Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774–1840), Easter Morning, ca. 1828–35. Oil on canvas, 43.7 × 34.4 cm. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.
I got to see this painting in person when I was in Madrid in 2018, and boy, what a beauty! Caspar David Friedrich was the leading painter of German Romanticism, exploring the spiritual and emotional connections between humanity and nature.
His Easter Morning shows a winding, tree-lined path at early dawn as winter gives way to spring, the leaves just starting to appear on the branches. Three women wrapped in shawls step onto the path, joining others who are making their way to church to worship the risen Lord. Although this is a contemporary scene, the women evoke the three devoted Marys of scripture who got up early one momentous Sunday morning to visit Jesus’s tomb.
Dnes spaseniye miru byst, poyem voskresshemu iz groba i nachalniku zhizni nasheya: razrushiv bo smertiyu smert, pobedu dade nam i veliyu milost.
English translation:
Today salvation has come to the world. Let us sing to him who rose from the dead, the Author of our life. Having destroyed death by death, he has given us the victory and great mercy.
Celebrated as one of the greatest musical achievements of the Russian Orthodox Church, Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil (Всенощное бдение / Vsénoshchnoye bdéniye) is an a cappella choral composition that sets texts from the All-Night Vigil, a liturgical service sung the evening before a major feast, including Pascha, the Feast of the Resurrection of Our Lord. The work premiered in Moscow in March 1915 with the all-male Moscow Synodal Choir and was warmly received but soon after, in 1917, was suppressed, like all church music, by the new Soviet government. For this reason, it didn’t become known in the West until the 1960s.
A troparion inviting meditation on the exalted mystery of the Resurrection, “Today Salvation Has Come” (Днесь спасеніе / Dnes spaseniye) is the thirteenth of the piece’s fifteen movements. It draws on the znamenny style of chant.
Richard Pousette-Dart (American, 1916–1992), Golden Dawn, 1952. Oil and graphite on linen, 93 1/2 × 51 1/2 in. (237.5 × 130.8 cm). North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
This abstract expressionist painting by Richard Pousette-Dart shows an explosion of light, and human bones, as I read it, reassembling—death being translated into life. I’m reminded of Ezekiel’s vision in the valley, of scattered skeletal remains coming back together, growing flesh, standing up, and receiving breath—a foretaste (one, of the descent of God’s Spirit at Pentecost, but also) of the coming resurrection of all the dead, the firstfruits of which was Christ.
LISTEN: The Protecting Veil: “Christ Is Risen!” by John Tavener, 1988 | Performed by the Ulster Orchestra, feat. Maria Kliegel, on John Tavener: The Protecting Veil; In Alium, 1999; re-released on The Essential John Tavener, 2014
This is section 6 of 8 from John Tavener’s The Protecting Veil, a work for cello and strings commissioned by the BBC for its 1989 Promenade season. It’s a Marian work, its title referencing the name of an Eastern Orthodox feast that commemorates the Mother of God’s miraculous appearance over Constantinople in the early tenth century to protect the Christians living there from a foreign invasion.
The “Christ Is Risen!” section is shimmering and exultant, evoking Jesus’s bursting out of the tomb. But about halfway through, the tempo slows and the mood softens, perhaps suggesting, after his triumphant victory over death, a quieter, tearful moment of reuniting with his mom.
The Protecting Veil, Tavener said, “is an attempt to make a lyrical ikon in sound, rather than in wood, and using the music of the cellist to paint rather than a brush.”
The painting featured above is no religious icon, but I see the gospel in it.
Greta Leśko (Polish, 1979–), Rabbuni!, 2021. Tempera on board, 29 × 30 cm. [purchase giclée print]
“At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had been laid.” —John 19:41
From garden to garden, God’s body moved. Born to breath beneath Eden’s tree, He named Himself Adam, Herself Eve, a twice-crowned exiled King and Queen. Gethsemane came a dark surprise— (Who knew where the garden gate might lead?)— the wind in the olives, the moon’s slow rise, the tell-tale blood on bony knees. That gray Friday we carried Christ home to one last garden, while evening birds sang a song of pity His stopped ears heard until He rose and hove away the stone. Our good dead God, while the dawn birds keened, bloomed anew in the garden’s sudden green.
