Natalya Rusetska (Ukrainian, 1984–), Nativity, 2016. Tempera on gessoed wood, 17.5 × 15.5 cm.
Gravity’s maker, spinner of spheres and spiraling matter, made into weight, to sweat. His own feet vulnerable, drawn flat and close against the punishing ground.
Star-strayed infant, wrapped in weight, heavy heaven. In the hollow of the years, long and narrow as a well, he waits suspended, bucket-drawn, clapper in a bell.
Ringing and ringing in the heatfolds of gravity, lines and lines of weight leaning us into each other, caught up, tumbled open-face roses in a blue bolt of thorn-pricked cloth.
God made known, fleshly God, Godlight bodied, bleeding out into wood, over stone. God from God, telluric God, shadowcast God, lightstricken God, bloodwritten. The pull
electric of low, deep center. God flesh, corpus God, Verbum corpse, light-riven. Inscribed, blooded, God-heft falling death- bitten into weighted rising, made and given; the miracle of leaven.
LeighAnna Schesser is a Catholic writer from south-central Kansas whose poetry collections include Struck Dumb with Singing (2020) and Heartland (2016).
PODCAST: Poetry for All, hosted by Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen:Poetry for All “is for those who already love poetry and for those who know very little about it. In this podcast, we read a poem, discuss it, see what makes it tick, learn how it works, grow from it, and then read it one more time.” I’ve consistently enjoyed this podcast since its launch in 2020, having learned about it through cohost Abram Van Engen [previously], an academic who often writes and speaks about poetry for general Christian audiences. Here are some of my favorite episodes of the ninety-seven that have been released to date:
Three haiku by Kobayashi Issa, translated from the Japanese by Robert Hass: The first: “The snow is melting / and the village is flooded / with children.” Learn the characteristics of what Joanne Diaz calls “the perfect poetic form.”
“spring song” by Lucille Clifton: One of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets. “This joyful poem caps a sequence of sixteen poems called ‘some jesus,’ which walks through biblical characters (beginning with Adam and Eve) and ends on four poems for Holy Week and Easter. [Clifton] wrote other poems on the Bible as well, including ‘john’ and ‘my dream about the second coming,’ which reimagine a way into biblical characters to make their stories fresh.”
“Elegy for My Mother’s Mind” by Laura Van Prooyen: This episode is unique in that it has the poet herself on to read and discuss the poem, which in this case navigates the complexities of memory, loss, and familial relationships.
“View but This Tulip” by Hester Pulter: Ashamedly, I had never heard of this seventeenth-century female poet before listening to this episode, so I’m grateful to guest Wendy Wall, cocreator of the award-winning Pulter Project website, for introducing me to her! “In this episode we discuss [Pulter’s] work with emblems, her scientific chemistry experiment with flowers, and her wonderment (both worried and confident, doubtful and awestruck) about the resurrection of the body and its reunification with the soul after death.”
“From Blossoms” by Li-Young Lee: A much-anthologized poem ostensibly about eating summer peaches, but more deeply, it’s about joy. “One of the things that draws me to this poem,” says Van Engen, “is that joy is actually very hard to write about . . . without it sounding naive or sentimental or withdrawn or unaware.”
“Primary Care” by Rafael Campo: Dr. Rafael Campo is both a poet and a practicing physician. Here he uses blank verse to explore the experience of illness and suffering.
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POEMS:
>> “For V. the Bag Lady, Great in the Kingdom of Heaven,” “Damascus Road,” “The Sower,” and “Crosses” by Paul J. Pastor: The Rabbit Room received permission to reproduce four poems from Paul J. Pastor’s [previously] new poetry collection, The Locust Years, which “explores a world of mystery and sorrow, desolation and love. Rooted in the Pacific Northwest, these poems offer readers an invitation to walk along a path pebbled with profound joy and deep loss.” I’ll be sharing another on the blog next week, courtesy of Wiseblood Books.
>>“Undone”by Michael Stalcup: The rise of blogging in the aughts and its descendant, Substacking, in the last few years has meant that poets and other writers can share their work directly with their reading publics and give them insight into their creative process if they wish. On his Substack, the Thai American poet Michael Stalcup [previously] recently shared one of his new poems that’s based on the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8:1–11. He explains how the poem’s form, a blend of the Petrarchan sonnet and the chiasmus, contributes to its meaning.
Nalini Jayasuriya (Sri Lankan, 1927–2014), Go, Sin No More, 2004. Mixed media on cloth, 23 × 19 in. Published in The Christian Story: Five Asian Artists Today, ed. Patricia C. Pongracz, Volker Küster, and John W. Cook (Museum of Biblical Art, 2007), p. 119.
Blessed be the paps which Thou hast sucked. —Luke 11:27
Suppose he had been Tabled at thy Teats, Thy hunger feels not what he eats: He’ll have his Teat ere long (a bloody one). The Mother then must suck the Son.
Scholar Kimberly Johnson [previously] unpacks these four lines about the body of Christ, who as an infant drank milk from his mother’s breast, and whose sacrificial death opened up his own breast whence flows the blood that nourishes us all. Johnson teases out the overlap of physical and spiritual in the poem, highlighting the maternal sharing of one’s own substance that links both couplets. At the eucharistic table, we are bidden to come and eat; or, in the stark metaphorical language of Crashaw, come and suck Christ’s bloody teat.
I plan to write an essay sometime about Christ as a nursing mother, as I’ve seen the image pop up in medieval writings and some visual art, including from Kongo and Ethiopia. In the meantime, here’s an illumination of the sixth vision in part 2 of Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias (Know the Ways), painted under the supervision of Hildy herself. It shows the crucified Christ feeding Ecclesia (his bride, the church) with blood from his breast.
“The Crucifixion and the Eucharist,” from Scivias (Know the Ways) II.6, Rupertsberg Abbey, Germany, before 1179. Rupertsberg Codex, fol. 86r, Hildegard Abbey, Eibingen, Germany. The original manuscript from Hildegard’s lifetime was lost in 1945, but a faithful copy was made in 1927–33, which is the source of the color reproductions now available.
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ESSAY: “Only One Heart: The Poetry of Franz Wright as Emblem of God’s Grace” by Bonnie Rubrecht, Curator: “Are You / just a word? // Are we beheld, or am I all alone?” These three lines typify the poetry of Franz Wright (1953–2015), the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Walking to Martha’s Vineyard, God’s Silence, and other collections. “Wright’s work is often described as confessional, colored by irony and humor. His irreverence, juxtaposed with honesty and humility, make his poetic voice unique in addressing God. Writers and poets often traffic in spiritual themes, but few modern poets echo the prophetic Old Testament tradition of crying out, approaching God with the concision and raw emotion that Wright does. He excels in voicing the concerns and ruminations of the human experience of suffering, while simultaneously shifting towards his own embodiment of grace.”
