Holy Week begins Sunday. I will be publishing short daily devotional posts during that time and through the first eight days of Easter. Also: don’t forget about the Art & TheologyHoly Week Playlist and Eastertide Playlist! I’ve made some new song additions since last year, mixed in to preserve the narrative flow.
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ART VIDEO: “The Crucifixion, c. 1200 (from Christus triumphans to Christus patiens)”: When I was a student in Florence for a semester, my first paper for my Italian history, art, and culture class traced the evolution of the painted wood-panel crucifix in late medieval Italy, from the Christus Triumphans (Triumphant Christ) type to Christus Patiens (Suffering Christ). I lived less than a five-minute walk from the Uffizi, which has in its collection a beautiful example of each—explored by Drs. Steven Zucker and Beth Harris in this short Smarthistory video. Longtime readers of the blog may recognize the latter, which I posted back in 2018.
Painted cross (detail), Pisa, ca. 1180–1200. Tempera and gold leaf on wood, 277 × 231 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Inv. 432. [object record]
Zucker provides wonderful photos of both in high resolution on his Flickr page (start here and scroll right)—the full crosses and details of each apron scene—available for free noncommercial use under a Creative Commons license. And there are many other art historical images there as well!
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ONLINE EXPERIENCE: “Anamnesis: Journey through the Stations of the Cross”: This year visual artist Daniel Callis and the music and liturgy collective The Many collaborated on a self-guided set of online Stations of the Cross. There are fifteen total, which are being released one at a time every morning and evening from March 30 through April 5. Each station consists of an artwork, a prayer, a song, and a written meditation that help us enter into lament.
Daniel Callis (American, 1955–), Grief Station #1, Prognosis, 2022. Ink, oil, palm ash, fiber, clay, ash, fabric, 60 × 24 × 24 in. (total work). Photo courtesy of the artist.
The artworks are by Callis, and they’re from his Stations: Resurgam series, a body of work that was just exhibited this month at Green Art Gallery at Biola University in La Mirada, California. He began the series in January 2021 in response to the death of his son, Jeremy David Callis (1980–2020). It consists of fifteen mixed-media works on paper (his process involves printing, “wounding,” stitching, etc.) and fifteen raku-fired offering bowls that incorporate, from the cooling process, copies of letters, hospital documents, and drawings from Jeremy. “They are about pain and the absurd insistent pursuit of hope,” Callis says of the series. Resurgam is Latin for “I shall rise again.”
The songs are by The Many.
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BOOK EXCERPT from The Unvarnished Jesus: A Lenten Journey by Brian Zahnd: In this post from his blog, Pastor Brian Zahnd excerpts a passage from his book The Unvarnished Jesus (2019). “To interpret the meaning of the cross is more than a life’s work—in fact, it has and will remain the work of the church for millennia,” he writes. “The cross is the ever-unfolding revelation of who God is, and it cannot be summed up in a simple formula. This is the bane of tidy atonement theories that seek to reduce the cross to a single meaning. The cross is many things: It’s the pinnacle of God’s self-disclosure. It’s divine solidarity with all human suffering. It’s the shaming of the principalities and powers. It’s the point from which the satan is driven out of the world. It’s the death by which Christ conquers Death. It’s the abolition of war and violence. It’s the supreme demonstration of the love of God. It’s the re-founding of the world around an axis of love. It’s the enduring model of co-suffering love we are to follow. It’s the eternal moment in which the sin of the world is forgiven . . .” Read more.
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SONGS:
>> “The Leaves of Life”: “The Leaves of Life,” alternatively titled “The Seven Virgins,” is a traditional English ballad carol of Christ’s passion, first set down in the nineteenth century. It is narrated by (the apostle?) Thomas, who on a fateful Friday runs into the Virgin Mary and six of her companions, who are looking for Jesus. He directs them to the hill where Jesus is being crucified (“And sit in the gallery” may be a corruption of “The city of Calvary”). The women tearfully fly to the site, and Jesus tries to console his mother from the cross before breathing his last. The song ends with Thomas imbibing a strong scent of rose and fennel as he meditates on Christ’s love. [HT: Global Christian Worship]
Here the song is performed in the chapter house of Wells Cathedral in Somerset by William Parsons, founder of the British Pilgrimage Trust and author of Singing for Our Supper: Walking an English Songline from Kent to Cornwall, a book about the seven months he spent as a wandering minstrel. Parsons refers to it as a gypsy carol because Ralph Vaughan Williams collected one version of it from the Roma singer Esther Smith during his 1908–13 collecting trips that resulted in the publication, with Ella May Leather, of Twelve Traditional Carols from Herefordshire (1920).
>> “Were You There”: This African American spiritual is performed here by Pegasis, a vocal trio of sisters—Marvelis, Rissel, and Yaina Peguero Almonte—originally from the Dominican Republic but now living in Green Bay, Wisconsin. It’s as if they’re the three Marys singing their testimony! The song is on their 2016 album Peace Through Praise, which they released under the name The Peguero Sisters. Their harmonies are gorgeous.
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PODCAST EPISODE: “Malcolm Guite: Poems on the Passion”: In this special passion- and resurrection-themed Nomad devotional episode from 2018, Malcolm Guite reads and reflects on three of his poems, and David Benjamin Blower performs an original three-part song that he wrote in response and that has not been released elsewhere (see 4:30, 16:04, and 27:18).
Guite’s “Jesus dies on the cross,” part of his Stations of the Cross sonnet cycle, was inspired by a line from George Herbert’s poem “Prayer”: “God’s breath in man returning to his birth.” And his “Easter Dawn” [previously] is based in part on a sermon by the seventeenth-century Anglican bishop Lancelot Andrewes. Paraphrasing Andrewes, Guite says, “Jesus is the gardener of Mary [Magdalene]’s heart—her heart is all rent and brown and wintery, and with one word, he makes all green again.” Beautiful! For more on the theme of Jesus as gardener, see my 2016 blog post “She mistook him for the gardener.”
In the thirteenth century, a new subject emerged in painted Passion cycles in both East and West: Christ resolutely climbing a ladder to the cross. He ascends willingly, even enthusiastically, demonstrating a heroic acceptance of death. In taking those steps up onto the instrument of his martyrdom, he exercises agency. As he tells a gathered crowd in John 10:18, “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down . . .” Out of love for the world, he gives himself as a sacrifice, bringing about reconciliation between God and humanity.
The iconography of the Ascent of the Cross (alternatively referred to as “Christ Mounts the Cross”) is of Byzantine origin and can be found in Macedonian and Serbian church frescoes.