Angela Alaimo O’Donnell is a writer, poet, and professor at Fordham University in New York City, where she teaches English and creative writing and serves as associate director of the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. She is the author of eleven books of poems and four books of prose, three of which are about Flannery O’Connor, and her essays—about the poetic craft, the nexus between faith and art, and literature in the context of the Catholic intellectual tradition—appear in numerous publications, including the magazines America and Commonweal.
This is the first of eight daily art-and-song posts, one for each day of the Easter Octave.
LOOK: Folio 8r (detail) from the Harley Psalter
Detail from the Harley Psalter, Canterbury, first half of 11th century. London, British Library, Harley MS 603, fol. 8r.
Produced at Christ Church in Canterbury, England, in the eleventh century, the Harley Psalter is celebrated for its lively and delicate multicolored line drawings executed in green, blue, pale sepia, and red inks, which illustrate individual lines from the Psalms, sometimes interpreting them in light of the New Testament. The manuscript is closely based on the ninth-century Utrecht Psalter from France, with a very similar arrangement and many near-identical images.
Folio 8r illustrates Psalm 16 (Psalm 15 in the Vulgate), even though the text of that psalm appears on the following page. I’ll focus on the three drawings at the bottom left (pictured above).
On the far left, the risen Christ pulls Adam and Eve up out of the pit of hell, trampling Hades (death personified as a crumpled man). To the right, three women go to visit Jesus’s tomb early on Easter morning, only to find it empty, save for the abandoned graveclothes—which we can see through an opening in the lower story.
These two vignettes illustrate Psalm 16:10: “For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption” (KJV). In the New Testament, both Peter (Acts 2:24–28) and Paul (Acts 13:35) apply this verse to Jesus’s resurrection.
The Hebrew word translated into English as “hell” is Sheol, the realm of the dead. In the Apostles’ Creed, the church proclaims that Jesus “was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended into hell [or ‘to the dead,’ as some translations render it]. On the third day he rose again . . .” As have and will most all humans, Jesus went down into the grave—but God did not leave him there. Nor will he leave his holy ones in that shadowy netherworld of deceased souls. Paul writes that Jesus is the first fruits of the harvest of eternal life (1 Cor. 15:20), his resurrection a foretaste and guarantee of the resurrection of all believers. That’s why the church developed the image of the Harrowing of Hell, or Anastasis, showing Christ triumphantly retrieving our ancestors in the faith from the Pit.
Matthew records that at the moment of Jesus’s death, the earth quaked, opening tombs, “and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many” (Matt. 27:52–53). What a strange phenomenon! That’s the harrowing.
The figure who appears in the Harley Psalter between the Harrowing of Hell and the Holy Women at the Tomb is the psalmist himself. He stands on a hillside holding a cup in his right hand and touching his lips with his left, harking to Psalm 16:4–5: “Their [idolaters’] drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names upon my lips. The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup . . .”
If you want to explore the manuscript’s predecessor, the Utrecht Psalter, the Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht (its owning institution) provides a full, annotated digital scan, in which every vignette is linked to the psalm verse it illustrates and accompanied by a description. It’s a wonderful resource! Here’s folio 8r, for example.
Psalm 15(16) from the Utrecht Psalter, Reims, France (Hautvilliers Abbey), ca. 820-30. Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS 32, fol. 8r.
See also the Eadwine Psalter, another copy of the Utrecht Psalter, only slightly later than Harley. Folio 24r corresponds with folio 8r in Utrecht and Harley.
Psalm 15(16) from the Eadwine Psalter, Canterbury, ca. 1150. Cambridge, Trinity College, R.17.1, fol. 24r.
LISTEN:“Rise Up (Lauds)” by Dylan McKeeman, on Good Morning, Happy Easter, vol. 3, by the Morning and Night Collective, 2014
Rise up this morning Jesus is risen! Rise up this morning and praise Rise up this morning Jesus is risen! Rise up this morning and praise
He is risen indeed He is risen for me He is risen this blessed day He is risen indeed He has set us all free He’s risen this blessed day
Dylan McKeeman wrote this song while serving as the director of music and arts at Reynolda EPC in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He is currently the director of modern worship and production at First Presbyterian Church, also in Winston-Salem.
