Saint Joseph – Art & Theology

The Trial by Bitter Water: An Apocryphal Tale of the Virgin Mary Being Tested for Adultery

November 21, 2025November 22, 2025 Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

As important as she is in the Christian tradition, the Bible doesn’t give us a whole lot of details about the life of Mary, especially prior to her conception of Jesus. To give her a backstory and fill in some gaps, the Protoevangelium of James (aka the Gospel of James) was written in the second century, probably in Syria. The author purports to be the apostle James, the brother of Jesus (by an earlier marriage of Joseph’s, according to the text), but the actual author is unknown. While parts of it are based on the canonical Gospels of Matthew and Luke, most of the material is legendary, developed to satisfy people’s curiosity about Jesus’s parentage and some of the events of his infancy.

The Protoevangelium of James was, and remains, immensely popular in Eastern Christianity, having been translated early on from its original Greek into Syriac, Ethiopic, Coptic, Armenian, and Arabic. On how the Orthodox Church views the text today, I found this Reddit thread interesting.

A later version of it, with additions and modifications, emerged in Latin by the seventh century under the name the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (aka the Infancy Gospel of Matthew), popularizing its stories in the West.

None of the three branches of Christianity regards these gospels as scripture—the Gelasian Decree of circa 495 officially classified the Protoevangelium as apocryphal, meaning not inspired or authoritative—but nonetheless, they have heavily influenced (in Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy) Christian art and Mariology.

Trying to interpret Christian artworks depicting unfamiliar scenes or details is how I first brushed up against the Protoevangelium of James and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew.

One such scene, which is rare but sometimes appears between images of the Visitation (or the Annunciation to Mary, or the First Dream of Joseph) and the Journey to Bethlehem, is of Mary standing before a priest, holding a cup. This, I learned, depicts the so-called trial by bitter water, or sotah ritual, an ancient Hebrew method for dealing judicially with women who were suspected of adultery. Outlined in Numbers 5:11–31, in this ritual, a suspicious husband was to bring his wife to the tabernacle to subject her to a trial by ordeal. After receiving a grain offering from the husband, the priest would mix a concoction of holy water, dust from the tabernacle floor, and curses scraped off from the parchment they were written on. The wife would be compelled to swear her innocence and then drink the cup. If she was guilty of marital unfaithfulness, she would suffer painful reproductive affliction;¹ but if not, she would be unharmed and thus exonerated.

Trial by ordeal was a common legal recourse in patriarchal cultures across the ancient Near East, reflecting distrust of women’s sexuality and reinforcing husbands’ domination over their wives. That it was a sanctioned practice in the Old Testament is troubling, to say the least—but let’s sidestep that discussion for now. Let me simply commend to you the Numbers 5 visual commentary by Maryanne Saunders (Master of Studies, History of Art, Oxford), which examines three artworks based on this passage, including a feminist Jewish one.

Trial by Bitter Water (Ateni, Georgia) (detail) — Fresco, 11th century, Church of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, Ateni, Georgia. (See a wider shot below.)

According to the Protoevangelium of James, sometime after the angel had appeared to Joseph convincing him of Mary’s fidelity, a Jewish scribe named Annas saw Mary’s pregnant belly and reported both her and Joseph to the priest for sexual sin, for they were not yet married. They maintained their innocence and were made to drink a potion that would have no effect if they were telling the truth but that would make them ill if they were indeed guilty. Of course, they came out scot-free. Their chastity was divinely confirmed.

This account of the Jewish ritual of sotah is unique in that (1) it is initiated by a third party, and (2) the male partner is also accused and made to drink the potential curse. Traditionally, the ritual could be initiated only by a husband. Scholars cite the Protoevangelium author’s apparent unfamiliarity with Jewish practices—this and others—as evidence that he was not Jewish (as the historical James was).

The Protoevangelium was written at a time when opponents of Christianity were decrying the virgin birth. The pagan philosopher Celsus, for example, insisted that while pledged to Joseph, Mary had an affair with the Roman soldier Panthera, and that Jesus was the illegitimate fruit of that union. The story of the trial by bitter water was an attempt to defend Mary against the charge of adultery and Jesus against the charge of ignoble origins. It also—if one believes God was indeed the moral adjudicator in the trial—corroborates the message Mary and Joseph claimed to have received separately from an angel, that Jesus was the Son of God.

