Visual Art – Page 35 – Art & Theology

Advent, Day 15: Great Joy River

December 11, 2022January 5, 2023 Victoria Emily Jones3 Comments

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God . . .

It has a great, high wall with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, . . . and the twelve gates are twelve pearls. . . .

I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. . . .

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

—Revelation 21:1–2, 12, 21–25; 22:1–5

LOOK: The New Heaven by Leroy Almon

Almon, Leroy_The New Heaven — Leroy Almon (American, 1938–1997), *The New Heaven*, 1984. Carved wood, light bulbs, artificial pearls, glue, glitter, plastic letters, paint, 36 × 28 in. (91.4 × 71.1 cm). Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio. [object record]

This mixed-media depiction of heaven by African American folk artist Leroy Almon draws on imagery from the book of Revelation, showing centrally a crystal-bright river, the water of life, flowing forth from the mouth of God (Rev. 22:1–2). It courses through the paradisal scene, past the tree with its twelve fruits and healing leaves, and is pumped into twelve fountains, from which Black and white people drink together. Across lines of race, the new-city dwellers unite in worship, fellowship, and play. Notice the group of children with the ball in the bottom register!

For a framing device, Almon has used two wooden doors that bow out, as if the scene in all its fullness cannot be contained; as if the borders of the new city must bend to embrace the multitudes and their joy. The shape communicates an expansiveness that is the heart of God.

God is shown as majestic, mountain-like, and yet bearing a tender expression. The plastic beads on his forehead are printed with letters that read, “THE NEW HEAVEN,” and his eyes (not lit in this photo) are battery-powered light bulbs! He is, as John the Revelator tells us, the unending light dispelling all darkness.

Almon was born in 1938, so for about the first three decades of his life, he lived in a country where racial segregation was enforced legally in many states and socially in others. By and large, Blacks and whites were made to live in separate neighborhoods, attend separate schools, swim in separate pools, eat at separate restaurants, drink from separate water fountains, pass through separate public building entrances, wait in separate waiting rooms, sit in separate sections of the bus and the theater and even (woe is us) the church, and so on. Even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, mandating desegregation, racial prejudices and hostilities continued to persist, as they do today. And because sinful human beings create and run systems (criminal legal, economic, educational, medical, etc.), it’s no surprise that the sin of racism can be found there as well.

Almon longed to see racial justice and (re)conciliation, and he knew Jesus has the power to make it happen. Almon’s preaching ministry went hand-in-hand with his art making. Through both, he shared the good news that Jesus, through his life, death, and resurrection, calls us to a new way of being in the world, which involves repentance of sin and turning to the divine light of love that knows no bounds. His New Heaven envisions a world saved and transformed by Christ’s love, where power is shared equally, forgiveness sought and granted, and friendship is the order of the day, as is a shared rejoicing in the greatness of God. In The New Heaven, Black and white praise Jesus side-by-side, eat at the tree of life together, and put their lips to the same bubbling fount of living water.

And not only are relationships healed and humanity restored to its original harmony in the new heaven, but also personal sorrows and hardships are no more. Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, socially, we flourish in the light of God that never dims.

For more on Leroy Almon, see this Art & Theology Lenten devotional post from earlier this year.

LISTEN: “Great Rejoicing” by Thad Cockrell, on To Be Loved (2009) | Performed by Rain for Roots, feat. Sandra McCracken and Skye Peterson, on Waiting Songs (2015)

There’s gonna be a great rejoicing (2×)

The troubles of this world
Will wither up and die
That river of tears made by the lonely
Someday will be dry
There’s gonna be a great rejoicing

There’s gonna be a great joy river (2×)

Questions of this world
Someday will be known
Who’s robbing you of peace
And who’s the giver

There’s gonna be a great joy river

Someday you will find me
Guarded in His fortress
Open heart and wings
That never touch the ground
Someday we will gather
In a grand reunion
Debts of this old world
Are nowhere to be found
Nowhere to be found

There’s gonna be a great rejoicing (5×)

We are now halfway through Advent! Many of the songs featured in this Advent series, including today’s, appear on my Advent Playlist. I also have a companion Christmastide Playlist, which has been revised and expanded since last year to include some choral selections.

Advent, Day 14: Joseph

December 10, 2022December 10, 2022 Victoria Emily Jones5 Comments

LOOK: Saint Joseph by Antoine Alexandre Morel

Morel, Antoine Alexandre_Saint Joseph — Antoine Alexandre Morel (French, 1765–1829), *Saint Joseph* (after Jean Baptiste Joseph Wicar), 1787. Etching and engraving, 12 5/16 × 9 1/4 in. (31.2 × 23.5 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Poor Joseph. His fiancée is pregnant, and the baby’s not his. What else is a man to think, but that she was unfaithful? The news cuts him like a knife. Why is Mary making up this ridiculous story about an angel and an overshadowing and divine seed? I mean, really. A complex stew of emotions simmers within him—anger, frustration, confusion, disappointment, embarrassment, sadness, disgust, fear.

In a rare type of iconography, the eighteenth-century French printmaker Antoine Alexandre Morel, copying a painting by Jean-Baptiste Wicar (which I’ve not been able to locate), shows Joseph in this distressed state of mind, cogitating over next steps. He’s seated at an open window in his woodshop, a cityscape visible in the background, holding a blank scroll. I’m assuming this is the writ of divorce he’s considering drawing up against Mary (Matt. 1:19). Rather than bring her to court on the charge of adultery and subject her to (potentially capital) punishment (Deut. 22:21 prescribes death by stoning for adulterers), the Gospel-writer tells us, Joseph opts to “put [Mary] away privily,” discreetly ending their betrothal with the legal paperwork. Joseph doesn’t want a spectacle, and he doesn’t want retribution. Though Mary hurt him deeply, he still cares for her.

A sprig of lilies lies across Joseph’s lap, alluding to an ancient legend that he was chosen from among other men to wed Mary by the miraculous blossoming of his staff. That the Roman Catholic Church assigns Hosea 14:5—“The just man shall blossom like the lily”—as one of the readings for Joseph’s feast day, March 19, further establishes the lily as his emblem.

This scene takes place shortly before Joseph receives an angelic visit of his own, corroborating Mary’s account.

LISTEN: “Joseph, Who Understood” by The New Pornographers, on The Spirit of Giving (2007)

Rumors are flying
All over Galilee these days
And Mary, I’m trying to be cool
When my friends walk by ’em
They cannot look at me in the eye
Baby, I’m trying

You’re asking me to believe in too many things
You’re asking me to believe in too many things

I know this child
Was sent here to heal our broken time
And some things are bigger than we know
When somehow you find out
That you are stepfather to a god
Well, Mary, that’s life

But you’re asking me to believe in so many things
You’re asking me to believe in so many things

Oh Mary, is he mine?
(Mary, is he mine?)
Mary, is he mine?
(Mary, is he mine?)
Oh Mary, is he mine?
(Mary, is he mine?)
Tell me, is he?