SPOTIFY PLAYLIST: September 2025 (Art & Theology): A new monthly playlist featuring a range of faith-based songs, including “Day by Day” by Lowana Wallace and Isaac Wardell of the Porter’s Gate (especially apt for Labor Day!), sung below by Kimberly Williams; “Jesus of Nazareth” by the early twentieth-century hymn writer Hugh W. Dougall, performed in a bluegrass style by the Lower Lights; and a fantastic instrumental jazz arrangement by Alice Grace of the classic children’s song “Jesus Loves Me,” performed by the Indonesian group Bestindo Music (Grace is at the keys).
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VIDEO: “The Apostles’ Creed”: This video presentation of the Apostles’ Creed, one of the oldest statements of Christian belief, used across denominations, was created in 2016 by Faith Church in Dyer, Indiana, using twenty-one of its members to voice the lines. [HT: Global Christian Worship]
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CHILDREN’S PICTURE BIBLE:Godaku Tjukurpa (God’s Story): Nami Kulyuru, a long-serving Pitjantjatjara Bible translator and artist from Central Australia, had the vision to pass on the stories of the Bible to her grandchildren and other young Pitjantjatjara readers using traditional Anangu paintings, compiled in book format. She began the artistic work in 2021 but shortly after was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Following her death in 2022, her friends and colleagues rallied together to complete the project, which was published last November by Bible Society Australia. [HT: Global Christian Worship]
Nami Kulyuru (Pitjantjatjara, 1964–2022), The Woman at the Well (John 4), 2021, from the bilingual book Godaku Tjukurpa (God’s Story) (Bible Society Australia, 2024)
Spanning the Old and New Testaments, Godaku Tjukurpa (God’s Story) features fifty-four Bible illustrations by Pitjantjatjara artists, along with descriptions in Pitjantjatjara and English. It is available for purchase through the Koorong website, but it appears that it can ship only to Australia or New Zealand.
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SHORT FILM: Feeling Through, dir. Doug Roland (2019): Nominated for an Academy Award in 2021, this eighteen-minute film is about a homeless teen (played by Steven Prescod) who encounters a DeafBlind man (played by Robert Tarango) on the streets of New York City. It was inspired by an actual experience writer-director Doug Roland had some years earlier. He partnered with the Helen Keller National Center to make the film, including casting a DeafBlind actor as co-lead, the first film to ever do so. You can watch Feeling Through for free on the film’s website, along with a “making of” documentary. Here’s a trailer:
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FEATURE FILM:Places in the Heart, dir. Robert Benton (1984): Set in Jim Crow Texas during the Great Depression, this film centers on the recently widowed Edna Spalding (Sally Field), a middle-age white woman who is struggling to run the cotton farm she inherited from her late husband and to make ends meet for herself and her two small children. To earn some cash, she takes in a boarder, Mr. Will (John Malkovich), a bitter World War I vet who is blind, and she hires Moze (Danny Glover), a Black drifter who is being harassed by the Ku Klux Klan, to teach her how to plant and harvest cotton. The three are thrown together out of necessity and help each other survive.
It’s a pretty good movie overall—and it won Sally Field her second Oscar for Best Actress—but what leads me to recommend it is its theologically profound closing scene, which shows the ordinance of Communion being celebrated at the local country church. First Corinthians 13:1–8, the famous “love” passage, is read from the pulpit, and the choir launches into “In the Garden” (a hymn inspired by the risen Christ’s appearance to Mary Magdalene on Easter morning) as the plates of bread and grape juice are passed down the pews. The camera zooms in close on each congregant as they receive the elements, starting with a couple whose marriage had suffered due to infidelity but who, in this scene, silently reconcile.
On my first watch, what signaled to me that we had entered the realm of the imaginary (the mystical? the aspirational?) was the presence of Moze, who had left town the previous night after having been beaten by Klansmen; he’s here, with no visible wounds, in this conservative white church in the 1930s that very likely would not have welcomed him, being served the body and blood of Christ by a deacon. I believe that some of the white men in the pews in front of him are repentant Klansmen who, when Mr. Will identified them under their hoods by their voices the previous night, mid-assault, slinked away in shame. Within the row, too, is the mortgage collector who was in conflict with Edna, insisting that she sell the farm.
After Edna receives the elements, she passes them to her husband, Royce, who was dead before but here is very much alive. He then passes the elements to the young Black teen, Wylie, who had shot and killed him in a drunken accident, whom vigilantes then lynched. “Peace of God,” they say to each other—a traditional Christian greeting expressing love and reconciliation. The final frame lingers on Royce and Wylie, sharing the meal together, and I’m intrigued by the actors’ choices of expression: Wylie is serene, grace-filled, whereas Royce appears befuddled, perhaps recognizing for the first time the blessed tie that binds him to his Black neighbor, his brother in Christ.
This scene speaks powerfully of the invitation of the Lord’s Table—open to all, even the most morally odious, who would come in humble confession of (and turning from) sin and reliance on God’s mercy through Christ, which heals and transforms. Partaking of the meal are various people from the community—people who have cheated on their spouses; people with ornery dispositions; people with narrow economic interests, who fail in compassion; people who have stolen; people who have committed cruel, racist, violent acts; people driven to drink, leading to fatal harm; people who have silently allowed racial terror to reign in their town. All these sinful, forgiven people make up the body of Christ, are united under his cross. They’ve often hurt one another, but the Holy Spirit is at work making them a new creation. I see this final scene as a picture of heaven, where wrongs are redressed, and of the “beloved community” Martin Luther King Jr. talked about.
Places in the Heart is streaming for free on Tubi (no account required).
HOLY WEEK TRADITION: Antigua, Guatemala, is renowned for its annual Good Friday observance, which involves the laying out of alfombras (carpets) of multicolored sawdust through the city’s cobblestone streets, hundreds of feet long. On Maundy Thursday, the city closes so that families and businesses can spend the day constructing the carpets, applying the sawdust to planned designs using stencils and strainers and adding pine needles, flowers, fruits, and other natural materials as well.
People watch while locals make an alfombra (carpet) of dyed sawdust for Antigua’s Good Friday processions, the most famous in Latin America. Photo: Lucy Brown, 2016.
At 4 a.m. on Good Friday, the processions begin, with people carrying floats that bear statues of Christ carrying his cross, followed by marching bands playing solemn music. (This is a remembrance of Jesus’s walk to Calvary.) As their feet pass over the alfombras, the dust scatters. Locals and visitors gather along the streets dressed in black for mourning, and at 11 p.m. a figure of Jesus is laid to rest in the church.