I’m sharing this episode from the Protoevangelium not because I think it actually happened but so that you have more context for an image that occasionally crops up in cycles on the life of Mary. Also, perhaps its elaboration on the scandal and consequences of alleged adultery in ancient Jewish culture helps better situate us in Mary’s time and place.

Before I quote the relevant excerpt, a little further background is in order, to explain some of what’s mentioned in the dialogues. Earlier in the Protoevangelium, we read that as an expression of gratitude, Mary’s parents dedicated her to the service of God, and that she lived in the temple in Jerusalem from age three until puberty, where she was fed by angels. When her first menstruation loomed, the priests consulted on what to do with her, lest she defile the temple with her blood. They decided to give her over to the care of Joseph, an elderly widower with grown children.

OK, so now, here are chapters 15 and 16 of the Protoevangelium of James, as translated by Alexander Walker, courtesy of New Advent (I’ve added paragraph breaks):

15. And Annas the scribe came to him [Joseph], and said: “Why have you not appeared in our assembly?”

And Joseph said to him: “Because I was weary from my journey, and rested the first day.”

And he [Annas] turned, and saw that Mary was with child. And he ran away to the priest, and said to him: “Joseph, whom you vouched for, has committed a grievous crime.”

And the priest said: “How so?”

And he said: “He has defiled the virgin whom he received out of the temple of the Lord, and has married her by stealth, and has not revealed it to the sons of Israel.”

And the priest answering, said: “Has Joseph done this?”

Then said Annas the scribe: “Send officers, and you will find the virgin with child.” And the officers went away, and found it as he had said; and they brought her along with Joseph to the tribunal.

And the priest said: “Mary, why have you done this? And why have you brought your soul low, and forgotten the Lord your God? You that wast reared in the holy of holies, and that received food from the hand of an angel, and heard the hymns, and danced before Him, why have you done this?”

And she wept bitterly, saying: “As the Lord my God lives, I am pure before Him, and know not a man.”

And the priest said to Joseph: “Why have you done this?”

And Joseph said: “As the Lord lives, I am pure concerning her.”

Then said the priest: “Bear not false witness, but speak the truth. You have married her by stealth, and hast not revealed it to the sons of Israel, and hast not bowed your head under the strong hand, that your seed might be blessed.” And Joseph was silent.

16. And the priest said: “Give up the virgin whom you received out of the temple of the Lord.” And Joseph burst into tears. And the priest said: “I will give you to drink of the water of the ordeal of the Lord, and He shall make manifest your sins in your eyes.”

And the priest took the water, and gave Joseph to drink and sent him away to the hill-country; and he returned unhurt. And he gave to Mary also to drink, and sent her away to the hill-country; and she returned unhurt. And all the people wondered that sin did not appear in them.

And the priest said: “If the Lord God has not made manifest your sins, neither do I judge you.” And he sent them away.

And Joseph took Mary, and went away to his own house, rejoicing and glorifying the God of Israel.

Here’s how that episode is adapted in chapter 12 of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew—again, translated by Walker, and in the public domain:

After these things [the angelic announcements to Mary and Joseph] there arose a great report that Mary was with child. And Joseph was seized by the officers of the temple, and brought along with Mary to the high priest. And he with the priests began to reproach him, and to say: “Why have you beguiled so great and so glorious a virgin, who was fed like a dove in the temple by the angels of God, who never wished either to see or to have a man, who had the most excellent knowledge of the law of God? If you had not done violence to her, she would still have remained in her virginity.”

And Joseph vowed, and swore that he had never touched her at all.

And Abiathar the high priest answered him: “As the Lord lives, I will give you to drink of the water of drinking of the Lord, and immediately your sin will appear.”

Then was assembled a multitude of people which could not be numbered, and Mary was brought to the temple. And the priests, and her relatives, and her parents wept, and said to Mary: “Confess to the priests your sin, you that wast like a dove in the temple of God, and received food from the hands of an angel.”