You’re asking me to believe in too many things
You’re asking me to believe in too many things

Now, Mary, he is mine
(Mary, he is mine)
Mary, he is mine
(Mary, is he mine?)
Yeah, Mary, he is mine
(Mary, he is mine)

You’re asking me to believe in so many things
You’re asking me to believe in so many things

This song by the Canadian indie-rock band The New Pornographers (despite their unsavory name, their website is clean!) explores Joseph’s internal conflict in the weeks after learning of Mary’s pregnancy and her wild story of how it happened. The second stanza suggests that the angel has already appeared to him to affirm Mary’s integrity and that he has committed to staying the course with her. Yet still, he wavers between doubt and belief and continues to battle the shame of being publicly perceived as the cuckolded husband.

He asks repeatedly, “Is he [the baby] mine?” He eventually gets to the point where he takes ownership of his role as father, even though he didn’t contribute his genetic material. This isn’t how he wanted to build his family, but like Mary, he accepts the strange and terrifying calling.

The refrain (“You’re asking me to believe in too many things”) is voiced to Mary, but it also extends out to God. Joseph is asked to believe that the child inside his fiancée’s womb was conceived by the Holy Spirit, that the child is the long-awaited Messiah who will deliver Israel, that the child is in fact God enfleshed, that he and Mary are capable of parenting this God-boy, and that through all this newly charted territory, God will guide and sustain them, and everything will work out just fine. The magnitude of these asks is overwhelming! No wonder Joseph is reeling.

But thanks be to God that Joseph stepped forward in faith, bolstered, no doubt, by the faith of his partner and by the work of the Spirit in him. He didn’t understand it all, but he was willing to learn as he went, and to let God direct. What he did understand was that something bigger than his own dreams and life plans was at play here, and that something was worth following.

Advent, Day 13: Magnificat

December 9, 2022December 11, 2025 Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

LOOK: Behold My Miracle by Fred Carter

Carter, Fred_Behold My Miracle — Fred J. Carter (American, 1911–1992), *Behold My Miracle*, 1980. Walnut, 55 × 20 in. Collection of Mary Carter Owens and Vel-Holly Fleming. Photo: Dan Meyers, courtesy of the American Visionary Art Museum.

Born in 1911 in the mountains of southwestern Virginia, Fred Jerome Carter spent the first few decades of his adulthood as a hardware merchant. In 1938 he married Eloise Davis, and in 1950 they adopted their first and only son, Ross.

In his late forties, Carter began to pursue art making, taking a beginner’s painting class, his only formal artistic training. But wood sculpting is the medium for which he became best known. Writer and documentary filmmaker Jack Wright classifies Carter’s art as “Appalachian art brut,” art brut (“raw art”) being a French term coined by modern artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art made outside the academic tradition.

In 1970 Carter was devastated when his son, having returned as a Marine from Vietnam, hanged himself. He and Eloise divorced shortly after, and Carter opened the Ross Carter Gallery, named in his son’s honor, where he started showing his own work. Below the gallery he established the Cumberland Museum to exhibit a large collection of pioneer tools and artifacts (having to do, for example, with farming, mining, spinning, and moonshining) that provided a window into Appalachian culture and history. It’s there that he met Vickie Hill, whom he later married. Vickie gave birth to Carter’s first biological child, Holly, in 1983, when Carter was seventy-two. Their daughter Mary was born two years later.

Carter created Behold My Miracle two years before Vickie’s first pregnancy, but he retroactively identified the figure with her. In a 1980 interview with Wright for Headwaters Television, he describes how the sculpture came about:

I was back, at Easter [1980], in the mountains, and a fellow was sawing up firewood. Now this was part of a walnut log . . . cut down forty or fifty years ago. . . . There was a limb going up through here about ten feet long. I said, “Don’t cut that up for wood. . . . I see something in this that I want to make. . . . I see a pregnant woman.” . . . So I brought it home and began to look at it. . . . The wood began to talk to me and tell me what it is. . . .

So, I will probably call this Behold My Miracle. That’s what the mother is saying and I am trying to get her to say, in the position of her hand and the look on her face, that this is truly the great miracle. . . . As though she is saying, “Behold me, in my greatest moment of the miracle!”

LISTEN: “The Glory of Jah” by Sinéad O’Connor and Ronald Tomlinson, on Theology (2007) – The acoustic version in the video below, which appears on disc 1 of the album, was recorded live at The Sugar Club in Dublin.

There is no Holy One like you
You install kings and take them down
Truly there is no one beside you
You made all of creation with wisdom

Refrain:
May the glory of Jah endure forever
The boughs of the mighty are broken
And the weak are clothed with strength

There is the sea, vast and wide
With all its creatures beyond number
There go the ships, they all look to you
You lift up the poor into a place of honor [Refrain]

Jah makes poor or he makes rich
The pillars of the earth belong to him
And he has set his world upon them
To raise us up from the dunghill [Refrain]

The eighth full-length album by Irish singer-songwriter Sinéad O’Connor, Theology is a collection of mostly original spiritual songs in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It’s saturated with scripture. It contains:

The opening (and my favorite) “Something Beautiful,” which starts out in O’Connor’s own voice and ends with quotations of Jeremiah 6:14 and 2:32, where God expresses compassion and longing for his people
“Out of the Depths,” a lament for the ways in which organized religion binds God and makes him hard to access, bookended by verses from Psalm 130
Seven settings/adaptations of Hebrew Bible passages: “33” (Ps. 33); “Whomsoever Dwells” (Ps. 91); “Rivers of Babylon” (Ps. 137); “If You Had a Vineyard” (Isa. 5:1–7); “Dark I Am Yet Lovely” (Song of Sol. 1:5–6; 3:1; 5:4, 15–16; 8:7); “Watcher of Men” (Job 3:11–19; 7:20; 10:4–7; 19:6, 13, 7, 10; 42:3–6); and “The Glory of Jah” (based primarily on 1 Sam. 2:1–10).
A traditional Palm Sunday antiphon, “Hosanna Filio David”
Curtis Mayfield’s “We People Who Are Darker Than Blue,” which O’Connor says is as prophetic as any biblical text
“I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from Webber and Rice’s 1971 rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar

O’Connor grew up Catholic and, until converting to Islam in 2018, identified as such, though she has always been unorthodox. Frustrated by the spiritual vapidness of the pop music industry in which she had found fame, in the early 2000s she studied theology at a college in Dublin, looking to connect more deeply with her religious heritage. Her favorite instructor, the Irish Dominican priest Wilfred Harrington, taught a course on the Prophets, reviving her interest in the biblical material that had so fascinated her as a youth. During this time, she was considering leaving her music career, but Fr. Harrington suggested that she set some scripture texts to music and see what happens. She took his advice, and the result is Theology, which she dedicated to Fr. Harrington. Listen to a ten-minute interview with O’Connor about the album, from the limited-edition Theology DVD released in 2008.

When I first heard “The Glory of Jah,” I thought it was a condensation of Mary’s Magnificat, which she voiced upon visiting her cousin Elizabeth following their mutual unexpected pregnancies—Elizabeth with John the Baptist, and Mary with the Christ:

My soul magnifies the Lord,
    and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant.
    Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
    and holy is his name;
indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him
    from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
    he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones
    and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things
    and sent the rich away empty.
He has come to the aid of his child Israel,
    in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
    to Abraham and to his descendants forever. (Luke 1:46–55)

But as I listened more closely and flipped through my Bible to match phrases, I realized that O’Connor’s song is actually a pastiche of Old Testament verses from 1 Samuel, Daniel, and the Psalms, the primary source text being Hannah’s song of thanksgiving:

My heart exults in the LORD;
    my strength is exalted in my God.
My mouth derides my enemies
    because I rejoice in your victory.

