundation for writing personal reflections, memoir, and poetry. Hosted by Image journal. Registration cost: $195.
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ART EXHIBITIONS:
I don’t know that I’ll be able to make it up to New York City before these two exhibitions close in January, but I will try! They both look excellent.
>> Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350, Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 13, 2024–January 26, 2025: “Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350 examines an exceptional moment at the dawn of the Italian Renaissance and the pivotal role of Sienese artists—including Duccio, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Simone Martini—in defining Western painting. In the decades leading up to the catastrophic onset of the plague around 1350, Siena was the site of phenomenal artistic innovation and activity. While Florence is often positioned as the center of the Renaissance, this presentation offers a fresh perspective on the importance of Siena, from Duccio’s profound influence on a new generation of painters to the development of narrative altarpieces and the dissemination of artistic styles beyond Italy.”
>> Anything but Simple: Gift Drawings and the Shaker Aesthetic, American Folk Art Museum, September 13, 2024–January 26, 2025: “The Shakers, often celebrated for their minimalist approach to design, will be showcased in a new light with the exhibition Anything but Simple: Gift Drawings and the Shaker Aesthetic. Made by women in the mid-19th century and believed to represent divine messages, the ‘gift’ drawings on display represent a departure from the simplicity typically associated with Shaker material culture.
“Opening during the 250th year of Shakerism in the United States, the exhibition features drawings widely considered to be among the finest surviving examples of this rare type. These symbols of love and nature were often given as ‘tokens’ to other Shakers during meetings. Brightly colored and replete with intricate ornamentation, they represent a stunning world of celestial imagery. Compared to examples of Shaker clothing and furniture that will also be included in the exhibition, the vibrancy of the drawings will mark a distinct contrast with the clean lines typically associated with Shaker design.”
Hannah Cohoon (American, 1788–1864), The Tree of Life, 1854. Ink and watercolor on paper, 18 1/8 × 23 5/16 in. Collection of the Hancock Shaker Village, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
Art & Theology 