The subtitle “Lauds” (Latin for “praises”) refers to an early-morning canonical hour designated for prayer, corresponding with dawn.
The song opens with the low, bowed tones of an upright bass, and then a violin, banjo, and guitar enter, all improvising around an F2 chord. Vocalist Jess Silk provides an ethereal hum underneath, which, together with the instruments, evokes a mist lifting. After about the first minute, the song modulates up a whole step to G and a bright banjo tune kicks in along with the summons: “Rise up this morning, Jesus is risen!”
Soichi Watanabe (Japanese, 1949–), To God Be the Glory, 2009. Acrylic on canvas, 52 × 39 in. Collection of the Overseas Ministries Study Center at Princeton Theological Seminary.
This is the paschal feast, the Lord’s passing from death to life: so cries the Spirit. No type or telling, this, no shadow. Pasch of the Lord it is, and truly.
You have protected us, Jesus, from endless disaster. You spread your hands like a mother and, motherlike, gave cover with your wings. Your blood, God’s blood, you poured over the earth, giving life, because you loved us.
The heavens may have your spirit, paradise your soul, but oh, may the earth have your blood!
This feast of the Spirit leads the mystic dance through the year. New is this feast and all-embracing; all creation assembles at it.
Joy to all creatures, honor, feasting, delight! Dark death is destroyed and life is restored everywhere. The gates of heaven are open. God has shown himself human, humanity has gone up to God. The gates of hell are shattered, the bars of Adam’s prison broken. The people of the world below have risen from the dead, bringing good news: what was promised is fulfilled. From the earth has come singing and dancing.
This is God’s passing! Heaven’s God, showing no stinginess, has joined us together with God in the Spirit. The great marriage hall is full of guests, all dressed for the wedding, no guest rejected for want of a wedding garment. The paschal light is the bright new lamplight, light that shines from the virgins’ lamps. The light in the soul will never go out. The fire of grace burns in us all, spirit, divine, in our bodies and in our souls, fed with the oil of Christ.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Join, then, all of you, join in this great rejoicing. You who’ve been working the vineyard from the early hour and you who came later, come now and collect your wages. Rich and poor, sing and dance together. You who are hard on yourselves, you who are easy, honor this day. You who have fasted and you who have not, make merry today.
The meal is ready: come and enjoy it. The calf is a fat one: you will not go away hungry. There’s kindness for all to partake of and kindness to spare.
Away with pleading of poverty: the kingdom belongs to us all. Away with bewailing of failings: forgiveness has come from the grave. Away with your fears of dying: the death of our Savior has freed us from fear. Death played the master: he has mastered death. The world below had scarcely known him in the flesh when he rose and left it plunged in bitter mourning.
Isaiah knew it would be so. [Isa. 14:9] The world of shadows mourned, he cried, when it met you, mourned at its being brought low, wept at its being deluded. The shadows seized a body and found it was God; they reached for earth and what they held was heaven; they took what they could see: it was what no one sees. Where is death’s goad? Where is the shadows’ victory?
Christ is risen: the world below [hell] is in ruins. Christ is risen: the spirits of evil are fallen. Christ is risen: the angels of God are rejoicing. Christ is risen: the tombs are void of their dead. Christ has indeed arisen from the dead, the first of the sleepers.
Glory and power are his for ever and ever. Amen.
This text is a composite of excerpts from two Easter sermons spuriously attributed to John Chrysostom (ca. 347–407) and drawing inspiration from Hippolytus of Rome (ca. 170–ca. 235), which I adapted from Walter Mitchell’s English translation from the original Greek that appears in Adalbert Hamman, OFM, ed., Early Christian Prayers (Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1961), 31–35. The source texts can be found in the Patrologia Graeca59:741–46 and 59:721–24. They probably date to the fourth century.
Last year when I was at the Art Institute of Chicago, I was transfixed by the pointillist painting Easter Mystery by the French artist Maurice Denis.