Michael Astrapas and Eutychios, Ascent of the Cross (at right), 1295. Fresco, Church of the Holy Mother of God Peribleptos (aka Church of Saint Clement), Ohrid, North Macedonia. Photo: Vera Zavaritskaya.Ascent of the Cross, 1298. Fresco, Church of St. Nicholas, Prilep, North Macedonia. Photo: P. S. Pavlinov.Ascent of the Cross, 1317. Fresco, Church of St. George, Staro Nagoričane, North Macedonia.Ascent of the Cross, 1343–45. Fresco, Church of St. George, Pološko, North Macedonia.
In a fresco from the Church of St. George at Staro Nagoričane, a small Roman military detachment has just led Jesus to the site of his execution. A young enslaved Roman fixes the cross into the ground, instructed by an older slave who holds a basket of nails, while a third stands on the suppedaneum and waits to nail Jesus’s hands into place. Caiaphas, the Jewish chief priest, points to the cross, indicating to Christ to ascend it. Christ grabs hold of the rungs and climbs, while at the top left, from behind a rock, the Virgin Mary and John look on in grief.
Byzantine painting greatly influenced the Italian painters of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Many of them adopted Byzantine models, of which the Ascent of the Cross is one example.
Pacino di Bonaguida (Italian, Florentine, 1280–1340), Ascent of the Cross, from the picture-book Scenes from the Life of Christ and the Life of the Blessed Gerard of Villamagna, ca. 1320. Tempera and gold leaf on parchment, 9 5/8 × 6 7/8 in. (24.5 × 17.6 cm). Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, M. 643, fol. 12r.
In a Ferrarese church lunette fresco in the Benedictine nuns’ monastic complex of Sant’Antonio in Polesine, two men kneel on the cross’s patibulum as Christ mounts the ladder propped against it. He wears a translucent loincloth, emphasizing his nakedness and humiliation. Knowing Christ’s innocence, an elderly Jewish man tries to intervene to prevent the brutality, but he is restrained by soldiers. On the right, a group of Romans argues over who will get to keep Christ’s cloak, a souvenir from this regional celebrity.
Christ Mounts the Cross on a Ladder, 14th century. Fresco, Monastery of Sant’Antonio in Polesine, Ferrara, Italy.
In some versions of the Ascent of the Cross, Jesus is pushed or pulled into position, or at least aided, by soldiers, with whom he readily cooperates. Such is the case in the earliest identified instance of the subject, from an eleventh-century Armenian Gospel-book. (Armenians were the largest non-Greek ethnicity in the Byzantine Empire.)
Ascent of the Cross, from the Vehapar Gospels, Armenia, early 11th century. Matenadaran, Yerevan, MS 10780, fol. 125v.
Art historian Thomas F. Mathews says that in the Armenian tradition, Golgotha is identified with the place where the Jewish patriarch Jacob had a vision of angels trafficking a ladder connecting heaven and earth. “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven,” Jacob exclaimed, dubbing it Bethel, Hebrew for “house of God” (Gen. 28:10–22). In Armenian manuscript illuminations, Mathews argues, the subject of Christ ascending the cross, very often followed by a depiction of Christ’s dead body descending from the cross, was thus interpreted as an extension of Jacob’s vision, as by climbing up and down the ladder of the cross, Christ opened heaven’s gate.[1]
Another Armenian Gospel-book miniature of the subject, from the early fourteenth century, is particularly striking in how it shows Christ turning, mid-climb, toward the viewer, his direct gaze engaging our pity and love.
T‘oros Taronec‘i, Ascent of the Cross, from the Gladzor Gospels, Armenia, 1300–1307. UCLA Library Special Collections, Los Angeles, Armenian MS 1, p. 283.
In some versions from Italy, Mary grabs her son around the waist, trying to prevent him from experiencing further torture. Take, for example, the panel painting by Guido da Siena that was originally part of the Madonna del Voto altarpiece in Siena’s cathedral. Her mama-bear instinct kicking in, Mary pushes away one of her son’s tormentors with one arm and with the other protectively encircles her son, unable to let him go.
Guido da Siena (Italian, Sienese, 1230–1290), Ascent of the Cross, ca. 1265–74. Tempera on poplar wood, 34.5 × 46 cm. Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, Netherlands.
Some Christians are wary of suggesting that the Mother of God would seek to deter God’s plan, but let’s remember that, devout as she was, Mary was not superhuman. The death sentence passed against her son and the violence that followed naturally unleashed a flood of emotion in her and an impulse to resist. What mother wouldn’t do everything in her power to save her child from harm? No matter how much she believed in her son’s mission, what mother wouldn’t reach out for one last embrace, if only to delay the inevitable?
That said, Mary’s gesture here may be one of attempting not to impede his ascent but to cover his nakedness. In the widely influential Meditations on the Life of Christ, a text that originated in early fourteenth-century Tuscany and circulated in Latin and all the major European vernaculars,[2] Mary responds in agony to Jesus’s being shamefully stripped for all to see, and she intervenes with a small mercy:
Oh what anguish this was to his mother, to see her most sweet son naked like this, standing like a lamb among these wicked wolves!
Then the mother, full of sorrow, went up close to her most sweet son and took the veil from her head and wrapped it around Lord Jesus Christ with bitter sorrow. And I do not know how she did not fall dead to the earth.[3]
Closely related to the Guido panel is one by an anonymous artist from Umbria or Tuscany that was the central panel of a portable altarpiece with two wings, possibly painted for the Basilica of Santa Chiara in Assisi. It depicts the Ascent of the Cross—again, with the Virgin Mary interceding—above a scene of the Funeral of Saint Clare (d. 1253), a close follower of Saint Francis and the founder of the Poor Clares religious order.
Christ Mounting the Cross and the Funeral of Saint Clare (detail), Umbria or Tuscany, 1290s. Tempera and silver leaf on panel, overall 31 1/4 × 20 3/8 in. (79.4 × 51.8 cm). Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts.
For the iconography of the Ascent of the Cross, art historian Anne Derbes identifies a possible literary source as Pseudo-Bede’s De meditatione passionis Christi: “Then, when the cross had been prepared, they [the people] cry: ‘Ascend, Jesus, ascend.’ O how freely He ascends, with what great love for us He bore everything, with what patience, what gentleness!”[4]
Terser references to this episode, Derbes points out, appear in Pseudo-Anselm’s Dialogus, which mentions that Christ “ascends the wood of the cross,”[5] and in Ambrose’s commentary on Luke, in which Ambrose remarks that “it was not his cross that Christ ascended, but ours,” and that Christ ascended the cross “as a victor ascends a triumphal chariot.”[6]
Derbes also notes the possible influence of the adoratio crucis (adoration of the cross) ritual, known in Jerusalem from the fourth century and in the West from the seventh or eighth, which states, “O Lord Jesus Christ, I adore you climbing onto the cross.”[7]
[In the tiled gallery below, click on the image to view the caption and source URL.]