Here are two resources for exploring this tradition further:
>> VIDEO: “Alfombras de Semana Santa en Guatemala,” dir.Federica Dominguez: This short film (in Spanish, with English subtitles) interviews Rolando Ortiz, an alfombrero who is also a shoemaker. He explains that the carpets hark back to Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, when the crowds strewed his path with palm branches (giving him the red carpet treatment, so to speak). Even though the alfombras last only a brief time, locals spare no expense in bringing them to fruition each year—“for Jesus,” Ortiz says. “It is an act of gratitude above all.” An offering of beauty and praise.
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NEW ALBUM: As Foretold, Part 3 by Poor Bishop Hooper: Released today, this is the final album in a trilogy based on the prophetic fulfillment passages in the Gospel of Matthew. It centers on Jesus’s passion and concludes with a resurrection epilogue. As with all their music, the duo graciously offers it for free download from their website.
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SONGS performed by Emorja Roberson: Emorja Roberson [previously] is a singer, gospel choir conductor, and assistant professor of music and African American studies at Oxford College of Emory University in Georgia. I enjoy following his YouTube channel. Here are two songs that are especially fitting for Holy Week.
>> “I Know It Was the Blood”: Roberson sings three verses of this beloved African American spiritual: the title verse, “They whipped him all night long,” and “He never said a mumblin’ word.” The song is more typically sung in a major key, and its full lyrics span Christ’s passion, resurrection, ascension, and second coming. But Roberson slows down the tempo and sings in a minor key, homing in on the sorrow of Good Friday.
>> “He Decided to Die” by Margaret Pleasant Douroux: Roberson, on keys, sings a gospel classic with friends Marcus Morton and Cameron Scott, a song that emphasizes Christ’s resoluteness on the cross, his endurance for love.
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VISUAL COMMENTARIES: “After the Order of Melchizedek” by Victoria Emily Jones: My latest contribution to the Visual Commentary on Scripture, a project based out of King’s College London, was published earlier this month. Tasked with choosing and commenting on three artworks that dialogue with Hebrews 7–8, I landed on a “You Are a Priest Forever” icon from Russia (very strange!), an Antwerp Mannerist triptych that centers the Last Supper, and (my favorite) a wall painting of Christ the Grapevine from a Romanian church. I was interested to explore the idea of how Jesus, in giving his body and blood, is both the offerer and the offered, both priest and sacrifice.
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POEM: “The Death of Christ” by Emperor Kangxi: Emperor Kangxi (1654–1722) ruled in China for sixty-one years during the Qing Dynasty. In 1692 he issued the Edict of Toleration, which barred attacks on churches and legalized the practice of Christianity among Chinese people. Curious about and respectful of other faiths, he penned this short poem on the Crucifixion using the classical qi-yen-she form.
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EXHIBITION: Tara Sellios: Ask Now the Beasts, Fitchburg Art Museum, January 18, 2025–January 18, 2026:Tara Sellios is a multidisciplinary artist from South Boston working mainly in large-format photography. Delighting in detail and complex symbolism, she often uses insects, dried fauna, bone, and other organic matter to create elaborate still lifes that she then photographs under dramatic lighting. She is inspired by art historical representations of the end of the world, especially the bizarre paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and Albrecht Dürer’s Apocalypse woodcuts, and by seventeenth-century Dutch vanitas paintings.
The photographs in her current solo show, Ask Now the Beasts at Fitchburg Art Museum in Massachusetts, are “contemporary allegories of suffering and transcendence.” The exhibition’s title comes from Job 12:7.
Two of the works on display are a pair of crosses: Umbra (Latin for “darkness” or “shadow”) and Dilucesco (“to begin to grow light, to dawn”), which together suggest a movement from death to resurrection. Constructed with a throng of black beetles and other black insects, the Umbra cross evokes the detail from the Synoptic Gospels’ Crucifixion accounts that at noon, “darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun’s light failed” (Luke 23:44–45; cf. Matt. 27:45; Mark 15:33). Dilucesco, on the other hand, shows the cross seemingly exploding into light, as white moths and other winged insects break out of their cruciform shape. View these two photographic artworks, plus a few process photos and sketches the artist sent me, below. See, too, www.tarasellios.com.
Tara Sellios (American, 1987–), Umbra, 2024, from the series Ask Now the Beasts. Inkjet print from 8 × 10 negative, 55 × 35 in. Courtesy of the artist.Tara Sellios (American, 1987–), Dilucesco, 2024, from the series Ask Now the Beasts. Inkjet print from 8 × 10 negative, 55 × 35 in. Courtesy of the artist.
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Pelican in Her Piety, 1880–81. Mosaic, Palatine Chapel, Aachen, Germany.
The pelican was one of the most popular animal symbols for Christ in the Middle Ages, appearing widely in art and literature. The association was first made in the Physiologus, a Late Antique Greek compilation of moralized animal lore written (probably around the year 200) in Alexandria and intended for Christian edification. Its anonymous author says the mother pelican is such “an exceeding lover of its young” that, to revive them from death, she pierces her breast with her beak and spills her blood over them.
The church sometimes refers to this allegorical bird as the vulning pelican (from the Latin vulnerō, “to wound”), or the Pelican in Her Piety.
The Christological parallel is obvious: Jesus submitted to being pierced with nails and spear on the cross, his heart’s blood spilt, in order to give life to his children. But the Physiologus cites a more obscure biblical passage: “ὡμοιώθην πελεκᾶνι ἐρημικῷ” (Ps. 101:7a LXX). In the Latin Vulgate, that’s “Similis factus sum pelicano solitudinis,” and in English, “I am like a pelican of the wilderness” (Ps. 102:6a KJV). The Physiologus author puts these words of the psalmist, which express a sense of isolation, into the mouth of Christ, lonely in his messianic ministry and in his passion.
Detail from the 13th-century Redemption Window at Chartres Cathedral in France, showing a pelican (a figure of Christ) feeding her young with her own blood as King David looks on, holding a scroll with the inscription “Similis factus sum pellicamo,” from Psalm 102:6. Photo: Adrian Barlow. There are similar glass panels at Rouen and Le Mans.
Not all parts of the pelican legend recounted in the Physiologus map easily onto Christ’s love for his church. The chicks are dead because they kept striking their parents in the face, and their parents, striking back, killed them. The parents feel bad, and it’s after three days of mourning that mama bird breaks herself open to bring back her little ones.