Maurice Denis (French, 1870–1943), Easter Mystery (Mystère de Pâcques), 1891. Oil on canvas, 41 × 40 1/8 in. (104 × 102 cm). Art Institute of Chicago. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
It shows three women dressed in mourning clothes arriving at Christ’s tomb (one ascending the hill, one kneeling, and one prostrate), only to find an angel at its entrance, announcing that Christ has risen. In the midground, visible through a veil of trees, the hand of God bends down to feed a group of white-clad women the body of Christ, a consecrated wafer that gives them eternal life.
Jesus’s teaching in John 6:48–58 is instructive here:
“I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day, for my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which the ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”
The Art Institute audio guide (#841) provides the following commentary on the painting:
Maurice Denis belonged to a group of young French artists who called themselves the Nabis after the Hebrew word for prophets. The Nabis were interested in imbuing their subject matter with a sense of mystery and otherness. For Denis, a devout Catholic, an ordinary landscape could be loaded with manifestations of the divine. Denis sets this scene in the village of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, west of Paris, where he lived. The large house in the background would later become his home. In the foreground, an angel emerges from a cave, as if to announce Christ rising, to the mourning Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene. Behind them are white-clad figures who hasten toward an astonishing sight, the hand of God himself, appearing miraculously from the trees to offer the Eucharist.
Denis strived for simple, flattened forms that sometimes verge on abstraction. He believed this process reflected spiritual purification, and he looked to the work of early Italian Renaissance art, and especially to the work of the painter monk Fra Angelico for inspiration. But he and the other Nabis were also deeply influenced by avant-garde French art. Here, Denis explores the effects of the pointillist technique of building up the picture surface with tiny dots of paint.
A 1994 exhibition catalog for Maurice Denis, 1870–1943 at the Musée des beaux-arts in Lyon expands on the artist’s technique in Easter Mystery. “By treating the surface with a kind of pointillist technique,” it reads, “he accentuates the gentleness of the curves, increases the light everywhere as in a mosaic, and endows the whole composition with an effect of airy lightness. . . . A spring landscape seems to be scattered with regularly spaced dabs of green paint, which work like a prism, breaking the light up into coloured particles. Denis used this method widely in order [in the words of Jean-Paul Bouillon] ‘to embody the truths of love and faith in perceptible form – making a surface quiver.’”
The quivering surface contributes to the mystical quality of the painting, in which mortality is taken up into immortality. By our partaking of the Eucharist, Christ assimilates us into his risen, living body, over which death has no dominion.
This painting is in the public domain, and you are free to use my photos if you wish. To view them in full resolution, right-click and open in a new tab (if viewing on a computer) or pinch to zoom (if viewing on a phone).
Woman gathering flowers, first century CE. Detached fresco, 38 × 32 cm, from the Villa Arianna in Stabiae, Campania, Italy, now in the Collection of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Naples, Italy. The woman may be Primavera (a personification of spring) or Flora (the Roman goddess of flowers, fertility, and abundance), or simply a generic maiden at leisure.
Spring bursts today, For Christ is risen and all the earth’s at play.
Flash forth, thou Sun, The rain is over and gone, its work is done.
Winter is past, Sweet Spring is come at last, is come at last.
Bud, Fig and Vine, Bud, Olive, fat with fruit and oil and wine.
Break forth this morn In roses, thou but yesterday a Thorn.
Uplift thy head, O pure white Lily through the Winter dead.
Beside your dams Leap and rejoice, you merry-making Lambs.
All Herds and Flocks Rejoice, all Beasts of thickets and of rocks.
Sing, Creatures, sing, Angels and Men and Birds and everything.
All notes of Doves Fill all our world: this is the time of loves.
This poem was originally published in A Pageant, and Other Poems(London, 1881) and is in the public domain.
One of the most celebrated poets of the Victorian era, Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894) was an English writer of Romantic, devotional, and children’s poems. She was the youngest of four siblings, among them the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, several of whose paintings she sat for, famously modeling for the Virgin Mary. A devout Anglican whose verse gives vivid expression to the life of faith and to spiritual longing, she is recognized as a saint by the Church of England and the Episcopal Church, who celebrate April 27 as her feast day.