There is no Holy One like the Lord,
    no one besides you;
    there is no Rock like our God.
Talk no more so very proudly;
    let not arrogance come from your mouth,
for the LORD is a God of knowledge,
    and by him actions are weighed.
The bows of the mighty are broken,
    but the feeble gird on strength.
Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread,
    but those who were hungry are fat with spoil.
The barren has borne seven,
    but she who has many children is forlorn.
The LORD kills and brings to life;
    he brings down to Sheol and raises up.
The LORD makes poor and makes rich;
    he brings low; he also exalts.
He raises up the poor from the dust;
    he lifts the needy from the ash heap
to make them sit with princes
    and inherit a seat of honor.
For the pillars of the earth are the LORD’s,
    and on them he has set the world.

He will guard the feet of his faithful ones,
    but the wicked will perish in darkness,
    for not by might does one prevail.
The LORD! His adversaries will be shattered;
    the Most High will thunder in heaven.
The LORD will judge the ends of the earth;
    he will give strength to his king
    and exalt the power of his anointed. (1 Sam. 2:1–10)

Hannah, an ancient Jew, prayed these words at the tabernacle at Shiloh upon dedicating her firstborn son, Samuel, to God’s service, as he was conceived after many hard years of infertility and anguished prayer. Mary’s song, which came some ten centuries later, picks up themes from Hannah’s, so it’s no wonder I originally misidentified O’Connor’s source. Mary would have known Hannah’s song from having heard it read in synagogue, and, as Mary’s son would also be set apart for divine service, perhaps she found a special kinship with this ancestral sister. Mary was also spiritually formed by the Psalms, another influence on her Magnificat composition; their words were deep in her bones, naturally coming out in effusions of praise.

Both Hannah and Mary praise God’s kindness, authority, and eternal plan, emphasizing his mercy toward the poor and the humble. Both songs are thematically linked to Psalm 113:5–8:

Who is like the LORD our God,
    who is seated on high,
who looks far down
    on the heavens and the earth?
He raises the poor from the dust
    and lifts the needy from the ash heap,
to make them sit with princes,
    with the princes of his people.

Now returning to O’Connor’s song: Line 2 has a corollary in Daniel 2:21, “he . . . deposes kings and sets up kings.” And the second verse seems inspired by Psalm 104:24–26, 31:

O LORD, how manifold are your works!
    In wisdom you have made them all;
    the earth is full of your creatures.
There is the sea, great and wide;
    creeping things innumerable are there,
    living things both small and great.
There go the ships
    and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

May the glory of the LORD endure forever;
    may the LORD rejoice in his works . . .

When referring to God, O’Connor uses the Rastafari name for him, “Jah,” a shortened form of “Jehovah.” She had recorded her previous album, Throw Down Your Arms, in Jamaica, a collection of roots reggae song covers, and her spirituality was impacted by her encounters with the Rastafari there. “They use music to reassure people that God is actually with them and watches them, can be called upon,” she said.

So “The Glory of Jah” is a highly intertextual song, rooted in Hannah’s song but weaving in strands from other biblical books—and the result sounds an awful lot like something Mother Mary would sing!

Advent, Day 12: The New Eve

December 8, 2022May 13, 2023 Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

LOOK: Prado Annunciation by Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico_The Annunciation (Prado) — Fra Angelico (Italian, ca. 1395–1455), *The Annunciation*, ca. 1426. Tempera and gold on wood panel, 162.3 × 191.5 cm. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

The Annunciation was a favorite subject of the Early Renaissance artist Fra Angelico [previously], and he painted it multiple times throughout his career. Once was for an altarpiece for the convent of San Domenico in Fiesole, near Florence, now in the Prado Museum in Madrid.

In this version Mary sits on a draped chair under the portico of a domestic space, reading the scriptures, when suddenly this otherworldly being, dressed in rose and radiating, approaches. It’s the archangel Gabriel. His foot crosses the threshold of paradise into Mary’s space—the divine stepping into the human realm. Will you do it? he asks. Be mother to God?

Mary’s initial fear and perplexity eventually give way to glad acceptance. The artist compresses the episode—the arrival, the ask, the cogitation, the answer—into this singular freeze frame. When Mary says yes to God’s plan to become flesh of her flesh and so work out the salvation of the world, God releases his Spirit, who rides a stream of light from the heavens into her womb. At this miraculous moment, Jesus is conceived.

Gabriel crosses his hands over his chest in humble reverence, a gesture mirrored by Mary. Both are still before the profound mystery of the Incarnation.

Fra Angelico used ultramarine—the finest and most expensive of all pigments, made from lapis lazuli, a semiprecious stone imported to Europe from the Middle East—to paint Mary’s mantle as well as the star-studded ceiling above her. Blue represents heaven, and here Mary is clothed with it and overshadowed by it.

The male figure in the carved roundel above the central column is, I’d say (based on the unambiguous Montecarlo Altarpiece), the prophet Isaiah, who wrote centuries before the event that “the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isa. 7:14).

But Fra Angelico goes even further back than the Old Testament prophets. On the left side of the panel he shows our foreparents, Adam and Eve, being cast out of paradise, having broken God’s trust. They blush in shame—they wince, they cover their face. By including this catalyzing event from salvation history in his painting of the Annunciation, the artist is telling a larger narrative. In particular, he is drawing connections, mainly contrastive, between Adam and Eve and Christ and Mary.

In his epistles, the apostle Paul talks about Christ as the Second Adam, or the New/Last Adam (Rom. 5:1 2–21; 1 Cor. 15:22–23, 45), who came to restore what was lost with the first Adam. Whereas Adam disobeyed God and caused sin to enter the world, Christ lived a life of perfect obedience to the Father, thereby redeeming humanity. The early church fathers, starting with Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian in the second century, extended this corollary with another: Mary as the Second Eve. Whereas Eve rejected God’s will, Mary embraced it, and her obedient yes, like Eve’s disobedient no, had repercussions for all of humanity. As the arts lecturer John Skillen puts it, our undoing in the Expulsion is undone by the Annunciation.

We see on the left an angel driving humanity out of Eden, but on the right, another angel welcomes humanity back in. And in a glorious reversal of the order of first creation, where Eve was created from Adam, here the Second Adam is created from the Second Eve, knit together from her DNA.

In the first issue of her Medievalish newsletter from last December, Dr. Grace Hamman discusses Fra Angelico’s Prado Annunciation in terms of chronos (ordinary time measured in seconds and hours) and kairos (moments outside of time). “Fra Angelico recognizes something that is easy to forget: because God is outside of time, not bound by chronology like us creatures, this painting offers a ‘God’s-eye view’ of salvation history,” she writes, portraying a simultaneity of “falls” that the fourteenth-century contemplative writer Julian of Norwich expounds on:

When Adam fell, God’s Son fell; because of the true union which was made in heaven, God’s Son could not be separated from Adam, for by Adam I understand all mankind. Adam fell from life to death, into the valley of this wretched world, and after that into hell. God’s Son fell with Adam, into the valley of the womb of the maiden who was the fairest daughter of Adam, and that was to excuse Adam from blame in heaven and on earth; and powerfully he brought him out of hell. (Revelations of Divine Love, chap. 51)

“There was never a moment,” Hamman continues, “even in the expulsion from Eden, that Emmanuel was not with us, if one is given the eyes of kairos.”