In his commentary on Psalm 102, Augustine writes, “Let us not pass over what is said, or even read, of this bird, that is, the pelican.” Standing over her dead chicks, “the mother wounds herself deeply, and pours forth her blood over her young, bathed in which they recover life. This may be true, it may be false: yet if it be true, see how it agrees with him, who gave us life by his blood. It agrees with him in that the mother’s flesh recalls to life her young with her blood; it agrees well. For he calls himself a hen brooding over her young. If, then, it be so truly, this bird does closely resemble the flesh of Christ, by whose blood we have been called to life.”
Augustine then goes on to explain how the mother’s killing her young relates to God metaphorically killing our old self so that he can then raise us up to new life in Christ; he likens conversion to death and rebirth. Medieval theologians loved to stretch allegories to the extreme!
A more streamlined version of the pelican legend that got passed down omits the filicide, focusing simply on the bird’s animating sacrifice—on how her shed blood raises the dead to life. And after the Feast of Corpus Christi was established in 1311, a variant emerged that said the pelican feeds her young with her blood when no other food would satisfy, a picture that resonated with the increased attention on the Eucharist in the Latin West.
The Physiologus, which contains the earliest known appearance of the pelican legend, was translated from Greek into Latin sometime between the fourth and early sixth centuries, and from there into Ethiopic, Armenian, Syriac, and a multitude of European and Middle Eastern vernaculars. By the end of the twelfth century its legends were absorbed into the bestiary, a genre of popular nature-book in keeping with the encyclopedic taste of the High Middle Ages.
In Art
The vulning pelican has appeared in all kinds of visual media from late antiquity through the medieval and premodern eras and on into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including illuminated prayerbooks, missals, bestiaries (as in the tiled gallery below; hover to view captions, or click to enter carousel); panel paintings, frescoes; mosaics; stained glass windows; tapestries; lecterns, roof bosses, bench ends, misericords, corbels; and a range of liturgical objects and vestments.
From a miscellany containing an illustrated copy of Hugh of Fouilloy’s De avibus, Italy, late 13th or early 14th century. Biblioteca Statale di Cremona, MS 199, fol. 11v. https://bestiary.ca/beasts/beastgallery244.htm
From an illuminated copy of Der Naturen Bloeme (The Flower of Nature) by Jacob van Maerlant, Flanders, ca. 1350. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, KA 16, fol. 96vb. https://manuscripts.kb.nl/show/images/KA+16/page/26
Pelican in Her Piety, 1331–32. Stained glass, Lady Chapel, St Michael and All Angels, Felton, Northumberland, England. Photo: Ann Chapman.Pelicanin Her Piety, 15th century. Stained glass, All Saints Church, Oaksey, England. Photo: Rex Harris.Pelican in Her Piety, All Saints Church, Bishop Burton, East Riding of Yorkshire, EnglandPelican in Her Piety, 1476. Fresco, Bollerup Church, Sweden. Photo: Stig Alenas.Painted choir vault, 15th century, Mariakerk (St. Mary’s Church), ‘t Zandt, Groningen, Netherlands. Photo: Ana Sudani.Oak wood roof boss, ca. 1470–80, St Mary the Virgin, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. Photo: Ana Sudani.Bench end by Henry Ringham, 19th century, St Margaret, Ipswich, Suffolk, England. Photo: Simon Knott.Carved oak misericord from Sheffield Cathedral, England, 1920Sculpture with Pelicans, Switzerland, 16th century. Painted linden and willow wood, 29.5 × 27 × 26 cm. Landesmuseum (Swiss National Museum), Zurich, LM-3972.Triptych with the Virgin and Child (detail), Cologne or Lower Rhine, ca. 1425–30. Tempera and gold leaf on oak wood. LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn, Germany. [view full triptych]Plate with the Pelican in Her Piety, Dinant or Malines, Netherlands, 15th century. Brass, diameter 19 7/8 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. It’s unknown whether this plate was used domestically or liturgically (i.e., for the Eucharist).Tapestry with a Pelican Feeding Her Young (detail), Germany (Lüne Abbey), ca. 1500. Linen and wool, 65 × 233 cm. Kloster Lüne Museum für sakrale Textilkunst, Lüneburg, Germany, Inv. LUEKO Ha 010.05. Source: Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World, cat. 41bCushion cover (detail), England, ca. 1640–70. Wool and silk embroidery on linen, 55.9 × 107.5 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The primary scenes are the Hospitality of Abraham and the Sacrifice of Isaac. [view full cushion]Pelican in Her Piety, Russia, early 19th centuryPelican in Her Piety, 1907–9. Relief carving from the exterior of Holy Trinity Church, St Andrews, Scotland. Photo: Joy Marie Clarkson.Pelican of Mercy, 1956. Stone relief carving, exterior of Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, Sioux City, Iowa.
The bird doesn’t always look like an actual pelican, though. It could be that some of the artists had never seen one, although the Dalmatian pelican, which has the long bill and the expandable throat pouch that we most associate with the genus, had been widespread across Europe since ancient times. More likely, the imaginative rendering of the pelican in Christian art derives from the account of the bird in book 12 (“De animalibus”) of the widely influential compendium Etymologies by the Spanish archbishop Isidore of Seville, written around 623, which repeats the popular legend and adds that the pelican lives in Egypt. An exotic bird therefore required exotic treatment.
Neither does the behavior the Physiologus ascribes to pelicans have any basis in natural fact. It’s possible the legend arose from the observation that the pelican sometimes bends its beak into its chest, which may look like it’s piercing it, and that some pelicans have a reddish tinge on their breast plumage and/or a red tip on their beak. However, zoological accuracy was not the point; the point was to convey theological truth.
In The Bestiary of Christ, Louis Charbonneau-Lassay says the pelican first started appearing as a Christian symbol on clay oil lamps in ancient Carthage (present-day Tunisia), citing “L. Delattre, Carthage,Symboles eucharistiques, p. 91”—the French archaeologist Alfred Louis Delattre (1850–1932). But I’ve not been able to track down the cited text or find any such examples. If you can point me to photographs, please do!
In the “Ējmiacin [Etchmiadzin] Codex” entry in The Eerdmans Encyclopedia of Early Christian Art and Archaeology, Paul Corbey Finney identifies the border illustrations in that Armenian Gospel book’s Baptism of Christ miniature from ca. 600 as depicting a pink-bodied pelican spreading its blue wings and pecking its breast while standing in a bejeweled chalice. The figure is repeated ten times.
Pelican detail from The Baptism of Christ in the Codex Etchmiadzin, an Armenian Gospel book. Yerevan, Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts (Matenadaran), Cod. 2374, fol. 229v. The image is dated to ca. 600, but it was added to a 10th-century manuscript.
Finney mentions that a vulning pelican also appears in the Rabbula Gospels from sixth-century Syria. I think he’s referring to the bird at the top of the canon tables on folio 5a, which also shows the prophets Joel and Hosea and the Wedding at Cana. The iconography is far less obvious here.