ART VIDEO: “Coventry Cathedral: A Journey Through Art” (HENI Talks), written and presented by James Fox: While my husband was presenting at a science conference at Oxford in 2013, I took a train to Coventry and spent the whole day at the city’s cathedral, wandering through its chapels and grounds, sitting in front of its various artworks as the light changed, praying, and even talking with a few locals, including one man who had lived in Coventry since before its bombing in World War II. That bombing destroyed the original St. Michael’s from the fourteenth century, but when the cathedral was rebuilt after the war, it provided the occasion for new commissions from modern architects and artists. Here’s a wonderful video introduction to the history, art, and design of Coventry Cathedral:
In it the art historian and BAFTA-nominated broadcaster Dr. James Fox explores some of the cathedral’s modernist masterpieces: St. Michael’s Victory over the Devil by Jacob Epstein; the West Screen by John Hutton; the Tablets of the Word by Ralph Beyer; the stained glass windows in the nave by Lawrence Lee, Keith New, and Geoffrey Clarke; the lectern eagle by Elisabeth Frink; the high-altar cross of nails by Geoffrey Clarke; the monumental tapestry Christ in Glory in the Tetramorph by Graham Sutherland (which I wrote about for ArtWay); Angel of Agony by Steven Sykes; the Crown of Thorns by Geoffrey Clarke; the Chapel of Unity floor mosaics by Einar Forseth; and the Baptistery Window by John Piper. The latter Fox calls the pinnacle of the entire complex, and I agree—it’s extraordinary. Explore more at www.coventrycathedral.org.uk.
Coventry Cathedral in the West Midlands, England. Photo: David Iliff (CC BY-SA 3.0).Detail of the large glass “west” screen at Coventry Cathedral, designed and hand-engraved by John Hutton, 1962. This view looks out over the ruins of the Old Cathedral. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.
SONG: “See What a Morning (Resurrection Hymn)” by Stuart Townend and Keith Getty, sung by the Coventry Cathedral choirs and congregation: Although Coventry Cathedral attracts tourists, it’s also an active church, home to a regular worshipping community! Here’s a video of the beginning of the entrance rite on Easter Day 2012, a procession carried out to the 2003 hymn “See What a Morning.” I appreciate the versatility of Stuart Townend and the Gettys’ hymns, which tend to work equally well if led by a contemporary worship band or a traditional choir with piano/organ accompaniment. I’m used to hearing their hymns sung in low-church contexts (“low church” refers to Christian traditions, such as evangelicalism, that place less emphasis on ritual and sacrament, as opposed to “high church”), so it was a delight to see one used as part of the Anglican liturgy and in such a majestic space!
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ARTICLE: “La Scala concert features violins that inmates made from battered migrant boats” by Colleen Barry, AP News, February 13, 2024: “The violins, violas and cellos played by the Orchestra of the Sea in its debut performance at Milan’s famed Teatro alla Scala carry with them tales of desperation and redemption. The wood that was bent, chiseled and gouged to form the instruments was recovered from dilapidated smugglers’ boats that brought migrants to Italy’s shores; the luthiers who created them are inmates in Italy’s largest prison. The project, dubbed Metamorphosis, focuses on transforming what otherwise might be discarded into something of value to society: rotten wood into fine instruments, inmates into craftsmen, all under the principle of rehabilitation . . .” This is a beautiful story of repurposing, of new life—for weathered wood that carried families out of danger zones, and for men who have been convicted of crimes but who seek to engage their hands and hearts in creative projects.
February 9, 2024: A violin made from the wood of wrecked migrants’ boats lies in the instrument workshop at Opera maximum-security prison outside Milan. Photo: Antonio Calanni / Associated Press.Two members of the Orchestra of the Sea play cellos made by inmates from reclaimed wood at the orchestra’s debut performance in Milan on February 12, 2024. Photo: Antonio Calanni / Associated Press.
Here’s my new (nonthematic) playlist for the month of April!
But also, because Easter lasts through May 18, be sure to check out the 184 songs I handpicked for the season, which includes some new ones mixed in since the playlist’s original publication.
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NEW SONGS:
>> “He Lives” by Emma Nissen: Emma Nissen is a Latter-day Saint singer-songwriter from Arizona known for her gorgeous jazz vocals. Here she performs an original song about God the Father giving his Son, Jesus, to redeem the world through his life, death, and resurrection. “Let there be light, let there be love . . .”