And again Joseph was summoned to the altar, and the water of drinking of the Lord was given him to drink. And when anyone that had lied drank this water, and walked seven times round the altar, God used to show some sign in his face. When, therefore, Joseph had drunk in safety, and had walked round the altar seven times, no sign of sin appeared in him. Then all the priests, and the officers, and the people justified him, saying: “Blessed are you, seeing that no charge has been found good against you.”

And they summoned Mary, and said: “And what excuse can you have? Or what greater sign can appear in you than the conception of your womb, which betrays you? This only we require of you, that since Joseph is pure regarding you, you confess who it is that has beguiled you. For it is better that your confession should betray you, than that the wrath of God should set a mark on your face, and expose you in the midst of the people.”

Then Mary said, steadfastly and without trembling: “O Lord God, King over all, who know all secrets, if there be any pollution in me, or any sin, or any evil desires, or unchastity, expose me in the sight of all the people, and make me an example of punishment to all.” Thus saying, she went up to the altar of the Lord boldly, and drank the water of drinking, and walked round the altar seven times, and no spot was found in her.

And when all the people were in the utmost astonishment, seeing that she was with child, and that no sign had appeared in her face, they began to be disturbed among themselves by conflicting statements: some said that she was holy and unspotted, others that she was wicked and defiled.

Then Mary, seeing that she was still suspected by the people, and that on that account she did not seem to them to be wholly cleared, said in the hearing of all, with a loud voice, “As the Lord Adonai lives, the Lord of Hosts before whom I stand, I have not known man; but I am known by Him to whom from my earliest years I have devoted myself. And this vow I made to my God from my infancy, that I should remain unspotted in Him who created me, and I trust that I shall so live to Him alone, and serve Him alone; and in Him, as long as I shall live, will I remain unpolluted.”

Then they all began to kiss her feet and to embrace her knees, asking her to pardon them for their wicked suspicions. And she was led down to her house with exultation and joy by the people, and the priests, and all the virgins. And they cried out, and said: “Blessed be the name of the Lord forever, because He has manifested your holiness to all His people Israel.”

Some of the differences from the Protoevangelium of James are:

Mary and Joseph’s accusers are a group of unnamed religious officials rather than the scribe Annas.
It’s specified that Mary and Joseph are brought before the high priest, and he’s named Abiathar. (In the Protoevangelium, the high priest, from the time of Mary’s presentation in the temple as a child to just after the birth of Christ, is Zechariah, Elizabeth’s husband.)
The sotah ritual involves the accused circling the altar seven times rather than going away to the hill country and returning.
Most notably, Mary vows to remain celibate for life. This passage lent power to (or derived power from?) the developing doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity—considered dogma by the Roman Catholic Church, as formally declared at the Lateran Council of 649, and taught, too, by the Eastern Orthodox Church, who accept the title “ever-virgin” for Mary, as recognized at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553.

One of the earliest known appearances of the trial by bitter water in visual art is on one of the twenty-seven surviving ivory plaques set into the cathedra (episcopal throne) of Archbishop Maximian of Ravenna.

Trial by Bitter Water (Throne of Maximian) — Throne of Maximian (detail), Constantinople or Alexandria, ca. 545–53. Ivory. Archiepiscopal Museum, Ravenna, Italy. [view full throne]

Standing at the right, Mary holds a vessel in one hand and a skein of wool in the other. (The Protoevangelium says she was among the young women who wove a new veil for the holy of holies.) Joseph stands across from her with a staff in hand, and behind her stands an angel, indicating divine intervention to determine guilt or innocence.

Around the same time, the trial by bitter water appeared in another ivory made in the Eastern Mediterranean—possibly Syria.

Trial by Bitter Water (Louvre) — Detail of an ivory band depicting the Trial by Bitter Water, Eastern Mediterranean (Syria?), 550–600. Musée du Louvre, OA 11149. [view full artwork]

And in a sequence of Marian scenes on a carved ivory Gospel-book cover from France.