One illuminated manuscript page I love that makes use of the pelican symbol comes from the late Flemish Boussu Hours, a prayerbook made for Isabelle de Lalaing, probably after the death of her husband Pierre de Hennin, lord of Boussu.
Master of Antoine Rolin (Flemish, active 1490–1520), Le pélican, symbole du Christ (Pelican, symbol of Christ), from the Boussu Hours, Cambrai, France, ca. 1490–95. Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Ms 1185 réserve, fol. 187r.
Appearing opposite a full-page miniature of Christ in Gethsemane, folio 187r opens the Hours of the Passion prayer cycle:
V: Domine labia mea aperies. R: Et os meum annunciabit laudem tuam. V: Deus in adiutorium meum intende. R: Domine ad adiuvandum me festina. Gloria Patri, et Filio: et Spiritui sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper: et in saecula saeculorum.
English translation:
V: O Lord, open my lips, R: And my mouth shall declare thy praise. V: Incline unto my aid, O God. R: O Lord, make haste to help me. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end.
The historiated initial “D” shows Christ before Pilate, and in the margin a pelican exudes her lifeblood into the mouths of her two chicks, a scene set against a gold background likewise dripping with blood—as well as sweat and tears. It’s “almost as if the gold margin were an expanded microcosm of the bird’s broken breast,” writes Katharine Davidson Bekker in her essay “Those Who Weep: Tears, Eyes, and Blood in the Boussu Hours.” Bekker further notes that “the pansy flower in the margin, the name of which references the French penser (‘to think’), . . . encourages the reader to think deeply about the images on the page.”
Another remarkable appearance of the pelican in medieval manuscript illumination is in the Holkham Bible Picture Book from fourteenth-century England—remarkable because it appears not in a passion cycle, as was typical, but in a creation cycle!
The Tree of Knowledge, from the Holkham Bible Picture Book, southeastern England, ca. 1327–35. British Library, Add MS 47682, fol. 3v.
In the garden of Eden, God the Creator, portrayed here as Christ, instructs Adam and Eve that they may freely eat of any tree except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which he points to with one hand and with the other wags his finger in a forbidding manner. Various birds perch atop the adjacent trees, but at the apex of this fateful one at the center is the vulning pelican, foreshadowing the sacrifice of Christ that will be required for humanity to reenter Paradise after the fall.
Compare this image to the diagrammatic one on folio 125v of the De Lisle Psalter, which was inspired by Bonaventure’s meditational treatise the Lignum vitae. It shows a pelican nesting atop the tree of life on which Christ is crucified, wounding herself to feed her offspring with her blood:
Tree of Life, from the De Lisle Psalter, England, 1310–39. London, British Library, Arundel MS 83, fol. 125v.
The Latin inscription above it in red reads, Pellicanus dicor, pro pullis scindo mihi cor (“I am called a pelican, because I tear open my heart for my chicks”). The twelve branches contain texts relating to Christ’s humanity, passion, and glorification, while the surrounding panels contain Old Testament witnesses.
The Crucifixion is the narrative context in which the vulning pelican most often appears in art, reinforcing the notion of Christ’s self-emptying sacrifice. It was especially popular in proto- and early Renaissance panel paintings from Italy—which the gallery below reflects, in addition to featuring a few other examples from France, Greece, and Armenia.
Fra Angelico, Christ on the Cross, the Virgin, Saint John the Evangelist, and Cardinal Torquemada (detail), ca. 1453–54. Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones [view full painting]
In the Simone di Filippo Benvenuti example above (third row, left), notice the little winged dragon fleeing the pelicans’ nest as the mother pelican undoes the harm he has inflicted. A similar detail can be found in the Crucifixion fresco from the altar wall of the Oratory of St. John the Baptist in Urbino, which shows a snake slithering away from the perishing chicks, who are brought back to life by their intervening mother:
Lorenzo Salimbeni (Italian, 1374–ca. 1418) and Jacopo Salimbeni (Italian, ca. 1370/80–after 1426), Crucifixion (detail), ca. 1416. Fresco, Oratorio di San Giovanni Battista (Oratory of St. John the Baptist), Urbino, Italy.
The snake motif references a version of the pelican legend found in De natura rerum (On the Nature of Things) by the Flemish Dominican friar Thomas of Cantimpré (ca. 1200–1272) and the slightly later De animalibus (On Animals) by the German Dominican friar Albertus Magnus (ca. 1200–1280). According to these two works, when the mother pelican leaves her nest to find food for her fledglings, she returns to find them dead from the bite of an ambushing snake. She then tears her own flesh to revive them with her blood, which is full of healing properties.
One of the most unique visual treatments of the vulning pelican that I found is a painting by the Dutch Renaissance artist Hieronymus Bosch. Rendered in grisaille (gray monochrome), his pelican appears in the center of a ring depicting scenes from the passion of Christ. It’s painted on the reverse of a panel that shows John the Evangelist in exile on Patmos, penning the book of Revelation.
Hieronymus Bosch (Netherlandish, ca. 1450–1516), Scenes from the Passion of Christ (reverse of John on Patmos), ca. 1500. Oil on panel in grisaille, 62.8 × 43.2 cm. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie.
Staged around mountain crags, the passion cycle begins on the right with Jesus praying in Gethsemane and continues clockwise with the Arrest of Christ, Christ before Pilate, the Flagellation, the Crowning with Thorns, the Carrying of the Cross, the Crucifixion, and the Entombment.
Outside this ring of scenes is a darkness populated by shadowy demons:
But the inner disc, the focal point of the composition, contains the promise of redemption. Emerging from the still waters of a vast postdiluvian landscape is a hillock with a hollow that houses a burning fire. On the summit, a large mother bird spreads her protective wings over her brood, inclining her head toward her chest—an iconography we recognize as the vulning pelican, symbolic of the deep, saving love God embodied on the cross.
As we view this painting, we progress from the outer darkness with its infernal powers, to the growing light actualized by the events of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, and finally to the brilliant center with its red flame—which, other than two dim, flickering torches in Gethsemane, contains the sole bit of color in the whole painting. Images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which would gain prominence in the seventeenth century, feature a flame, representing Christ’s ardent love burning bright. And that’s what we have here.
Red is also the color of blood. I’m reminded of Robert Southwell’s poem “Christ’s Bloody Sweat,” which combines imagery of the pelican and the self-immolating but ultimately indestructible phoenix, marveling at “how bleedeth burning love.” (I’ll explore a few more poems about the pelican in the next section.)
As John writes in the wonderful prologue to his Gospel, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it” (John 1:5).