The long Latin version of the Meditations, which, from the mid-fourteenth century, postdates most of the paintings shown here, also mentions the Ascent of the Cross, perhaps itself influenced by trecento visual culture:
Now diligently behold the process of Crucifixion. Two ladders are accustomed to be placed, one on the one side, the other on the other; upon these, wicked men go up, with nails and hammers; while another ladder is placed in front, reaching to that part of the Cross where the feet are to be nailed. Contemplate now each event Our Lord may have been compelled by means of this small ladder to ascend the Cross, for He does whatsoever they bid Him, humbly, without resistance or complaint. Having reached the top of the ladder, He turns Himself round, it may be, opens His arms, and extends His Hands—so royal and beautiful—and yields Himself up to His crucifiers.
. . . Some there are who think that this was not the method of Crucifixion, i.e. by making our Lord ascend a ladder before the nailing of His Body to the Cross; but that they fastened Him to the Cross when it was laid on the ground before it was raised.[8]
Interestingly, the writer, as he does elsewhere in the manuscript, allows for the possibility that the action may have occurred in one of two ways. Actually, probably neither of the two options he describes for how Christ was nailed to the cross is accurate. Ancient historians think it most likely that Jesus was nailed to the horizontal crossbeam while it lay on the ground, which was then lifted up, his body attached, and dropped into a notch in the permanently fixed vertical post.[9]
However, the Ascent of the Cross isn’t so much meant to be a literal portrayal of what happened historically as it is an expression of the theological truth that Christ went to his death voluntarily. He was not forced onto the cross against his will. The Ascent suggests divine initiative and purpose. Even in those images where Christ is being prodded by his executioners, he does not resist. Instead, he bounds onward and upward to his chosen end.
In medieval English literature, the freedom and strength of Christ in his death is often emphasized. In the Old English poem “The Dream of the Rood” from the eighth century, the cross says, “Then I saw mankind’s Lord / hasten with great zeal, as though he wanted to climb on me.”[10] In Middle English religious lyrics, which come down to us mainly through preaching manuscripts, Christ mounts the cross much like a knight does his steed, prepared for battle, but of a spiritual kind.[11]
One anomalous example of the Ascent of the Cross that I found comes from Reformation Germany. A copperplate engraving by Augustin Hirschvogel[12] shows a muscly Christ mounting the cross with three figures slung over his shoulder: a clawed, beaked, horned creature representing the devil; a skeleton representing death; and what looks like a bloated corpse, probably representing sin. The tone is triumphant, as Christ’s death defeats this formidable trio. They are nailed to the cross with him, but unlike him, never to rise.
Augustin Hirschvogel (German, 1503–1553), Christ Ascending the Cross with Sin, Death, and the Devil, 1547. Etching, 11.8 × 14.8 cm (image) / 15.1 × 14.8 cm (sheet). National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Christ Ascending the Cross with Sin, Death, and the Devil is one of a group of over one hundred etchings of biblical scenes commissioned by the Hungarian aristocrat and politician Peter Perényi (1502–1548) for his Concordance of the Old and New Testaments, first published in Vienna by the printer Aegidius Adler in 1550. Perényi selected the scenes and wrote the letterpress captions beneath them. This one reads,
Noch mer Christus am creutz uberwand Desshalben von Gott war selb gesandt Und den teueffel Hell alles band Drumb er unser erlöser ist genannt. Luc. 23e. Corinth.5f.
On the cross, it says, Christ overcame hell and the devil, and that’s why we call him “Redeemer.” The biblical citations are to the Crucifixion account in Luke 23 and to 2 Corinthians 5:14–21, which begins, “For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for the one who for their sake died and was raised” (NRSV).
A follower of Martin Luther and a friend of Philip Melanchthon, Perényi was an influential protector of Protestant preachers in the kingdom of Hungary. But his shifting political allegiances got him into trouble when in 1542 he was imprisoned by Ferdinand I, a Habsburg prince, for disloyalty. It was from a prison in Vienna that he worked on his concordance project.
All these artworks of Christ ascending the cross show his bravery, dignity, and poise in the face of persecution, his heroic self-giving that wins the world’s salvation. Despite his mother’s tearful entreaties, and despite the pain he knows is coming, he remains steadfast, his eyes fixed on the prize that will be attained on Easter morning.
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1. Thomas F. Mathews and Avedis K. Sanjian, Armenian Gospel Iconography: The Tradition of the Glajor Gospel (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1990), 131–32.
2. This text is traditionally attributed to a Franciscan friar known as Pseudo-Bonaventure and believed to have originated in Latin (title: Meditationes de vitae Christi), but Sarah McNamer has persuasively argued that its originator was a woman, a Poor Clare from Pisa, who wrote it in Italian for her fellow nuns sometime between 1300 and 1325. Within the next decade and a half, McNamara proposes, a Franciscan friar expanded and altered it to make it more didactic, creating first another Italian version (the “testo minore”) and then translating this into Latin to “authorize” it and make it more disseminatable. The long Latin text has become canonical but is, McNamara argues, inferior to the base text, compromising its narrative pacing and emotional impact. See Sarah NcNamer, Meditations on the Life of Christ: The Short Italian Text (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2018).
3. Translated by Sarah McNamer from Oxford, Bodeleian Library MS Canonici Italian 174 (the “testo breve”), in Meditations, 141.
4. “Deinde parata cruce dicunt ei, ascende, Jesu, ascende. O quam libenter ascendit, o quanto amore ista omnia pro nobis sustinuit, o quanta patientia, o quanta mansuetudo!”(PL 94:565). Translated by Anne Derbes in Picturing the Passion in Late Medieval Italy: Narrative Painting, Franciscan Ideologies, and the Levant (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 154.
6. “Non enim suam, sed nostram crucem christus ascendit” (PL 15:1923); “currum suum triumphator ascendit” (PL 15:1924). Qtd. Derbes, 242n56.
7. “Domine Ihesu Christi, adoro te in cruce ascendentem,” qtd. Derbes, 242n56, from Karl Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1933), 117–19.