This came a few weeks after we discussed the artwork, along with several others on the Annunciation, on Hamman’s podcast, Old Books with Grace. It’s such a generative painting!

And the Annunciation is only the main panel. Along the predella (base) are depicted the Marriage of the Virgin, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and the Dormition (the “falling asleep,” or death, of Mary).

LISTEN: “Cum erubuerint infelices” (While Downcast Parents Blushed) by Hildegard of Bingen, ca. 1175 | Performed by La Reverdie on Sponsa Regis: La victoire de la Vierge dans l’œuvre d’Hildegard, 2003

Cum erubuerint infelices
in progenie sua,
procedentes in peregrinatione casus,
tunc tu clamas clara voce,
hoc modo homines elevans
de isto malicioso
casu.

While downcast parents blushed,
ashamed to see their offspring
wand’ring off into the fallen exile’s pilgrimage,
you cried aloud with crystal voice,
to lift up humankind
from that malicious
fall.

Trans. Nathaniel M. Campbell [source]

The Benedictine abbess Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) was a visionary theologian, poet, composer, singer, artist, gardener, and physician. She wrote on scientific and medical subjects in addition to theology, which she conveyed not only through prose but also through poetry, music, dramas, and illuminations. She was quite the medieval polymath!

I first learned about Hildegard in a Western music history survey course in college, in a unit centered on her Ordo Virtutum (Play of the Virtues). I couldn’t believe I had never heard about this amazing sister in the faith before. In 2012 she was formally canonized by the Roman Catholic Church—a long time coming!—and Pope Benedict XVI even named her a “doctor of the church,” a title given to saints who have made a significant contribution to theology or doctrine.

The corpus of surviving musical compositions by Hildegard is larger than that of any other medieval composer. More than half of these are antiphons, short free verses sung before and after each set of psalms during monastic prayer.

“Cum erubuerint” is one such antiphon. Hildegard would have sung it with her sisters at her monastery on the Rupertsberg and later the abbey at Eibingen as part of the Divine Office.

The song addresses the Virgin Mary, whose yes to Gabriel set into motion the Incarnation and thus humanity’s deliverance from spiritual exile.

As are many of Hildegard’s compositions, “Cum erubuerint” is highly melismatic—that is, it features long melodic phrases sung to one syllable. For example, I counted thirteen notes on the first syllable, “Cum”! The highest pitch occurs on clara (“clear”), referring to the definitive quality of Mary’s consent, bright and luminous, to this new thing that God is doing. An agent of God’s grace, Mary speaks a word that cuts through the mists of confusion through which we’ve been wandering, lost, uplifting us from the fall (casu), whose depths are underscored by that word’s being pitched the lowest. In her fiat, Mary is essentially saying, “Let there be light.”

Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum (Symphony of the Harmony of Celestial Revelations) is the title Hildegard gave to her collection of musical compositions, which are preserved in two manuscripts:

Dendermonde (D), Belgium, Sint-Pieters-en-Paulusabdij, Cod. 9 (ca. 1175). This one is considered by scholars to be the more authoritative. It was prepared under Hildegard’s supervision as a gift for the monks of Villers and contains fifty-seven songs.
Riesenkodex (R), Wiesbaden, Hessische Landesbibliothek, Hs. 2 (ca. 1180–85). This revised and enlarged edition, which includes seventy-five songs, was produced at the Rupertsberg scriptorium not long after Hildegard’s death.

“Cum erubuerint” appears in both.

Click here for a modern transcription from the International Society of Hildegard von Bingen Studies.

In her critical edition of Hildegard’s Symphonia, Barbara Newman writes,

Hildegard’s creations, compared with a contemporary hymn by Abelard or a sequence by Adam of St. Victor, will sound either primitive or unnervingly avant-garde. In a sense they are both. As a Benedictine, she was acquainted with a large repertoire of chant, but she lacked formal training and made no attempt to imitate the mainstream poetic and musical achievements of her day. Various scholars have hypothesized that she was influenced by German folksong, yet her compositions lack the two essential traits of a popular tune: it must be easy to remember and easy to sing. The difficult music of the Symphonia is sui generis. In [Sr. Maria Immaculata] Ritscher’s words, it is ‘gregorianizing but not Gregorian’ and impossible to classify in terms of any known contemporary movement. (27–28)

And regarding Hildegard’s lyrical texts:

Until the advent of modern vers libre, scholars were reluctant even to dignify Hildegard’s songs with the title of poetry. In style they are much closer to Kunstprosa, a highly wrought figurative language that resembles poetry in its density and musicality, yet with no semblance of meter or regular form. (32–33)

The above performance of “Cum erubuerint” is by La Reverdie, a medieval and Renaissance vocal ensemble that started in 1986 with two pairs of sisters from Italy.

But in addition, here are a few instrumental versions I particularly like:

>> Tina Chancey of the early music ensemble Hesperus plays the melody on kemenche, a bowed instrument from the Black Sea region of Turkey:

>> Riley Lee on shakuhachi (bamboo flute):

>> Noël Akchoté on electric guitar:

The song also appears, under the title “From This Wicked Fall,” on the Billboard-topping Vision: The Music of Hildegard Von Bingen (1994), a classical-electronic crossover album of seventeen of Hildegard’s works arranged by Richard Souther. In Souther’s version, nonlexical vocables (sung by soprano Emily Van Evera and mezzo-soprano Sister Germaine Fritz, OSB) replace the Latin text.

Advent, Day 11: Waiting Bride

December 7, 2022August 29, 2023 Victoria Emily Jones3 Comments

LOOK: Dim Gold (Feast of Brides) by Mandy Cano Villalobos

Cano Villalobos, Mandy_Dim Gold (Feast of Brides) — Mandy Cano Villalobos (American, 1979–), *Dim Gold (Feast of Brides)*, 2022. Miscellaneous found objects, dimensions variable. Installation at Bridge Projects, Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Mandy Cano Villalobos is an interdisciplinary artist whose projects span installation, painting, drawing, performance, sculpture, and video. She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Drawing on the archetype of the waiting bride, the found-object installation Dim Gold (Feast of Brides) was commissioned by Bridge Projects for Here After, an exhibition exploring humanity’s hope for paradise. The artist writes,

Dim Gold is an allegory of marital covenant, bodily death, and the hope of love’s consummation in afterlife. The throne heap consists of discarded clothing, broken appliances, old lamps, unwanted toys, bruised furniture, fake flowers, stained curtains, human and synthetic hair, scratched glasses, deflated soccer balls, faded photographs, worn shoes, chipped figurines, kitchen utensils, costume jewelry, yellowed wedding decorations, cracked dishes, Christmas ornaments, mildewed books, and bathtub plugs.

From baby bottles and children’s playthings to a cane and a pillbox, the pile contains a life. (In fact, Cano Villalobos said she acquired most of the items from an old woman’s estate sale.) It’s a full life, but one of brokenness and decay. There is no permanence in this world. The otherworld—the new heaven, the new earth (a transfigured thisworld)—is what endures.