>> “Living Among the Dead” by Caleb Stine: Alt-country singer-songwriter Caleb Stine, based in Baltimore, released this Johnny Cash–esque, resurrection-themed song just before Easter. The title and chorus come from the words the angels spoke to the women who went to Jesus’s tomb the Sunday after his death, looking for his body. “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” they asked. “He is not here but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to the hands of sinners and be crucified and on the third day rise again” (Luke 24:5–7).
The first verse narrates that momentous visit to the tomb. The second verse fast-forwards to the present day and raises issues of poverty, mental illness, substance abuse, culture warring, and militarism, some caused and others exacerbated by the death-dealing policies or neglect of the government. Many people look to politicians for salvation, trusting in their often empty promises, embracing their divisive rhetoric, and ignoring major character flaws for the sake of power. This song cautions us not to go to a dry well for sustenance—not to quench our thirst for living water in places that cannot give it.
The third verse tells of a “thin man in a dusty hat” who regales the story of a carpenter who healed and fed people, who drove out demons from bodies and greedy opportunists from temple courtyards, who befriended those of little means and those who were ostracized. He addressed human suffering head-on with tenderness and self-sacrifice. When the chorus comes in a final time, I hear in it that this loving, serving, reconciling Christ is still living, his Spirit is still moving, and that we ought to get behind that movement, practicing resurrection where we live. “Be not of fear, be of light, lift your head.” As the body of Christ, we should follow him in doing the same deeds and proclaiming the same good news of liberation.
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BLOG POST: “50 Ways to Practice Resurrection during the 50 Days of Eastertide” by Tamara Hill Murphy: Spiritual director and writer Tamara Hill Murphy of Connecticut shares fifty simple ideas for celebrating the Easter season in your day-to-day, including retelling baptism stories, visiting a botanical garden, watching a movie that makes you laugh, swinging on the playground, cooking a new veggie recipe, building a new piece of furniture, or washing your car by hand. “I find a lot of joy . . . in seeing these ordinary choices during my day as ways to practice a life that trumps death, a resurrection kind of life,” Murphy writes.
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PODCAST EPISODE: “The Beauty—the Poetry—of Christian Experience” with Benjamin Myers, Faith & Imagination: I listen to at least a dozen podcast episodes a week, and this one has been one of my favorites of the past few months. Dr. Benjamin Myers is a literature professor at Oklahoma Baptist University and a former poet laureate of Oklahoma. Here, host Matthew Wickman interviews Myers about two of his six books: A Poetics of Orthodoxy: Christian Truth as Aesthetic Foundation (2020) and the poetry collection The Family Book of Martyrs (2022). They talk about the incarnation and its implications on art; the disclosure of the extraordinary in the ordinary; the inherently unsecular nature of all good poetry; how beauty mirrors grace; the importance of the humanities in Christian education (how it “thickens up” the soul); the obligation of Christian art to capture both the “something good” and the “something missing” of our lives; and how love calls us to the things of this world.
A few additional highlights for me:
Myers came to faith after attending a Lessons & Carols service, compelled by the beauty and truthfulness of the story it told.
“Beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder but also in the being of God.”
At 37:24, Myers reads a poem he wrote for his youngest daughter: “Elizabeth Discovers Rock and Roll.”
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INSTAGRAM VIDEO:from AJ+: On March 31 in the Borgerhout district of Antwerp, a mile-plus-long table set up along the Turnhoutsebaan brought together city residents for a joint Easter-iftar dinner. Easter is the most sacred feast of the Christian year, celebrating the resurrection of Jesus; on Easter Sunday, Christians break the forty-day fast they’ve held for the duration of Lent. Lent almost always overlaps in part with Ramadan, a Muslim holy month of fasting that commemorates the prophet Muhammad’s first revelation. On each day of Ramadan after sunset, the fast is broken with an evening meal called an iftar.
Christians and Muslims in Antwerp broke their fasts together at an outdoor Easter-iftar dinner on March 31. Photo: Sanad Latifa.