8. S. Bonaventure, The Life of Christ, trans. and ed. Rev. W. H. Hutchings (London: Rivingtons, 1881), 267, xiii–xiv. Sarah McNamer says that while (what she argues is) the original Meditations text describes a crucifixion method known as jacente cruce—Christ nailed to the cross as it lies prone on the ground—the Italian recension and subsequent translations and versions that came soon after privilege the erecta cruce method, in which Christ ascends a ladder to an upright cross and thus is nailed from an elevated position (Meditations, 228n126).
9. Martin Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 25; Robin Jensen, The Cross: History, Art, and Controversy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 10.
10. “Geseah ic þā Frēan mancynnes / efstan elne micle, þæt hē mē wolde on gestīgan.”
11. The metaphor of Christ’s cross as a horse that he bravely mounts as if for battle occurs in MS Balliol 149 (cf. MSS Magdalen 93 and Trinity Dublin 277), Nicolas Bozon’s poem “Sa sele fu trop dure, et mout l’ad anguise,” MS Bodley 649, and MS Harley 2316. See Rosemary Woolf, Art and Doctrine: Essays on Medieval Literature (London: The Hambledon Press, 1986), 113–15.
12. Hirschvogel was trained as a stained-glass painter in the workshop of his father, but when his hometown of Nuremberg accepted Luther’s Protestant teachings, the workshop lost its church commissions. Hirschvogel thus pivoted to designing maps and fortification plans and, in his final decade, making landscape etchings as part of the Danube School. Richard Manly Adams Jr., “One Acquisition, Two Great Traditions at Pitts,” Reformation Notes no. 56 (Summer 2021): 5.
Bruce Herman (American, 1953–), Called, from the Woman series, 2007. Oil, alkyd resin, and 23k gold and silver leaf on wood, 58 3/4 × 48 3/4 in. Collection of Bjorn and Barbara Iwarsson, Lakeville, Minnesota.
My parents named me
for the daughter of Amram
and the Levite woman Yocheved:
prophetess with a timbrel
who cast her baby brother
on the mercies of the Nile.
Our name means Bitter Waters
like the salt-encrusted sea
into which the Jordan flows.
Or perhaps Sea of Myrrh—
that sticky precious resin
scenting the anointing oil
which Moshe once used
to consecrate the Mishkan,
the place where Presence dwelled.
My namesake had a well
which followed the Israelites
in all their wandering,*
a sweet spring in the desert
bringing clarity to the heart
of anyone who cupped their hands
and drank. Will I too
be a wellspring of Torah,
a source of living waters,
or will I stagnate here
in this backwater town
never hearing the voice of God?
* According to the Mishnah (Talmud, Taanit 9a), a well of fresh water miraculously followed Miriam, Moses’s sister, as she wandered with her people through the desert, providing a steady source of drink for all.
Rabbi Rachel Barenblat is a longtime blogger at The Velveteen Rabbi and a cofounder of Bayit, a collective of clergy, liturgists, artists, and educators that develops and distributes online Judaism resources. She holds dual ordination as a rabbi and mashpi’ah (spiritual director) and since 2011 has served as spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams, Massachusetts. She has an MFA in writing and literature from the Bennington Writing Seminars and is the author of six volumes of poetry, including 70 faces: Torah poems (Phoenicia Publishing, 2011)and Texts to the Holy (Ben Yehuda, 2018). Her work has appeared in Reform Judaism,The Wisdom Daily, The Forward, and anthologies such as The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry and The Women’s Seder Sourcebook. She has taught at Beyond Walls, a writing program for clergy of many faiths at the Kenyon Institute, and is currently serving as a visiting faculty at the Academy for Spiritual Formation.
VIDEO: “Waiting with Christ: An Artful Meditation for Holy Week”: A collaboration between Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts in Durham, North Carolina, and City Church in Cleveland, Ohio, this half-hour video from 2021 presents a small collection of scripture readings, poems, visual art, and music for Holy Week, interspersed with reflections by theologian Jeremy Begbie. The artistic selections are a spoken word performance by Paul Turner, Malcolm Guite’s sonnet “Jesus Meets His Mother,” the Adagio movement of Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major, the painting Riven Tree by Bruce Herman, and Bifrost Arts’ “Our Song in the Night,” performed by Salina Turner, Allison Negus, and Joel Negus [previously].
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ARTICLE: “6 Musical ‘Passions’ Beyond Bach” by Josh Rodriguez: Composer, professor, and Deus Ex Musica cofounder Josh Rodriguez is an excellent classical music curator and guide. In this article he introduces us to six modern large-scale musical works about Jesus’s final week: The Passion of Yeshua by Richard Danielpour, La Pasión Según San Marcos by Osvaldo Golijov, The Passion of the Christ Symphony by John Debney, Johannes-Passion by Sofia Gubaidulina, Simeron by Ivan Moody, and the St. John Passion by James MacMillan. He interweaves composer biography, musical analysis, and meaning in concise ways, with nods to music history. Stylistic influences for these diverse selections range from Byzantine chant to salsa! Audio/video excerpts are provided, such as the cued-up “¿Por qué?” from Golijov’s Pasión (see below), a movement centering on the woman who anointed Jesus’s feet with perfume (Mark 14:3–9).
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PRINT SERIES: The Passion and Its Objects (after Dürer) by Marcus Rees Roberts: “The Passion and Its Objects (after Dürer) is a series of etchings and monotypes by Marcus Rees Roberts. The images derive from fragments from Albrecht Dürer’s series of woodcuts The Small Passion (1511). Images of the Passion – and of the crucifixion in particular – are so embedded in Western consciousness that we forget that it is a depiction of betrayal, prejudice, and torture. In this version of the Passion by Dürer, one of several he made, small, everyday objects lie scattered within the images – a jug, pliers, a hammer, a coil of rope. Even five hundred years later, we recognise these objects as our own; we can identify with them. But in so doing, we enter the depicted space, and we become complicit in the cruelty. This is one reason why Dürer’s Small Passion is both so powerful and so uncomfortable.”
Marcus Rees Roberts (British, 1951–), The Passion and Its Objects (after Dürer) I, 2019. Diptych etching and aquatint with chine collé printed on Somerset Satin soft white 300gsm, each plate 29.5 × 21 cm (overall 29.5 × 42 cm). Edition of 15.
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PHOTOGRAPHY SERIES: Passion Play by Deborah Luster: “There are more than 5,300 inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Nearly 4,000 of them are serving life without parole. In 2012 and 2013 the Angola Prison Drama Club staged a play unlike any other in the prison’s experience. The Life of Jesus Christ featured 70 inmates, men and women acting together for the first time—in costume, with a real camel, performing for the general public. For the untrained actors, this production held special meaning as they saw pieces of their own lives revealed in the characters they played.”