Cano Villalobos, Mandy_Dim Gold (detail)

The Dim Gold construction is throne-like, all its components leaning in toward a central chair topped by seven white, ribbed shafts that fan out and that are suggestive, with the flame-colored flowers at the terminals, of a menorah. Lace, silk, and draped strings of pearls form the throne’s backing. With its dressed but empty seat that calls forth a presence, the piece evokes the hetoimasia (prepared throne of the second coming) of Eastern Orthodox icons.

The scattered, lit bulbs on shadeless lampstands allude to the burning oil lamps in Jesus’s parable of the ten bridesmaids (Matt. 25:1–13), which signify readiness for the Bridegroom’s return.

Cano Villalobos combines earthly and heavenly imagery in Dim Gold, an Advent ensemble that pictures the church-as-bride’s waiting with lights on, amid the ephemera of this life, for her groom to come take her home, where an eternal feast is spread in bright, delicious glory, and the two of them will become one at last.

LISTEN: “When the Bridegroom Comes” | Words by David Omer Bearden, 1973 | Music by Judee Sill, 1973 | Performed by Judee Sill on Heart Food, 1973

See the bride and the Spirit are one.
Then won’t you who are thirsty invite him to come?
With your door open wide,
Won’t you listen in the dark for the midnight cry?
And see, when your light is on, that the Bridegroom comes.

Into cold outer darkness are gone
Guests who would not their own wedding garment put on.
Though the chosen are few,
Won’t you tarry by your lamp till he calls for you?
And pray that your love endure till the Bridegroom comes.

When the halt and the lame meet the Son,
And he sees for the blind and he speaks for the dumb,
Let their poor hearts’ complaint,
Like the leper turned around who has kissed the saint,
Lift like a trumpet shout, and the Bridegroom come.

See the builders despising the stone,
See the pearl of great price and the dry desert bones.
By the Pharisees cursed,
Be exultant with the rose when the last are first,
And see how his mercy shines as the Bridegroom comes.

Hear the bride and the Spirit say, “Come!”
Then won’t you who are weary invite in the Son?
When your heart’s love is high,
Won’t you hasten to the place where the hour is nigh?
And see that your light is on, for the Bridegroom comes.
See that your light is on, for the Bridegroom comes.

Judee Sill (1944–1979) was an American singer-songwriter whose genre of music Rolling Stone refers to as “mystic Christian folk.” Themes of temptation, rapture, redemption, and the search for higher meaning permeate her work.

Sill survived ongoing physical and verbal abuse in childhood from her mother and stepfather. As a teenager, she committed a series of armed robberies that landed her in reform school, where she learned to play the organ for church and became interested in gospel music. Upon her release, after briefly attending a junior college and working in a piano bar, she got caught up in the California drug culture, developing a crippling heroin addiction and resorting to prostitution and check forgery to fund it.

While she was serving a prison sentence for narcotics and forgery offenses, her only sibling, Dennis, died of an illness, and she was devastated. But this seems to have given her the impetus to pursue a career in songwriting and performing. She gigged in clubs around Los Angeles while living in a Cadillac, and she was eventually signed by the new Asylum Records. Graham Nash (of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) produced her first single, “Jesus Was a Cross Maker.” Her two albums, Judee Sill (1971) and Heart Food (1973), received some acclaim but failed to chart. Discouraged, and suffering back pain from a car accident and later a fall, she returned to hard drugs. She died of a cocaine and codeine overdose at age thirty-five.

Why do I rehearse Sill’s turbulent biography? Because songs don’t come out of a vacuum. The longing in “When the Bridegroom Comes”—those piano chords, that voice—is real. Her thirst, her questing, her waiting and hoping. Though she herself didn’t write the lyrics (David Omer Bearden, her romantic partner at the time, did, though she likely gave input), she sings them with fervency, makes them her prayer.

The song melds together the parable of the ten bridesmaids from Matthew 25 with the bridal theology of Revelation. In one, which has more of an individual focus, we are put in the place of the bride’s attendants and warned to be prepared for the imminent wedding celebration, lest we get locked out in the dark; in the other, Christ’s church as a collective is likened to the bride herself, eagerly anticipating the arrival of her groom and the sweet union that will follow.

The song’s primary referent is Revelation 22:17, from the final chapter of the Bible:

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.”
And let everyone who hears say, “Come.”
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

In this verse, the voice of the bride (the church) through whom the Spirit speaks calls out, “Come.” Because of the interchange of speakers and subjects in the broader passage, it’s unclear whether the addressee of this imperative is Christ or the masses. The church could be crying out for Jesus’s return, as they do in verse 20, or they could be inviting people far and wide to the gospel feast, bidding them come and eat. I think the latter, which would make it continuous with the third and fourth lines, but it could really go either way. Because as sure as there’s the final coming of Christ to the world, there’s also the coming of the world to Christ. He comes to us, and we come to him.

Sill’s whole song is full of biblical references—Jesus’s healing ministry, Jesus as the rejected cornerstone (Matt. 21:42), Jesus as the pearl of great price (Matt. 13:45–46), the Spirit breathing life into dry bones (Ezek. 37:1–14), Jesus’s upside-down kingdom in which the last are first and the first are last (Matt. 19:30). It celebrates divine mercy and grace and encourages us to respond in the affirmative to Christ’s wedding invitation, and to persevere in love while he tarries.

Roundup: Kenyan Annunciation; Jesus in utero; the politics of the Magnificat; and more

December 6, 2022December 11, 2025 Victoria Emily Jones5 Comments

Many Catholics and Orthodox decry that Protestants really only ever talk about Mary during Christmas. While she does get some extra attention here on the blog in December, I also try to talk about her throughout the year, from the feasts of the Annunciation (March 25) and the Visitation (May 31) to her witness during Holy Week and Pentecost and her being such an important figure in Jesus’s life and exemplary for our own. Here’s a new Marian roundup, plus at the bottom a Christmas gift idea involving a product I helped create. 🙂

VISUAL MEDITATIONS:

>> “Wondrous” by Paul Simpson Duke, Seeing the Sacred: In 2019, Rev. Drs. Paul and Stacey Simpson Duke, co-pastors of First Baptist Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, ran an Annunciation art series on their blog, meditating on one artwork on the subject per day for twenty-five days. I commend the whole series, but I was particularly compelled by Day 13, which centers on a terracotta sculpture made by the late Kenyan artist Rosemary Namuli Karuga when she was a student at Makerere College Art School in Uganda. Paul Duke considers especially the mixture of sorrow and awe expressed in the figure’s face.

Karuga, Rosemary Namuli_Mary — Rosemary Namuli Karuga (Kenyan, 1928–2021), *Mary*, ca. 1950. Terracotta. This image is Plate 4 in the book *Christian Art in Africa and Asia* by Arno Lehmann.

>> “Pregnant with God” by Victoria Emily Jones, ArtWay: For the first Sunday of Advent, I wrote about the painting Blue Madonna by Scottish Catholic artist Michael Felix Gilfedder, which shows the Christ child developing inside Mary’s womb. Pregnancy has always been an image I’ve carried with me during Advent, as it embodies the expectancy characteristic of the season—the growth of new life, a hidden fullness, about to come forth.