Borgerhout carried out this interfaith initiative in collaboration with the FMV cultural association and other partners in the hopes of promoting dialogue, social cohesion, and connection. I love this idea of gathering folks together across lines of religious difference to enjoy community, good food, and spiritual celebration! For more information, see https://www.2kmsamenaantafel.be/.
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NEW ALBUM: Three Gifts by Liturgical Folk and Jon Guerra: Ryan Flanigan of Liturgical Folk and Jon Guerra have teamed up to release an EP of three songs, one for each of the three theological virtues: faith, hope, and love (1 Cor. 13:13). Here’s “the greatest of these”:
Now on that same day two of them [to whom the women had reported the empty tomb] were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them. . . . As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them.
—Luke 24:13–15, 28–29
LOOK: Road to Emmaus by Duccio
Duccio (Italian, ca. 1255/60–ca. 1319), Road to Emmaus, 1308–11. Tempera on wood, 51 × 57 cm. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena.
In his Road to Emmaus painting, the Sienese master Duccio portrays Jesus as a typical medieval pilgrim, wearing a woolen cloak, a satchel, and a wide-brimmed hat and holding a walking stick. This artistic choice was probably made in part to explain why his two traveling companions, Cleopas and an unnamed other, do not recognize him until later. Those two had been in Jerusalem for Passover and thus heard of the prophet Jesus’s being put to death and, just that morning, an angel supposedly appearing to a group of women saying he had risen. It was a wild week. Weary now from their seven-mile journey, they gesture toward the village of Emmaus. “Let’s get some food,” they suggest.
This panel is part of an enormous polyptych (multipaneled altarpiece) that originally stood at the high altar of Siena Cathedral in Italy. It’s called the Maestà (“Majesty”) altarpiece, after the primary panel of the enthroned Madonna and Child with saints and angels, and it’s one of the most significant artworks of the fourteenth century. Unfortunately, it was cut up in the eighteenth century and individual panels sold for private purchase. Therefore, several panels are now lost, and the rest are dispersed internationally across twelve museum collections, though many are held at the Museo dell’Opera Metropolitana in Siena.
The following two images are conjectural digital reconstructions that place the surviving paintings into the probable framework, based on documentary evidence. The front of the altarpiece contained fourteen scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary, and the back contained twenty-six scenes from the life of Christ. The Road to Emmaus is the last in the narrative sequence on the back (see arrow).
Conjectural digital reconstruction of the front of Duccio’s Maestà altarpiece, 1308–11. Tempera and gold on wood, height 16 1/2 ft. Source: Italian Art Society.Conjectural digital reconstruction of the back of Duccio’s Maestà altarpiece, with an arrow pointing to the Road to Emmaus
Stay with us, Lord Jesus, stay with us. Stay with us; it soon is evening. Stay with us, Lord Jesus, stay with us. It soon is evening and night is falling.
Jesus Christ, the world’s true light! Shine so the darkness cannot overcome it! Stay with us, Lord Jesus, it soon is evening. Stay with us, Lord Jesus, for night is falling. Let your light pierce the darkness And fill your church with its glory.
“Bli hos oss,” or “Stay with Us” in English, is the third of six choral pieces that comprise opus 87 of the Norwegian composer Egil Hovland (1924–2013). The main part of the text is based on Luke 24:29, where two pilgrims to Jerusalem are traveling back home after the feast of Passover in the company of, unbeknownst to them at the time, the risen Christ. When they reach the village of Emmaus, it’s time to turn in for the evening, and the two invite their fellow traveler to dine and lodge with them. (The text is ambiguous as to whether they live there or are merely stopping overnight at an inn or the home of a friend to rest.) He accepts. And it is at the dinner table there that Jesus reveals to them who he is.
This song is used in many churches for Vespers (evening worship) services during Eastertide. It invokes Christ’s presence, asking him to be with us through the night and to shine his light into places of spiritual or emotional darkness.
As we continue our journey through the liturgical year, may Christ be glorified in our hearts, in our homes and neighborhoods, in his church, and in the wider world, granting us the illumination, the awed recognition and joy, that he granted the two pilgrims who supped with him at Emmaus after his resurrection.
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Art & Theology 