Layla “Roach” Roberts (Inquisitor), sentenced to LIFE, Angola Prison, Louisiana. Photograph by Deborah Luster, from the Passion Play series, 2013.Bobby Wallace (Jesus), Angola Prison, Louisiana. Photograph by Deborah Luster, from the Passion Play series, 2013.
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SONGS:
>>“May I Go with You” by January Lim: This Maundy Thursday song was written in 2020 in the voice of Jesus in Gethsemane, speaking to God the Father. In the first stanza, it seems to me that Jesus is asking to be taken up to heaven, like Elijah—just whisked away back to glory, and spared tomorrow’s cruelties and pain. But in the second stanza that same request seems to shift in meaning as Jesus expresses a desire to go with God’s plan and asks for the strength to follow through. The song was released on the EP Gathered Sighs (2021), put out by Evergreen Baptist Church of Los Angeles, where Lim serves as worship arts pastor. [HT: Global Christian Worship]
O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me!
—Micah 6:3
The Reproaches (Latin: Improperia), also known by the first phrase of their refrain, “Popule meus” (O My People), are a series of antiphons and responses used in Good Friday liturgies across all three branches of Christianity. The text contrasts Old Testament stories of God’s goodness with humanity’s enactment of evil against God’s Son. Whereas God graciously delivered his people from death time and again throughout history, they delivered his Son to death—death on a cross. Thus God reproaches us, his beloved ones, for our fatal rejection of Christ, his greatest gift, lamenting that we have spurned his love.
The lyrics are reproduced below (the side-by-side formatting with English translation on the right is best viewed on a computer screen), followed by four musical settings, chosen from among dozens. In the present Roman Rite, the roman-style text is sung by a cantor and the italicized text by a choir, and the lines of the Trisagion (“Thrice Holy”), the ancient hymn that follows the first improperium, are sung by two halves of a choir in alternation—the first singing in Greek, the second in Latin. Composers working outside that context, however, may assign the sections differently.
Fra Angelico (Italian, ca. 1395–1455), Man of Sorrows, ca. 1440. Fresco, Cell 39, Convent of San Marco, Florence. Photo: Fr. Lawrence Lew, OP.
Popule meus, quid feci tibi?
Aut in quo contristavi te?
Responde mihi.
Quia eduxi te de terra Aegypti:
parasti Crucem Salvatori tuo.
Hagios o Theos.
Sanctus Deus.
Hagios Ischyros.
Sanctus fortis.
Hagios Athanatos, eleison himas.
Sanctus immortalis, miserere nobis.
Quia eduxi te per desertum quadraginta annis:
et manna cibavi te, et introduxi te in terram satis bonam:
parasti Crucem Salvatori tuo.
Hagios . . .
Quid ultra debui facere tibi, et non feci?
Ego quidem plantavi te vineam meam speciosissimam:
et tu facta es mihi nimis amara:
aceto namque sitim meam potasti:
et lancea perforasti latus Salvatori tuo.
Hagios . . .
Ego propter te flagellavi Aegyptum cum primogenitis suis:
et tu me flagellatum tradidisti.
Popule meus . . .
Ego te eduxi de Aegypto, demerso Pharone in mare Rubrum:
et tu me tradidisti principibus sacerdotum.
Popule meus . . .
Ego ante te aperui mare:
et tu aperuisti lancea latus meum.
Popule meus . . .
Ego ante te praeivi in columna nubis:
et tu me duxisti ad praetorium Pilati.
Popule meus . . .
Ego te pavi manna in desertum:
et tu me cedisti alapis et flagellis.
Popule meus . . .
Ego te potavi aqua salutis de petra:
et tu me potasti felle et aceto.
Popule meus . . .
Ego propter te Chananeorum reges percussi:
et tu percussisti arundine caput meum.
Popule meus . . .
Ego dedi tibi sceptrum regale:
et tu dedisti capiti meo spineam coronam.
Popule meus . . .
Ego te exaltavi magna virtute:
et tu me suspendisti in patibulo crucis.
Popule meus . . .
O my people, what have I done to thee? Or how have I offended thee? Answer me.
Because I led thee out of the land of Egypt: thou hast prepared a cross for thy Savior.
O holy God! O holy God! O holy strong One! O holy strong One! O holy and immortal, have mercy upon us. O holy and immortal, have mercy upon us.
Because I led thee through the desert for forty years: and fed thee with manna, and brought thee into a land exceeding good: thou hast prepared a cross for thy Savior. O holy God! . . .
What more ought I to have done for thee, that I have not done? I planted thee, indeed, my most beautiful vineyard: and thou hast become exceeding bitter to me: for in my thirst thou gavest me vinegar to drink: and with a spear thou hast pierced the side of thy Savior. O holy God! . . .
For thy sake I scourged the firstborn of Egypt: Thou hast given me up to be scourged. O my people . . .
I led thee out of Egypt, having drowned Pharaoh in the Red Sea: and thou hast delivered me to the chief priests. O my people . . .
I opened the sea before thee: and thou hast opened my side with a spear. O my people . . .
I went before thee in a pillar of cloud: and thou hast led me to the judgment hall of Pilate. O my people . . .
I fed thee with manna in the desert: and thou hast assaulted me with blows and scourges. O my people . . .
I gave thee the water of salvation from the rock: and thou hast given me gall and vinegar to drink. O my people . . .
For thy sake I struck the kings of the Canaanites: and thou hast struck my head with a reed. O my people . . .
I gave thee a royal scepter: and thou hast given a crown of thorns for my head. O my people . . .
I exalted thee with great strength: and thou hast hanged me on the gibbet of the cross. O my people . . .
First up, a traditional setting of the Latin by the Spanish Renaissance composer Tomás Luis de Victoria (ca. 1548–1611) [previously], performed by Ensemble Invocatio under the direction of Daniel Knaggs in 2022 at Seminary Church in Warsaw, Poland. The soloist is Łukasz Dziuba. This four-part motet is the most widely performed setting of the Reproaches.
This setting in English by the British composer John Sanders (1933–2003) has become standard repertoire for many English cathedral and church choirs. Sanders first wrote it in 1984 for a Good Friday service at Gloucester Cathedral, where he served as organist, but it wasn’t published until 1993. It’s performed here by the Ely Cathedral Choir, conducted by Sarah MacDonald, from 2018. Whereas Victoria scored his setting for four voices (SATB), Sanders scored his for eight (SSAATTBB), creating more complex harmonies, including dissonance.