Gilfedder, Michael Felix_Blue Madonna — Michael Felix Gilfedder (Scottish, 1948–), *Blue Madonna (Mary, Mother of God)*, 1987. Oil and tempera on wood with gesso relief, 25 1/4 × 13 in. (64 × 33 cm). Private collection, London. [prints for sale]

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PODCAST EPISODES: Both of the following come from For the Life of the World, the podcast of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Released back-to-back last December.

>> “Mary Theotokos: Her Bright Sorrow, Her Suffering Faith, and Her Compassion” with Frederica Mathewes-Green: Frederica Mathewes-Green is an American author and speaker, chiefly on topics related to Eastern Orthodox belief and practice. Here she discusses the Orthodox reverence for Mary; the scriptural account of her life; Mary as the mother of us all; the Protevangelium of James, which provides legendary material about Mary’s upbringing and betrothal; the ancient prayer “Sub tuum praesidium” (“Under Your Compassion”) from 250 CE, the earliest known appearance of the title “Theotokos”; and Mary’s role as intercessor. The latter point is something that Protestants like me are wary of—praying through saints who have passed on is not something I practice—but the way Mathewes-Green explains it is, just as we would ask fellow believers on earth to pray for us, why shouldn’t we also ask our friends in heaven to do the same, if we truly believe that they are alive and that we are in communion with them (as we confess in the Apostles’ Creed)?

Besides explicating several Marian doctrines, Mathewes-Green also speaks of Mary as an ordinary human being with an extraordinary call. With tenderness, she considers Mary’s experiences and emotions at different life stages: first as a perplexed young woman who is taken aback by Gabriel’s announcement but ultimately responds with humility and magnanimity, then as a parent who raises a child and later witnesses his violent death.

For more from Mathewes-Green on the topic, see her book Mary as the Early Christians Knew Her: The Mother of Jesus in Three Ancient Texts.

>> “A Womb More Spacious Than Stars: How Mary’s Beauty and Presence Upends the Patriarchy and Stabilizes Christian Spirituality” with Matthew J. Milliner: Matthew Milliner, an art history professor at Wheaton College and the author of Mother of the Lamb: The Story of a Global Icon, is a Protestant who wants to see other Protestants embrace a more robust doctrine of Mary as Theotokos, “Mother of God,” and develop a keener sense of her ecclesial presence. In this hour-long conversation he discusses Mary as person and as symbol; the need for “hermeneutical adventurousness anchored in the revelation of God in Christ”; how icons work, and particularly how Marian icons are spiritually formative; how to read a Nativity icon; the feminist objection to Mary; how Mary upends the ancient pagan goddess culture; and how we all must be Marian if we are to be orthodox Christians.

I’ve previously featured two other talks by Milliner on Mary: “The Art of Advent” and “Blessed Art Thou.”

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VIDEO: “Magnificat” by SALT Project: This short film features a reading of the Magnificat in Spanish, its words fleshed out in contemporary images. For the same video but in English, see here.

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ARTICLE: “The Political Is Personal: Mary as a Parent and Prophet of Righteousness” by Erin Dufault-Hunter, Fuller Magazine: What does the New Testament mean by “righteousness” (dikē)? Is it personal piety, or social justice? This article by Christian ethics professor Erin Dufault-Hunter examines how Mary upholds both connotations of the word. “Perhaps more than anyone else, Mary displays for us how saying yes to the kingdom, and its unlikely king, necessarily involves the personal but also reorients our social and political allegiances,” Dufault-Hunter writes. “Intimacy with God necessarily entails a political orientation, bringing or solidifying a way of seeing power and position.” Debunking the claim that Jesus’s coming was not political, Dufault-Hunter considers Mary’s Magnificat as well as other elements of the Christmas story—like the title “Son of God,” the word “gospel,” and the angels’ potentially treasonous news to the shepherds—showing how the good news of Christ is both personal and political.

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The Daily Prayer Project is running a special Christmas gift offer that, for $50, includes a physical and digital copy of our hot-off-the-press Christmas–Epiphany prayer periodical (covering December 25 through February 21) and two hand-thrown, dishwasher-safe mugs with a raised medallion of our labyrinth-inspired logo and glazes that map onto our morning and evening prayer colors. Packages ship early next week, so get your order in soon! There are also yearly subscription options, individual or communal, on the website.

In addition to working as a copyeditor and proofreader for the DPP, I also curate the art for the Gallery section, which is expanded in this edition to eight pieces—in this case, Nativities from around the world, each accompanied by a short reflection. The cover image is Morning Star by the Japanese Christian artist Hiroshi Tabata (1929–2014).

Advent, Day 10: Oil in My Lamp

December 6, 2022December 6, 2022 Victoria Emily Jones3 Comments

LOOK: Oil Lamp by Andrew Wyeth

Wyeth, Andrew_Oil Lamp — Andrew Wyeth (American, 1917–2009), *Oil Lamp*, 1945. Tempera on hardboard panel, 34 × 42 in. (86.4 × 106.6 cm). Collection of Phyllis and Jamie Wyeth. Photo courtesy of the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine.

Andrew Wyeth’s realist paintings center narratives of rural life in Pennsylvania, where he lived for most of each year, and Maine, where he and his wife spent their summers. This one shows his friend Alvaro Olson sitting in a room of his (Alvaro’s) eighteenth-century farmhouse in Cushing, Maine. Weary and worn, he stares off to the side, his face cast in the dim glow of an oil lamp. Alvaro tended to the family farm and took care of his increasingly debilitated sister, Christina, who is the subject of Wyeth’s most famous painting, Christina’s World.

Wyeth is one of my favorite artists, and I’ve featured his work a few times on the blog: here, here, and here.

LISTEN: “Oil in My Lamp,” traditional gospel song | Arranged by Gene Parsons and Clarence White and performed by the Byrds on Ballad of Easy Rider (1969)

Give me oil in my lamp
Keep me burning, burning, burning
Give me oil in my lamp, I pray
Give me oil in my lamp
Keep me burning, burning, burning
Keep me burning till the break of day

Sing, oh sinner!* sing, oh sinner!
Sing, oh sinner, to the King!
Sing, oh sinner! sing, oh sinner!
Sing, oh sinner, to the King!

* The traditional lyrics of the chorus are “Sing hosanna.”

This gospel song is inspired by Jesus’s parable from Matthew 25:1–13, in which ten bridesmaids are waiting for the bridegroom to come to them so that the wedding-night procession can start. Having not prepared an adequate supply of oil, five of the women foolishly allow their lamps to burn out, while the other five, ready with oil refills, keep theirs lit. The parable is a warning to be prepared for the Bridegroom’s return, always kindling our faith and shining forth our good works. The song is thus a plea that God would help us persevere.

I was first introduced to “Oil in My Lamp” through the country-rock arrangement by the Byrds’ guitarist Clarence White and drummer Gene Parsons, who recorded it with their bandmates in 1969. (This version was covered nicely by Neal Casal in 1999, using more minimal instrumentation and a slower tempo for more contemplative vibes.)

The song’s origins are elusive, with most sources simply using the attribution “Traditional.” Fascinated as I am by sacred song histories, I got a bit carried away trying to track down more information. So feel free to stop reading here—or follow to the end if you want to trace the song’s evolution and follow links to different creative interpretations!