Trial by Bitter Water (Lupicin Gospels) — Ivory panel from the back cover of the Lupicin Gospels, France, 6th century. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. [view full cover]

The scene is found painted inside several of the cave churches of Cappadocia from the ninth through eleventh centuries, including St. Eustathios, Tokalı (see below), Kılıçlar, Bahattin Samanlığı, Aynalı, Eğritaş, and Pürenli Seki, as the art historian Yıldız Ötüken has pointed out.

In Old and “New” Tokalı Kilise (Buckle Church), the latter built as an extension forty years after the original, Joseph drinks the bitter water as well as Mary, as the apocryphal gospels state but which is rarely shown.

Trial by Bitter Water (Old Tokali) — Fresco, ca. 920, south wall, Old Tokalı Kilise (Buckle Church), Göreme Open Air Museum, Cappadocia, Turkey [view wider shot]

Trial by Bitter Water (New Tokali) — Fresco, ca. 960, New Tokalı Kilise (Buckle Church), Göreme Open Air Museum, Cappadocia, Turkey

So, too, at Çavuşin Church:

Trial by Bitter Water (Çavuşin) — Fresco, mid-10th century, Çavuşin Church, Göreme National Park, Cappadocia, Turkey [view wider shot]

But not at Pancarlik Church:

Trial by Bitter Water (Pancarlik Church) — Fresco, 11th century, Pancarlik Church, Cappadocia, Turkey [view wider shot]

The trial by bitter water also appears elsewhere in the Balkans, such as in Georgia and North Macedonia.

Trial by Bitter Water (Ateni, Georgia) — Fresco, 11th century, Church of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, Ateni, Georgia

Trial by Bitter Water (Balkans) — I’m not able to confirm, but blogger Marina Golubina says this is a 13th-century fresco from Sušica (near Skopje) in North Macedonia.

Joseph's Reproach, Trial by Bitter Water, Joseph's Dream — Michael Astrapa and Eutychius, *Joseph’s Reproach, the Trial by Bitter Water, and Joseph’s Dream*, 1295. Fresco, north wall, Church of the Virgin Mary Peribleptos, Ohrid, North Macedonia.

Trial by Bitter Water (Macedonia) — Fresco, 1330, Church of the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, Kucevište, North Macedonia

In that second image in the above grouping, Mary is accompanied to the temple by her five (four?) virgin companions, named in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew as Rebecca, Sephora, Susanna, Abigea, and Cael.

Due to overlapping content, the Protoevangelium of James is illustrated in detail in the twelfth-century manuscript Six Homilies on the Life of the Virgin by James of Kokkinobaphos, which was made by a prominent atelier in Constantinople and is held at the Vatican Library. The trial by bitter water is divided into two separate scenes: one of Joseph drinking the cup and being escorted up the mountain, and one of Mary doing the same.

Trial by Bitter Water (Joseph) (Vatican) — *Joseph drinks the cup from Zechariah*, Constantinople, first half of 12th century. From a manuscript of the *Six Homilies on the Life of the Virgin* by James of Kokkinobaphos. Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. gr. 1162, fol. 184r. [object record]

Trial by Bitter Water (Mary) (Vatican) — *Mary drinks the cup from Zechariah*, Constantinople, first half of 12th century. From a manuscript of the *Six Homilies on the Life of the Virgin* by James of Kokkinobaphos. Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. gr. 1162, fol. 188r. [object record]

Other scenes in the sequence portray Joseph’s dream, Joseph consulting with his sons, Joseph apologizing to Mary, Annas the scribe confronting Joseph and the pregnant Mary, Annas reporting the couple to the high priest Zechariah, Mary and Joseph being brought to the temple, Zechariah talking with Joseph, Zechariah talking with Mary, and after the drink, Mary returning unharmed and Zechariah proclaiming her innocence, and then Mary, Joseph, and Joseph’s sons leaving Jerusalem.

On occasion, the trial by bitter water appears in Russian icons, such as on the walls of St. Sophia Cathedral in Vologda.

Trial by Bitter Water (Russia) — Fresco, 1685–87, St. Sophia Cathedral, Vologda, Russia

I first encountered it, though, in my studies of Ethiopian art, where it appears in a handful of illuminated manuscripts.