3. “Popule meus” by Filipe Faria and Sérgio Peixoto (2015)
In 1999 Portuguese composers Filipe Faria (b. 1976) and Sérgio Peixoto (b. 1974) founded Sete Lágrimas ECMC (Early and Contemporary Music Consort) to create dialogues between medieval, Renaissance, and early Baroque music on the one hand and contemporary music on the other. Their “Popule meus,” which includes just the opening refrain, is from their Missa Mínima, a minimalistic setting for two voices and recorder of the five parts of the Catholic Mass, along with other important liturgical texts. They began composing it in 1999, put it on the back burner for a while, and returned to it later, completing it in 2015. In this 2016 recording, the singers are Faria and Peixoto. The melodic embellishment on the syllable -sta in contristavi (literally “saddened” but more often translated in this song as “offended” or “distressed”) creates a tense quivering effect, a climax before the languid return to the title phrase and a petering off with “Responde mihi.”
American singer-songwriter Paul Zach wrote this condensed version of the Reproaches with frequent collaborator Kate Bluett [previously], which puts the words in the voice of the people, who assume and repent of their responsibility for Jesus’s death—for no matter our temporal or geographical proximity to the event, it was our sin that led him to and held him on the cross. Transferring the speaker from God to the Christian for the whole duration helps make the song more suitable for congregational singing, as it can then function as a corporate confession.
You delivered us from Pharaoh; We delivered you to death. You gave manna in the desert; We gave a crown of thorns for your head.
You brought us out of slavery Into the promised land; We brought you up to Calvary And pierced your feet and hands.
Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, Have mercy, mercy, Have mercy on us.
You opened up the Red Sea; We opened up your side. “Come down, come down,” we mocked you; “My God, my God,” you cried.
Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, Have mercy, mercy, Have mercy on us.
Zach told me he’s not fully satisfied with the song and is working on a rewrite that he may release in 2024. Nonetheless, I really like what he and Bluett have created here! And I appreciate how it brings the Reproaches into an indie-folk idiom, making that long-standing sung portion of the global church’s Good Friday liturgy accessible to those who find it difficult to connect with choral music or chant.
Addendum, 3/21/23: Rev. Bill Combs from Greensboro, Georgia, has just reminded me of a contemporary adaptation of the text of the Reproaches by Janet Morley, a liturgist from the UK. It’s from her wonderful collection All Desires Known, a resource for public worship and private devotion, and can be read here. Combs’s church, Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, chants this text as part of their annual Good Friday service using Tone II.1.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has in its collection a Byzantine Crucifixion ivory from Constantinople with an unusual figure at the bottom: a burly, bearded man in a reclining position, being stabbed through his belly by the cross. The Greek inscription clues us in to his identity: “The Cross Implanted in the Stomach of Hades.” This is the ruler of the underworld being subdued by Christus Victor, the conquering Christ!
Icon with the Crucifixion, made in Constantinople, mid-10th century. Ivory, 5 15/16 × 3 1/2 in. (15.1 × 8.9 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Hades is associated with death. The New Testament writers use the word, roughly equivalent to the Hebrew Sheol, to refer to the unseen realm of the dead, where people’s souls reside between death and the general resurrection, or sometimes to the grave, the place of bodily decay.
The iconography of Hades being stabbed is unique among surviving Byzantine representations of the Crucifixion, though it is present in some depictions of the Anastasis (Resurrection), known in English as the Harrowing of Hell.
There is also an ancient literary tradition of Hades experiencing gastric troubles in response to Christ’s redemptive work—either being speared through his midsection with Jesus’s cross, or his stomach churning in nervous anticipation of Jesus’s approach. Byzantine art curator Margaret English Frazer cites several such examples in her essay “Hades Stabbed by the Cross of Christ”:
“With this precious weapon [the cross] Christ tore apart the voracious stomach of Hades and blocked the treacherous fully opened jaws of Satan. Seeing this, Death quaked and was terrified, and released all whom he held beginning with the first man.”—Ephrem the Syrian, “Sermo in pretiosam et vivicam crucem” (Sermon on the Precious and Life-Giving Cross)
In the Gospel of Nicodemus, Hades frets to Satan about Jesus’s coming to the underworld after his crucifixion: “I not long ago swallowed down one dead, Lazarus by name; and not long after, one of the living by a single word dragged him up by force out of my bowels: and I think that it was he of whom thou speakest. If, therefore, we receive him here, I am afraid lest perchance we be in danger even about the rest. For, lo, all those that I have swallowed from eternity I perceive to be in commotion, and I am pained in my belly.”
In the Gospel of Bartholomew, upon hearing footsteps descending the stairs to his abode, Hades says, “My belly is rent, and mine inward parts are pained: it cannot be but that God cometh hither.”
In a sermon among the spuria of John Chrysostom of the fifth to seventh century, the infernal serpent laments that a nail is implanted in his heart and a wooden lance pierces him, tearing him apart. (“In adorationem venerandae crucis,” Patrologia Graeca 62, col. 748)
Hades, to the snake: “Let us both bitterly lament, Since in His descent He has attacked my stomach, So that I vomit forth those whom I formerly devoured. But now lament with me, for we are despoiled of our common glory.” —Romanos the Melodist, Fourth Hymn of the Resurrection, trans. Marjorie Carpenter in Kontakia of Romanos, Byzantine Melodist
Again, Hades, crying out: “I am pierced in the stomach; I do not digest the One whom I devoured; Just so, on the third day, the whale disgorged Jonas. Now I disgorge Christ and all of those who are Christ’s; Because of the race of Adam I am being chastised.” —Romanos the Melodist, Fifth Hymn of the Resurrection, trans. Marjorie Carpenter in Kontakia of Romanos, Byzantine Melodist
But again, the context of all these passages is Christ’s descent into Hades, part of the resurrection narrative celebrated on Easter. Is there any precedent for Hades being stabbed at the moment of Christ’s death?
Frazer identifies the most likely literary inspiration for our anonymous ivory carver as Romanos the Melodist’s hymn “On the Triumph of the Cross” from the sixth century, which was sung on Good Friday in the Byzantine church. Here’s an excerpt, translated from the Greek by Marjorie Carpenter:
Pilate fixed three crosses on Golgotha, Two for the robbers, and one for the Giver of life. When Hades saw Him, he said to those below: “O my priests and forces, who has fixed the nail in my heart? A wooden spear has pierced me suddenly and I am torn apart. I am in pain—internal pain; I have a bellyache; My senses make my spirit quiver, And I am forced to vomit forth Adam and those descended from Adam, given to me by a tree. The tree leads them back Again into Paradise.”