The earliest appearance of the lyrics, at least one version of them, that I could find is in the short story “Safe in the Arms of Jesus” by Arthur Huff Fauset, an African American writer, published in Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life 7, no. 4 (April 1929), p. 126. At an Easter night service, the Reverend De Witt Coleman steps up to his Baptist pulpit and addresses the small male chorus seated at his side.

“Boys,” he screamed, “I want you to sing for me. Sing as you never sang before . . . that song of yours called, ‘Has My Gas Bill Been Paid,’ or something like that!”

The vast congregation roared with laughter at this facetious petition of their leader.

A group of five men arose and began to croon softly. The audience became suddenly still. The tenor gave the note, then the bass and other members of the chorus took up the tone. They launched into song:

Give me oil in my lamp,
Give me oil in my lamp,
Give me oil in my lamp, I pray;
Keep me singing in the camp,
Keep me singing in the camp,
Until the break of day.

When my cup runneth over,
When my cup runneth over,
When my cup runneth over with joy;
I find it easy to pray,
And to sing every day,
When my cup runneth over with joy.

Give me oil in my lamp,
Give me oil in my lamp,
Give me oil in my lamp, I pray;
Keep me singing in the camp,
Keep me singing in the camp,
Until the break of day.

Besides being an active figure in the Harlem Renaissance, Fauset was an anthropologist and a folklorist who conducted fieldwork among Black communities in the Deep South, the British West Indies, and Nova Scotia. He may have collected this song from any of the many people he interviewed, or churches he visited, in those places. My guess is that it originated in the United States as a camp meeting song in the early twentieth century, hence the line “Keep me singing in the camp” (though this lyric could have been a later adaptation to fit that context). “Camp meeting” is the name given to the outdoor evangelical religious services that spread across the American frontier in the early nineteenth century.

“The camp meeting tradition fostered a tradition of music and hymn singing with strong oral, improvisatory, and spontaneous elements,” reads a Wikipedia article. “Both tunes and words were created, changed, and adapted in true folk music fashion.”

In the 1950s, “Oil in My Lamp” (alternatively titled “Give Me Oil in My Lamp” or “Sing Hosanna”) spread throughout the country through traveling song leaders, songbook publishers, and other networks. Boundless Praise, published in Lawrenceville, Tennessee, in 1944, is the earliest songbook appearance I can find (attribution: “Author unknown”), and the earliest recording I found is from The Four Girls gospel quartet, who sang it as part of a medley for an Easter 1954 broadcast (“Give me oil in my lamp / Keep me shining in the camp / Until the judgment day”).

Singspiration published the song text in 1951, citing A. Sevison as the author (probably because he added the verse “Make me a fisher of men, keep me seeking . . .” and possibly also the “Sing hosanna” refrain), and in 1963 they published an arrangement by “the Csehys” (Wilmos and Gladys Csehy?) and Norman Johnson.

After that, the song appeared in Girl Scouts / Girl Guides songbooks and, later, on major children’s music albums, like Wee Sing Bible Songs (1986), Bible Songs by Cedarmont Kids (1997), and Bob and Larry’s Sunday Morning Songs (2002) from the VeggieTales Sing-Alongs series. The children’s versions often include additional verses, such as “Give me joy in my heart, keep me singing . . . ,” “Give me peace in my heart, keep me resting . . . ,” “Give me love in my heart, keep me serving . . . ,” and so on.

One interesting thing I found is how popular—and widely recorded—the song was in Jamaica, starting in the sixties.

In 1964, five years before the Byrds release, Jamaican ska singer Eric “Monty” Morris recorded it with Byron Lee and the Dragonaires, and it was a huge hit. Other Jamaican artists, including Jackie Edwards (1964) and Desmond Dekker and The Specials (1993), followed, and the song appears on several reggae gospel compilations.

Jamaican singer-songwriter and percussionist Dick “Syncona” Smith, who became a linchpin of the Toronto music scene after migrating there in the 1960s, released a notable variation in 1974 that opens with this new verse:

When the burden of life makes me weary
And I feel that I can’t carry on
When my time’s running out and my nights get lonely
Lord, I need someone to hear my song

The extensive popularity of “Oil in My Lamp” among Caribbean artists makes me wonder if perhaps the song actually originated on Caribbean soil and was brought to the US by migrants.

If you have any additional information about the song’s history, or know of any recordings prior to 1954, please do share!

Advent, Day 9: La Luz

December 5, 2022 Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

LOOK: Magna #1 by Luciano Cian

Cian, Luciano_Magna 1 — Luciano Cian (Brazilian, 1973–), *Magna #1*, 2021. Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm, 110 × 90 cm. Edition of 20.

LISTEN: “La Luz” by Brother Isaiah, on Shade (2020)

You are the light of the world, yeah, yeah
You are the light of the world, yeah, yeah
You are the light, Lord, yes, you are the light

Well come alight, come fire, come and burn in me
Come alight, come fire, come and burn in me
Come alight, come fire, come and burn in me
Come and burn in me, yeah

Well I was sitting in the darkness
Waiting for the daybreak
Sweet dawn from on high
Come and break upon me, I pray
’Cause dawn seem so far away
’Cause dawn seem so far away
But he said, “Hope and watch and wait
Watch and pray
You know me coming, Sonny
You know me don’t delay
They call me New Sunshine
They call me New Daybreak
They call me Sweet Dayspring
’Cause with my help my kingdom bring

“So wait child”—and so I wait
I heard him say, “Pray child”—and so I prayed
I pray, “Light from light, come and drown on me now”
Me say, “Light from light, come and shine on me now”
Light from light, come and shine on me now
Me say, “Life from light from light”

You are the light of the world, yeah, yeah
You are the light of the world, yeah, yeah
You are the light, Lord, yeah, yeah, you are the light

Well come alight, come fire, come and burn in me
Come alight, come fire, come and burn in me
Come alight, come fire, come and burn in me
Come and burn in me, yeah

Well in the middle of the night
Beneath the starlight
I was sitting in the dark when I heard a cry
Singing, “Glory, glory, glory!”
There was angels singing, “Glory, glory, glory!”

Then in the quiet of my heart
There came a little light shining
Daystar rising, breaking through my night
And then a light from on high
Broke upon me inside
Like a fire burning bright
Put the darkness to flight

With all that glory, glory, glory
There was angels singing, “Glory, glory, glory!”
There was angels singing, “Glory, glory, glory!”
And all of heaven ringing, “Glory, glory, glory!”
And then my soul was singing, “Glory, glory, glory!”
There was singing, there were: “Glory, glory, glory!”

You are the light of the world, yeah, yeah
Yes, you are the light of the world, yeah, yeah
Yes, you are the light, Lord, yeah, you are the light, yeah

Come alight, come fire, come and burn in me
Come alight, come fire, come and burn in me
Come alight, come fire, come and burn in me
Come and burn in me, yeah

Come alight, come fire, come and burn in me
Come alight, come fire, come and burn in me
Come alight, come fire, come and burn in me
Come and burn in me, yeah

’Cause you’re the light of the world, yeah, yeah
Yes, you’re the light of the world, yeah, yeah
You’re the light, Lord, yes, you are the light
Yes, you are the light of the world, yeah, yeah
You are the light of the world, yeah, yeah

Yes, you are the light, Lord, yes, you are the light
Yes, you are the light, Lord, yes, you are the light

Fr. Isaiah Marie Hofmann, CFR, is a newly ordained priest with the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, an institute founded in the South Bronx in 1987 by eight Capuchin friars desiring to work more definitively for personal and communal reform within the Catholic Church. Their mission is twofold: service to the materially poor, and evangelization. Father Isaiah joined this community as a lay brother in 2008, after graduating from Boston College, where he played lacrosse.