In Bosch’s painting, the Christbrand bursts, like the pelican’s split side. The flame of redemption is lit, like a lighthouse, calling us home into the love of God.
Another especially compelling art object that draws on the pelican legend is a silver-plated tabernacle monstrance from Portuguese Goa in southwestern India.
Tabernacle monstrance made in Goa, India, 17th century. Silver on wood, glass, 142 × 72 cm, globe 66 cm. Museum of Christian Art, Convent of Santa Monica, Old Goa, India.
In the Roman Catholic Church, a tabernacle is a container in which the consecrated hosts (small unleavened wafers of bread) of the Eucharist are stored as part of the “reserved sacrament” rite, and a monstrance is a vessel that displays the consecrated host on the altar and in procession. This object combines both into one—the spherical base serving as the tabernacle, with access gained through an opening at the back, and the bird’s breast bearing a transparent aperture surrounded by a golden sunburst halo, through which the host can be viewed. The body of Christ, broken for you.
In researching this essay, I found that the pelican is a subject that recurs (so charmingly!) in the folk art of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Pennsylvania Germans:
A Pelican in Its Piety, Bucks County or Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, ca. 1800. Watercolor and ink on laid paper, 8.9 × 8.3 cm. Promised gift of Joan and Victor Johnson to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.David Kulp (American, 1777–1834), Pelican in Its Piety, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, ca. 1810. Watercolor and ink on wove paper, 18.6 × 12.2 cm. Free Library of Philadelphia.Pelican, Pennsylvania, ca. 1850. Watercolor and ink on wove paper, 31.6 × 25.4 cm. Free Library of Philadelphia.A Pelican in Its Piety, Pennsylvania, ca. 1825. Watercolor and ink on wove paper, 24.1 × 19.1 cm. Promised gift of Joan and Victor Johnson to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
From the Victorian era, I’m especially fond of the stained glass pelican design by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones, fabricated by Morris & Co. to serve as part of the East Window of St Martin’s Church, Brampton, in Cumbria. Burne-Jones drew his design in 1880, and after the window was completed the following year, he returned to the drawing out of personal fondness, embellishing it with colored chalks, and gold for the blood drops, thus developing it into a more substantial work.
Edward Burne-Jones (British, 1833–1898) and Morris & Co., Pelican on Nest (detail), 1880. East Window, St Martin, Brampton, Cumbria, England. Photo: Dave Webster. [view full window]Edward Burne-Jones (British, 1833–1898), Pelican in Her Piety, 1880–81. Pencil, colored chalk, and gold on paper, 172.7 × 57.3 cm. William Morris Gallery, London.
Contemporary artists have also turned to the subject of the vulning pelican, especially the Ukrainian Catholic women iconographers of Lviv:
Natalya Rusetska (Ukrainian, 1984–), Pelican, 2017. Egg tempera on gessoed wood, 19 × 15 cm.Natalya Rusetska (Ukrainian, 1984–), Jesus the Grapevine and the Last Supper, 2021. Egg tempera on gessoed wood, 30 × 24 cm.Kateryna Kuziv (Ukrainian, 1993–), Pelican, 2021. Egg tempera on gessoed wood, 30 × 30 cm.Kateryna Kuziv (Ukrainian, 1993–), Crucifixion, 2022. Egg tempera on gessoed wood, 65 × 49 cm.Ulyana Tomkevych (Ukrainian, 1981–), Pelican, 2021. Egg tempera on gessoed wood, diameter 30 cm.Olya Kravchenko (Ukrainian, 1985–), Sacrifice and Victory, 2022. Tempera and silver leaf on gessoed wood, 40 × 40 cm.
Addendum, 4/8/25: Shortly after publishing this, a reader reminded me of Josh Tiessen’s painting All Creatures Lament from his Vanitas and Viriditas series, which shows an American white pelican protecting her chicks in the face of another oil spill and the accumulation of fishing-related plastic waste. Tiessen, an artist of faith, directs the symbolism of the pelican toward a call for wildlife conservation. (I previously featured Tiessen’s work here.)
Josh Tiessen (Canadian, 1995–), All Creatures Lament, 2023. Oil on braced Baltic birch, diameter 26 inches.
In Poetry and Song
Probably the most universally famous poetic treatment of the pelican as an emblem of Christ is the eucharistic hymn “Adoro te devote” (Hidden God, Devoutly I Adore Thee). Written around 1260 by Thomas Aquinas, it is one of the most beautiful medieval poems in Latin. Aquinas did not originally write it for the liturgy, but it was added to the Roman Missal in 1570 and since then has been used in the Catholic Mass. The penultimate stanza reads:
Pie pelicane, Jesu Domine, Me immundum munda tuo sanguine, Cujus una stilla salvum facere Totum mundum quit ab omni scelere.
Like what tender tales tell of the Pelican, Bathe me, Jesus Lord, in what thy bosom ran— Blood that but one drop of has the pow’r to win All the world forgiveness of its world of sin.
Trans. Gerard Manley Hopkins
Here’s a great video of the hymn put out by the Fundación Canto Católico, set to a Benedictine plainsong melody from the thirteenth century, as has become standard. Our pelican passage appears at the 4:10 mark. The subtitles are in Spanish, but you can turn on CC for English.
(If, like me, you’re wondering what in the world the video’s images are from, an explanatory note in the YouTube comments section explains: they are from the Cuasimodo festival in Chile, celebrated the second Sunday of Easter. The festival has nothing to do with Victor Hugo’s famous hunchback but rather is about bringing Communion to the sick and elderly who were unable to leave their residences to participate in the sacrament during Holy Week. [The Spanish Cuasimodo comes from the Latin Quasimodo, from the incipit of the day’s introit based on 1 Peter 2:2: “Quasi modo géniti infántes . . . ,” or “As newborn babes . . .”] Traditionally for this task, priests were escorted by horsemen, who showed them the route and protected them from assaults.)
The vulning pelican also appears in the liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church, whose members sing at Matins on Good Friday evening, “Like a pelican wounding her breast, Thou, O Word, hast made Thy mortal children to live, for Thou hast shed upon them life-giving streams.”
Dante Alighieri, the great medieval Italian writer, calls Christ “nostro Pelicano” (our Pelican) in canto 25 of his Paradiso, the third book in his Divine Comedy trilogy of extended narrative poems.
The Christ-pelican appears, too, in English poetry from the late Middle Ages onward. One Middle English poem found in a prayerbook from ca. 1460 reads:
The pellicane his bloode dothe blede Therwith his birdis for to fede. It figureth that God with his bloode Us fede hanging on the rode, Whane he us brought oute of hell In joy and blis with him to dwel, And be oure fader and oure fode, And we his childerne meke and good.