Satan tries to calm Hades, but he is inconsolable in his defeat, replying,
“Run and uncover your eyes, and see The root of the tree within my spirit; It has gone down into my vitals, So that like iron it will draw up Adam.”
As is common in the New Testament and early patristic writings, Romanos interprets the Crucifixion as Christ’s victory over death. Through Christ’s self-sacrifice, death is disemboweled, no longer posing a threat. The gates of eternal life with God are now opened.
As I study this tenth-century ivory, I wonder who first owned it and how it supported their faith, and I marvel that after more than a thousand years, this precious object still beckons and speaks. It is the central panel of a small triptych whose two wings are now lost. Its diminutive size—no bigger than a hand—means it was likely a personal devotional object.
The artist places the scene under a baldachin. Jesus’s arms are extended over the crossbeam and his feet rest on a suppedaneum, below which three seated soldiers cast lots for his cloak. The Virgin Mary and Saint John stand on either side in an attitude of mourning. But their tears will soon give way to rejoicing, because the cross’s wooden stake plunges decisively into the stomach of Hades, doing him in; see the blood welling up at the wound. The cross is portrayed as the weapon with which Christ wins humanity’s salvation.
This is a symbolic image, one that manifests physically the metaphysical drama playing out beneath the surface of things. Hades embodies death, the opposite of life, so his impalement represents an end to his reign of terror. Symbolism is a common tool of the religious artist for signposting the viewer toward an invisible spiritual truth, and here the artist uses it to show how Christ has, surprisingly, vanquished death by death.
Mariia Bilas (Марія Білас) (née Ivaniuta) (Ukrainian, 1992–), Crucifixion, 2015. Tempera and gold leaf on canvas, 40 × 50 cm.
one
he lays his left hand along the beam
hand that moulded clay into fluttering birds*
hand that cupped wildflowers to learn their peace
hand that stroked the bee’s soft back and touched death’s sting
two
he stretches his right hand across the grain
hand that blessed a dead corpse quick
hand that smeared blind spittle into sight
hand that burgeoned bread, smoothed down the rumpled sea
three
he stands laborious
sagging, split
homo erectus, poor bare forked thing
hung on nails like a picture
he is not beautiful
blood sweats from him in rain
far off where we are lost, desert dry
thunder begins its quiet roar
the first drops startle us alive
the cloud no bigger
than a man’s hand
* According to a legend first recorded in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, when Jesus was a child he molded sparrows out of clay and then brought them to life. This episode is also referenced in the Qur’an 5:110.
This poem appears in Faith in Her Words: Six Centuries of Women’s Poetry, compiled by Veronica Zundel (Oxford: Lion Books, 1991). Used by permission of the author.
Veronica Zundel is a writer of Christian books, articles, and poetry, living in London. She was born in England in 1953 to Austrian refugee parents (her mother was Jewish) and graduated with a BA in English from Oxford University in 1975. She came to faith in a Baptist church as a teenager and spent time in the Church of England and the Mennonite Church before joining the Methodist congregation she worships with now. Her books include Crying for the Light: Bible Readings and Reflections for Living with Depression, Everything I Know about God I’ve Learned from Being a Parent, and The Lion Book of Famous Prayers, and she contributes regularly to periodicals such as New Daylight and Woman Alive.
NEW ALBUM: Lent Hymns by Paul Zach: Released this month, Lent Hymns by Paul Zach comprises twelve songs, a mix of originals and classics, with contributions by IAMSON, Jessica Fox, Sara Groves, Jon Guerra, and Kate Bluett. The LP is available wherever music is streamed or sold. Here’s an Instagram video that excerpts “Draw Me In”:
KICKSTARTER: New Porter’s Gate album: This summer The Porter’s Gate, an interdenominational Christian music collective, is gathering songwriters to write and record musical settings of passages from The Message, a translation of the Bible by the late Eugene Peterson [previously] that uses contemporary idioms and phrases. The project is in partnership with the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. I’m so looking forward to this!
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SONGS:
>> “Вечірня молитва” (Vechirnya molytva) (Evening Prayer): A choral setting of a text from the Divine Service of the Eastern Orthodox Church, by contemporary Ukrainian composer Iryna Aleksiychuk. Performed in 2012 by the Female Choir of Kiev Glier Institute of Music, conducted by G. Gorbatenko. [HT: Global Christian Worship]
English translation:
Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of Truth, Who art everywhere present and fillest all things, Treasury of good things, and Giver of life: Come and abide in us, and cleanse us from every sin, And save our souls, O Good One! Holy God, holy Mighty, holy Immortal, Have mercy on us.
>> “Bare and Bones” by Candace Coker: Trinidad-born, Vancouver-based singer-songwriter Candace Coker sings the title track from her new album, Bare and Bones, with her boyfriend, Josiah Charleau. The video is shot at Bamboo Cathedral, a thousand-foot stretch of roadway in Tucker Valley in Chaguaramas, Trinidad and Tobago, where bamboo stalks bend toward each other across the road, creating a canopy.
>> “HigherHoly” by IAMSON:IAMSON is the artist name of singer-songwriter and music producer Orlando Palmer, based in Richmond, Virginia. He released this song as a single in 2020. The rap is performed by guest artist Marv (Marvin Hudgins II) of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the animation in the video is by Kenya Foster.
>> “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever” (cover) by Mary Yang and Ger Vang: Mary Yang and Ger Vang are Hmong Christian musicians living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (The Hmong are an Indigenous people group from East and Southeast Asia.) Here they perform their bossa nova arrangement of this modern worship classic by Martin Smith of the English band Delirious?. Yang and Vang are part of the Fishermen’s Project, a band that releases mainly classic hymns translated into the Hmong language. [HT: Global Christian Worship]
Sister Kim Ok-soon (김옥순 수녀), The Bread of Life from Heaven (하늘에서 내려온 생명의 빵), 2014
Stars sing, light-years deep in silent space.
In a bottle’s neck God’s Ghost sings
as the wine is poured.
Out on the edge of eternity, the Father
sees the Lamb slain ere the world is formed.
A soft cough splits the silence of this room
light-years below the wheeling stars.
A hollow prayer; give it breath, O Ghost,
let roar a wind like that which shook
the bones in Vision Vale.
For vision, God spills bread crumbs on the board.
His stars sing, light-years deep in silent space.
Here, emblems speak a mystery of brokenness:
the shattering of him by whom all things consist.