During his time as a friar, he has released four albums under the name Brother Isaiah: Shade (2020), Shade, Season 2 (2020), Poco a Poco (2018), and Broomstick (2016). “Music is where I wrestle with God—and where I find God,” he says.

Advent, Day 8: Prepare Ye the Way

December 4, 2022October 9, 2024 Victoria Emily Jones5 Comments

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
make his paths straight.’”

—Matthew 3:1–3

LOOK: Painted staircases by Xomatok

Xomatok stairway — Painted staircase by Xomatok (b. 1985), Lima, Peru, 2021. All photos by Jeremy Flores.

From Colossal:

Artist Xomatok translates the vibrant, geometric motifs of handwoven Andean blankets, or llicllas, into large-scale works that mark the pathways through the hilly Alisos de Amauta neighborhood in Lima, Peru. Painted during the course of two months as part of the Municipality of Lima’s Pinta Lima Bicentenario, the 13 interventions were a collaborative undertaking by the artist and local residents, who transformed the public staircases that wind through the district into multi-level canvases. The resulting patterns are kaleidoscopic and highlight a spectrum of bright colors and symmetries often associated with the traditional textiles.

View more photos.

LISTEN: “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord” by Stephen Schwartz, from the musical Godspell (1971)

The following video clip is the opening sequence of the 1973 film adaptation of the stage musical Godspell, which stars David Haskell as John the Baptist:

So. much. joy!

The ram’s horn issues its call. Ballet dancer, student, struggling actress, waitress, cab driver, businessman, businesswoman, parking attendant—they all leave their jobs, casting off their workplace trappings to accept John’s invitation to new and abundant life. They meet him at The Angel of the Waters, a sculpted fountain in New York City’s Central Park. They throw themselves into the fountain like children, receiving their baptism, their initiation into the upside-down kingdom of God.

But John notices Jesus standing at a distance, stripped down and ready for his own baptism. John’s lighthearted visage turns heavy for a moment in recognition that Jesus’s baptism is into suffering and death.

I wrote about Godspell two years ago when I featured one of its songs, “Turn Back, O Man,” to go along with a lectionary reading from Ezekiel. The musical is wacky, with the ragtag disciples forming a comic troupe to act out Jesus’s parables and teachings from the Gospel of Matthew. Some Christians find it all too silly and irreverent. Others, like me, see it as capturing an important element of the Good News, which is joy. This is what Godspell’s creator, John-Michael Tebelak, wanted to get across.

Perhaps the festive tone of the opening number seems disjunctive with what we know of John from the Gospels—a desert ascetic who preached about vipers and axes and fire and winnowing forks, warning his hearers of the wrath to come. Point taken.

However, while his message is a sobering one, repentance need not be a dour affair. We must take honest stock of our sins, yes, laying them out in confession before God, but scripture assures us many times over of God’s pardon, and that’s something to rejoice in! There is a joy to repentance and to following the way of Christ. Turning off the death-road, onto the road of life. As we unload the burdens that have accrued on our backs, we are freed to walk upright once again.

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” John cries out on the riverbank.

I’d encourage you to read that not as a threat but as an invitation. The kingdom of heaven is marked by grace and possibility. It’s a pearl, it’s a seed, it’s a feast. When we embrace the gospel, our cities become a playground where we enact the values of Christ, childlike as they are, preparing the world to receive her coming King.

Advent, Day 7: Lift Up Your Heads

December 3, 2022December 6, 2022 Victoria Emily Jones3 Comments

LOOK: Ps:24//7 by Marco Cazzulini

Cazzulini, Marco_Choral Cathedral — Marco Cazzulini (British, 1962–), *Ps:24//7 (working title: Choral Cathedral)*, 2017. Digital artwork, 40 × 40 cm.

Based on a text that’s traditionally read during Advent and on Palm Sunday, this digital artwork by Marco Cazzulini is part of a larger series on the Psalms, which he has compiled in a limited-edition book. Cazzulini writes,

‘Lift up your heads, O you gates; and be lifted up, you age-abiding doors, that the King of glory may come in’ (AMPC). The language of the Psalms is deeply rooted in time and place, experience and tradition. It is likely to be so here. Nevertheless, these words are not hidebound to their history. This verse gives wings to the imagination and can be transposed onto other things.

This triumphal and celebratory cry ‘Lift up your heads, O you gates’ seems to herald the entry of Christ into the vaunted place of His dominion. That which is closed, opens, and that which is worn, patinated by age, is commanded to lift up its head and acknowledge the arrival of the King of Glory. He who stands, and waits, at the doors of our own closed hearts, worn out by bad experience, shut through unbelief, locked by fear, ruined by sin, is the same King of Glory. He comes, knocks, but never forces entry, and on His ‘coming in’ we are lifted up by His own virtuous majesty. His entry transforms and illumines. Jesus comes in divine eminence and meek humanity. He wears His crown with humility and His presence welcomed is like opening a door to a fresh scented breeze.

Great lofty cathedral interiors soaring into the void inform this artwork. Caught in the half light, their ceilings dissolve into a penumbral space as if no roof or limit existed. Their naves running into infinity, their transepts stretching into the unknown.

Bearing equal creative weight is the image of a path running through a grove of tall trees with light ﬁltering through the canopy, camouﬂaging shapes and creating deep shadows.

Follow the artist on Instagram @marcocazzuliniart.

For more on Psalm 24 as a whole, used in ancient times as an entrance liturgy for processions into the Jerusalem temple, see this commentary by Old Testament scholar Rolf Jacobson. “The poem,” Jacobson writes, “describes the contrasting natures of the God who enters into human space and those humans who are able to meet the advent of this God. Psalm 24 is about the advent of human beings into the presence of God, and the mutual advent of the King of glory into the presence of ‘those who seek the face of God.’”

Think of this world as a temple or your heart as a temple—that dark doorway of Cazzulini’s image the entrance—and meditate on Christ’s coming into it. Do you need to fling open the gates to let him in?

LISTEN: “Lift Up Your Heads” (original title: “Machet die Tore Weit”) | Text: Psalm 24:7–9 | Music by Andreas Hammerschmidt, 17th century, arr. Robert Field | Performed by Oasis Chorale, dir. Wendell Nisly, on Favorites, 2017

Lift up your heads, ye gates!
O eternal doors,
Lift up high!
And the king of great glory shall come in.
Who is this king of great glory?
He is the Lord, strong and mighty in battle.
Sing Hosanna in the highest!

The German Baroque composer Andreas Hammerschmidt (1612–1675) served as organist and choir director at the Protestant Johanniskirche (Church of St. John) in Zittau from 1639 until his death. He wrote the Advent motet “Machet die Tore Weit” for his community there, setting Martin Luther’s German translation of Psalm 24:7–9. Oasis Chorale sings the piece in English. To hear the original German, click here.