[Bodleian Library MS Douce 1, fol. 57r]
The pelican his blood doth bleed, Therewith his birdies for to feed. It figures God, who, with his blood, Fed us hanging on the rood, By which he brought us out of hell, In joy and bliss with him to dwell, To be our father and our food, And we his children meek and good.
Our Pelican, by bleeding thus, Fulfill’d the law, and cured us.
Look here, and mark (her sickly birds to feed) How freely this kind Pelican doth bleed. See how (when other salves could not be found) To cure their sorrows, she herself doth wound; And when this holy emblem thou shalt see, Lift up thy soul to him, who died for thee.
For this our hieroglyphic would express That Pelican which, in the wilderness Of this vast world, was left (as all alone) Our miserable nature to bemoan; And in whose eyes the tears of pity stood, When he beheld his own unthankful brood His favors and his mercies then condemn, When with his wings he would have brooded them, And sought their endless peace to have confirm’d, Though to procure his ruin, they were arm’d.
To be their food, himself he freely gave; His heart was pierc’d, that he their souls might save, Because they disobey’d the sacred will, He did the law of righteousness fulfill; And to that end (though guiltless he had been) Was offered for our universal sin.
Let me, oh God! forever fix mine eyes Upon the merit of that sacrifice: Let me retain a due commemoration Of those dear mercies, and that bloody passion, Which here is meant; and by true faith, still feed Upon the drops this Pelican did bleed; Yea, let me firm unto thy law abide, And ever love that flock for which he died.
I already mentioned, in relation to Bosch’s pelican painting above, “Christ’s Bloody Sweat” by the English Catholic martyr Robert Southwell.
More recently, the Anglican priest Matt Simpkins, who performs music under the name Rev Simpkins, wrote a song titled “Pelican,” which he released on his album Big Sea (2020). Gritty and impassioned, here’s a live performance at Colchester Arts Centre:
Pelican feeds the hungry and needy I kneel before her My throat like an open grave
Food cannot fill me Water dilutes me Nothing contents me Pelican, pity me
She tears her breast, her children to refresh By her I am blessed, led to life from living death
Though death entreats me Her life flows sweetly Given so freely Given in flesh and blood
She tears her breast, her children to refresh By her I am blessed, led to life from living death
Pelican feeds me Loves me completely Though I’m unworthy She gives so graciously
She tears her breast, her children to refresh By her I am blessed, led to life from living death
She crowns the whole earth, the heavens and seas The Pelican tears her breast for me
She’s queen of what was and what is to be The Pelican tears her breast for me
She gives of herself in infinity The Pelican tears her breast for me
She’s compassion and love, she’s strength and glory The Pelican tears her breast for me
I love it when contemporary artists engage with historical Christological symbols, whether from the animal world or elsewhere, tapping into a creative wisdom the saints of ages past have bequeathed to us but that is too often dismissed in favor of literalism or wordy, intellectual articulations of doctrine.
I wholeheartedly support the endeavor of academic theology, but it must be remembered that for centuries, the church has developed her theology not just through discursive prose but also through liturgy, verse, and visual art. While many modern Christians may discount medieval allegories of Christ as naive, backward, too fanciful, or too obscure, I want to suggest that there’s value in learning (at least some of) them and even incorporating them into new material, to explore how they might come alive in new contexts.
By studying the pelican of ancient lore, for example, as it has been adapted in Christian art and literature, I’ve grown in my appreciation for the mother-love of God, who, to restore me to life and to nourish me—his child, his dependent—allowed his sacred flesh to be torn, so that I might know the power in the blood.
This essay took many hours to research and write and came to fruition only after several years spent collecting enough Pelican images to reach a critical mass. If you have the inclination and means to support more essays like this, I’d really appreciate a donation!
He has come, the Christ of God: Left for us his glad abode; Stooping from his throne of bliss To this darksome wilderness.
Refrain 1: He has come, the Prince of Peace: Come to bid our sorrows cease; Come to scatter with his light All the shadows of our night.
He, the mighty King, has come, Making this poor earth his home: Come to bear our sin’s sad load, Son of David, Son of God.
Refrain 2: He has come, whose Name of grace Speaks deliverance to our race: Left for us his glad abode, Son of Mary, Son of God.
Unto us a Child is born: Ne’er has earth beheld a morn, Among all the morns of time, Half so glorious in its prime.
Refrain 3: Unto us a Son is given: He has come from God’s own heaven, Bringing with him from above Holy peace and holy love.
While he was a worship pastor at Bayou City Fellowship in Houston, Ryan DeLange wrote a new tune for this nineteenth-century Christmas hymn by Horatius Bonar, a Scotsman who is best known for “Be Still, My Soul.” To hear DeLange discuss what drew him to this hymn, see season 2, episode 2 of the Hymnistry podcast, which aired December 5, 2016. He performs the song at 9:22 of the episode, and at 27:01, Pastor Jacob Breeze charges listeners to “keep the party going” for all twelve days of Christmas.
The 2016 video above is from Scarlet City Church in Columbus, Ohio. The singer is Janelle Jackson, and she’s accompanied on guitar by Rev. Mike Juday, who was the church’s music pastor at the time but who is now the associate rector of Village Church Anglican in Greenville, South Carolina.
LOOK: Incipit to the Gospel of John from the Book of Kells
Incipit to the Gospel of John, Book of Kells, ca. 800. Trinity College Dublin MS 58, fol. 292r.
Made by Celtic monks in a Columban monastery around the year 800, the Book of Kells—an illuminated Gospel book named after the monastery of Kells in County Meath, Ireland, where it spent eight centuries—is one of the most beautiful manuscripts ever created. Pictured here is the lavishly decorated opening page of the Gospel of John, which bears the words “In p/rinci/pio erat ver/bum [et] ver[b]um” (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word . . .”). The passage continues on the following page.
Bernard Meehan, the former head of research collections and keeper of manuscripts at Trinity College Dublin, describes the lettering on folio 292r:
The letters IN P, filled with interlacing snakes, crosses and abstract ornament, dominate the composition. Snakes form the letters RIN and C, with C taking the form of a harp, played by the man who forms the letter I. The urge of the artist to decorate has taken precedence over legibility, to the extent that the letters ET and B are missing from the last line. [1]
Because some of the letters are difficult to discern, I’ve done my best to trace them in red in this graphic:
The text unfolds in four rows. The column on the left forms the I and doubles as the left stem of the N. The diagonal stroke of the N passes through the cross-shape, and its right stem is formed by another blue column, which also doubles as the stem of the P.
The following R, I, N, and C are beige and blue serpentine figures, tangled together, the latter shaped like a harp and being “played” by a seated man whose torso forms an I.