Keith Patman is an occasional poet whose primary vocation is Bible translation. Since 1982 he has worked for Wycliffe Bible Translators, assisting with the translation of scripture into the languages of West and Central Africa. He lived in Cameroon from 1987 to 1995, working on a Nugunu New Testament, and now serves from the US as part of an international team providing tools and training to African translators. He currently lives in Waynesboro, Virginia, with his wife, Jaci, who is a Presbyterian minister. They have two grown children and six grandchildren.
I’ve received a few requests from followers to resume my monthly thirty-song playlists. I had previously thought I’d stick to publishing these during Ordinary Time, since I have longer, thematic playlists for the seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent (our current place in the calendar), and Easter—which you can find on my Spotify profile. But I’m happy to oblige! Here’s a new playlist for March:
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ESSAY: “Victor Hugo’s Masterpiece of Impossibility” by Caitrin Keiper, Plough: A wonderful essay on how competing vows in the novel and musical Les Misérables reveal the paradox of grace. I’ve been captivated by this story of mercy, forgiveness, and transformation set in revolutionary France ever since I saw the 1998 film adaptation starring Liam Neeson in middle school. The faith-inspired actions of Bishop Myriel at the beginning set the life of the protagonist Jean Valjean, an escaped convict, on a trajectory that is beautiful to watch unfold, and the downfall of the law-obsessed Inspector Javert, who cannot bring himself to accept the grace offered him, is most tragic.
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PODCAST EPISODES:
>> Season 2, episode 2, of Gather Round, on the DPP’s Lent 2023 Living Prayer Periodical: On the in-house podcast of Grace Mosaic in Washington, DC, three of my four Daily Prayer Project colleagues and I walk listeners through the latest edition of our prayer periodical, which covers the six weeks of Lent. The conversation starts at 3:46. Rev. Joel Littlepage, curator of the liturgies and songs, highlights a litany to the Servant-Christ from Andhra Theological College in Hyderabad, India, and a song by Pastor Antonio Rivera González of Mexico (see below). Ashley Williams, who commissions or secures reproduction rights for the practice-based essays and curates the photographs throughout, shares some teasers for “Calling Out to God in Lament” by Nina Barnes and “Intractable Sin, Preemptory Prayer” by Alicia Akins.
The Daily Prayer Project’s Lent 2023 booklet, featuring scripture, prayers, practical essays, art, and music from diverse contributors, is available in print and digital formats.
As curator of the art on the cover and in the Gallery section, I discuss the marble sculpture Condemned to Death by Chang Dong Ho (장동호) (see more by the artist), the mixed-media piece Gathering Fragments 1 by C. F. John, the photograph Untitled #10, Flushing, NY from the Stranger Fruit series by Jon Henry, and the painted woodcarving Qwi:qwelstom (Halkomelem, a Coast Salish language, for “Balance and Harmony”) by Don Froese.
At 32:44–35:06, our theological editor, Rev. Russ Whitfield, discusses a theological method that has informed our work at the DPP called triperspectivalism (or multiperspectivalism), which says that we can enrich our perspective, limited on its own, by looking at things from different angles, especially those revealed to us by other people and cultures. For a snippet of the Herman Bavinck quote, see here. What Russ says is SO GOOD! I believe our prayerbooks stand out from other similar projects in that they are deliberately cross-cultural—not because it’s trendy, but because there is so much beauty and wisdom we are missing by not availing ourselves of the many resources of the global church. Our content is also cross-historical.
There are subscription options for individuals (you receive a print edition and a digital download link) and groups (digital access, with bulk-printing options). You can also buy a single copy, but it’s cheaper to purchase a monthly subscription and then cancel after you receive your edition if you don’t wish to continue. We publish six editions a year, each following the same format but filled with new content for the given season.
>> “Lent: Season of Repentance, Renewal . . . and Rebellion” with Esau McCaulley, For the Life of the World: Here Rev. Dr. Esau McCaulley—associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, and award-winning author of Reading While Black—talks about the Christian practice of Lent as a collective wisdom passed down through generations of Jesus followers, as well as a spiritual rebellion against mainstream American culture, which has its own established rhythms that shape how we spend our money, when we feast, and what we celebrate.
McCaulley spent the first twenty-one years of his life in the Black Baptist church and the past twenty in a high-liturgical tradition, both of which have been formative for him. One thing he appreciates about liturgy (both the yearly calendar and the elements within a worship service), he says, is how it helps him more fully inhabit the story of Christ. He construes Lent as a season of repentance and grace; he points out the justice practices of Lent; he walks through a Christian understanding of death, and the beautiful practice of stripping the altars on Maundy Thursday; and he’s emphatic about how Lent is a guided season of pursuing the grace to find, or perhaps return to, yourself as God has called you to be. These ideas are expanded upon in his new book, Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal, from IVP’s Fullness of Time series.
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SONGS:
>> “Divino compañero del camino” (O Lord, Divine Companion): Written in 1964 by Antonio Rivera of Mexico, this popular Spanish-language song is performed here by Karina Moreno and Joseph Espinoza. It’s based on Luke 24:28–32, from the postresurrection story of the walk to and supper at Emmaus, but its pilgrimage aspect—the idea of Jesus as a companion on our life journey—makes it appropriate for Lent. [HT: The Daily Prayer Project]
>> “Yeshu Ji Mere Paap Kshama Kar Do” (Lord Jesus, Forgive My Sins): A Hindi song of confession with words by the late Shri Jalal Masih and music by his granddaughter, Mercy Sharon Masih. Mercy sings it here with her father, Hanook Masih. For an English translation, click the “CC” button. [HT: Global Christian Worship]
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ARTICLE: “The Blood Collages of John Bingley Garland (ca. 1850–60),”Public Domain Review: Peruse the so-called Victorian Blood Book, an eccentricity made by the British politician and fishmonger John Bingley Garland as a wedding gift for his daughter Amy in 1854. It consists of forty-one collages whose sources are engravings by William Blake and various other religious artists, botanical and zoological illustrations, photographs of medieval tombs, and other images from nineteenth-century books, but with one distinguishing decorative addition by Garland’s hand: drops of blood in red India ink, presumably signifying the blood of Christ. The pages also bear extensive handwritten religious commentary.
Detail from a page of John Bingley Garland’s “Blood Book” (ca. 1850–60), featuring a cut-out from a reproduction of William Blake’s engraving The Soul exploring the recesses of the Grave.
The Blood Book transferred from the collection of novelist Evelyn Waugh to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin upon Waugh’s death, and they identify it as “the single most curious object in the entire library.” Though modern eyes may see the collages as surreal or even grotesque, Garland’s descendants regarded them as nothing other than “a precious reminder of the love of family and Our Lord,” as they have written. The Harry Ransom Center has digitized the full book.
Art & Theology 