The remaining text is organized in two rows and is black. As Meehan mentioned, the artist-monk unintentionally omitted the ET and B in “et verbum.” And the final M is upside down, an artistic variation.
Scholars disagree on who the curly-haired figure at the top is, holding a book: some suppose it’s John the Evangelist, the author of the fourth Gospel, while others think it’s Christ the Logos. I’m in the latter camp. Christ is often shown in art sitting on a throne holding a book, representing the gospel—as on folio 32v of this very manuscript. And a full-page portrait of John already appears on the opposite page, folio 291v; granted, the iconography is similar, but it would be an unusual choice to repeat a person in the same pose on a single page spread. Also, as art historian Heather Pulliam points out, the yellow and red striations that encompass the figure resemble flame—a “throne of light,” writes Françoise Henry—an attribute more befitting of the figure of Christ than of John. [2]
The identity of the smaller figure on the right who’s drinking from a red chalice is also debated. Again, it could be either John or Christ. According to an apocryphal legend that first appeared in the second-century Acts of John and that was popularized in the thirteenth-century Golden Legend, a pagan priest challenged John to drink a cup of poisoned wine to test whether his God was truly powerful enough to protect him. John blessed the cup, downed the wine, and suffered no harm. That’s why in art one of John’s attributes is a chalice with a serpent in it, representing the poison rising out and the triumph of Christian faith.
On the other hand, the drinking figure may be Christ drinking the cup of suffering (John 18:11). The monstrous head to the right supports either interpretation—it could be Satan tormenting Christ in Gethsemane, or in John’s case, the threat of death by poison, or the evil intent of the pagan priest who sought to discredit him.
Additional possibilities have also been posited. Małgorzata Krasnodębska-D’Aughton argues that the man is meant to be a generic Christian partaking of the Eucharist, [3] whereas Pulliam suggests that the cup represents not the blood of Christ but “the chalice of wisdom received from the breast of Christ.” [4] She cites Augustine’s first tractate on the Gospel of John:
Thence John, who said these things, received them, brothers, he who lay on the Lord’s breast, and from the breast of the Lord drank in what he might give us to drink. But he gave us words; you ought then to receive understanding from the source, from that which he drank who gave to you; so that you may lift up your eyes to the mountains from where shall come your aid, so that from there you may receive, as it were, the cup, that is, the word, given you to drink; and yet, since your help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth, you may fill your breast, from the source. [5]
In Pulliam’s interpretation, the man imbibes the words of God—that is, scripture—providing a model for us to emulate.
Bernard Meehan, The Book of Kells: An Illustrated Introduction to the Manuscript in Trinity College Dublin (Thames & Hudson, 1994, 2008), 34.
Heather Pulliam, Word and Image in the Book of Kells (Four Courts Press, 2006), 180–83; cf. Françoise Henry, The Book of Kells: Reproductions from the Manuscript in Trinity College, Dublin (Thames & Hudson, 1974).
Małgorzata Krasnodębska-D’Aughton, “Decoration of the In principio initials in early Insular manuscripts: Christ as a visible image of the invisible God,” Word and Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry 18, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 117.
Pulliam, Word and Image, 185.
Augustine, In Joannis Evangelium 1.1, PL 35: 1382.
LISTEN: “The Word Was God” by Rosephanye Powell, 1996 | Performed by the University of Pretoria Camerata, dir. Michael Barrett, 2022
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made that have been made. Nothing was made he has not made.
While this choral anthem is not a Christmas song per se, it is a setting of John 1:1–3, the opening of the great prologue of the Incarnation. These first three verses are about Christ’s eternal being, his oneness with the Father, and his active role in creation. I can’t hear them without anticipating verse 14: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us . . .”
“The Word Was God” is by Dr. Rosephanye Powell (pronounced ro-SEH-fuh-nee) (born 1962), an African American composer, singer, professor, and researcher. One of her most popular and widely recorded works, it is full of rhythmic energy and drive. Read detailed notes by Powell here, where she explains her musical choices and their theological significance.
John the Baptist, Angel of the Desert, Russia, 17th or 18th century
John the Baptist served as a bridge between the old and new covenants, calling on people to repent of their sins and produce good fruit in preparation for the arrival of the Messiah. “The kingdom of heaven is at hand!” he vigorously proclaimed on the banks of the river Jordan. “Get ready.”
Eastern Orthodox icons sometimes portray John the Baptist with wings, as the word “angel” means “messenger.” God had announced through his prophet Malachi, “See, I am sending my messenger [mal’āḵ] to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts” (Mal. 3:1). The Hebrew word, mal’āḵ, that is translated as “messenger” in this passage is translated elsewhere in the Old Testament as “angel.” Christian commentators see this prophecy as fulfilled in John the Baptist.
The iconography of John the Baptist as Angel of the Desert/Wilderness first started appearing in the sixteenth century and is present only in the East. In addition to having two wings, he wears camel skins, an allusion to his asceticism (Matt. 3:4). He usually holds an unfolded scroll bearing his words from Matthew 3:2—“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near”—as well as a poteiron (liturgical chalice) in which lies a naked Christ Emmanuel, evoking the Eucharist. John points to Christ, the source of our salvation.
Sometimes it is John’s own severed head that lies in the chalice instead. This variation references his martyrdom, commemorated each year on August 29.
I’ve compiled a range of John the Baptist, Angel of the Desert icons that include the Christ child in a eucharistic cup. They are all from seventeenth-, eighteenth-, or nineteenth-century Russia; many are in private collections, and a few are in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.
What is the crying at Jordan? Who hears, O God, the prophecy? Dark is the season, dark our hearts, and shut to mystery.
Who, then, shall stir in this darkness, prepare for joy in the winter night? Mortal, in darkness we lie down, blindhearted, seeing no light.
Lord, give us grace to awake us, to see the branch that begins to bloom; in great humility is hid all heaven in a little room.
Now comes the day of salvation; in joy and terror the Word is born! God comes as gift into our lives; oh let salvation dawn!
The “crying at Jordan” in the first line of this modern hymn refers not to weeping but to a loud uttering—that of John the Baptist preparing the way for the Messiah through the preaching of repentance. When, in response to John’s ministry, the priests and Levites asked him who he was, he declared, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said” (John 1:23; cf. Isa. 40:3; Matt. 3:3).
The third stanza refers to Mary’s pregnancy, echoing the closing couplet of the poet John Donne’s “Annunciation” sonnet: “Thou hast light in dark, and shutst in little room, / Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.” This is an idea that many Christians, both before and after Donne, have mused on and marveled at.
Thank you to my friend Peggy, who introduced me to this remarkable Advent hymn!
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).
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Art & Theology 