Trial by Bitter Water (Ethiopia) — *The Trial by Bitter Water*, from an Ethiopian Gospel-book, late 14th–early 15th century. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

The trial by bitter water is almost nonexistent in Western art. One exception is a fresco inside the Church of Santa Maria foris portas (Church of St. Mary Outside the Gates) in Castelseprio, Italy. All the frescoes there, which are some of the most sophisticated and expressive to have survived from the early medieval period, exhibit a strong Byzantine influence.

Trial by Bitter Water (Castelseprio) — Fresco, first half of 9th century, Church of Santa Maria foris portas (Church of St. Mary Outside the Gates), Castelseprio, Italy. Photo: Francesco Bini.

A mosaic at the Basilica of San Marco (Saint Mark’s) in Venice could easily be mistaken for the trial by bitter water, as Mary appears to be taking in hand the same pitcher with which she draws water from the well in the adjacent Annunciation scene.

Annunciation at the Spring (San Marco, Venice) — *The Annunciation at the Spring and the Handing Over of Purple to Mary*, detail of transept mosaic in the Basilica of San Marco, Venice, 12th century

But the Latin inscription, Quo tingat vela paravit, indicates that the priest is handing Mary a vase of dye. This is another reference to the Protoevangelium: Chapter 10 says that after her betrothal to Joseph but before their marriage, Mary was one of seven virgins from the house of David selected by a council of priests to remake the temple veil (presumably to replace the old worn one). By lot, she was chosen to spin and weave the scarlet and purple.

Other comparable images, such as the mosaic at the former Chora Church (now Kariye Mosque) in Istanbul, show the priest handing Mary a skein of wool instead.

According to the Protoevangelium, Mary was spinning wool for this project when she was interrupted by the angel Gabriel with news of an even greater task she had been chosen for.

Those who disbelieved her about how her pregnancy came to be insisted she be brought to the temple for a trial by bitter water. Sometimes in image cycles on the life of Mary, such as the one on the Carolingian-era Werden Casket, she is shown on her way to the trial rather than at it, being led to the temple by an angel, priest, or moral police to verify her account before God.

Credit goes to Marina Golubina for compiling the vast majority of these images in a blog series (in Russian): Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16. As always, I have linked each image to its online source and have done my best to provide captioning info.

NOTES

When Christians claim that the Bible opposes abortion, some people point to Numbers 5:11–31 as a counterexample, since, for the woman who has conceived a child out of wedlock, the “bitter water” is essentially an abortifacient; “if you have gone astray while under your husband’s authority, if you have defiled yourself and some man other than your husband has had intercourse with you, . . . now may this water that brings the curse enter your bowels and make your womb discharge, your uterus drop!” the priest pronounces (Num. 5:20, 22 NRSV). There’s ambiguity in the Hebrew text as to whether this curse involves loss of a fetus or only infertility. ↩︎

Roundup: Nativity story told by Kenyan children, Annie Moses Band Christmas Special, industrious Joseph, and more

December 30, 2024December 31, 2024 Victoria Emily Jones3 Comments

Some of you may wonder why I’m still posting Christmas content. It’s because it’s still Christmastime! Christmas is a twelve-day feast extending from December 25 to January 5. So keep the celebration going with parties, carols, decoration, storytelling, worship, and meditation on the amazing historic event of the Incarnation.

VIDEO: “The Nativity Story (as Imagined by Children in Kenya)”: Released in 2021, this video produced in Kenya by the faith-based child sponsorship organization Compassion International tells the story of Jesus’s birth with localized details, narrated and enacted by children. I was struck by how Mary is pounding yams when the angel Gabriel comes to her, like in one of Nigerian artist George Bandele’s wood carvings of the Annunciation, and how the shepherds literally run to see Jesus, so excited are they to meet him! [HT: Global Christian Worship]

As far as I can tell, this is the first installment in a series of children’s retellings of the Nativity story from around the world that Compassion International releases annually. Subsequent videos—all of them worth watching!—are from Indonesia (2022), Bolivia (2023), and the Philippines (2024).

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CONCERT RECORDING: O Holy Night: An Annie Moses Band Christmas Special: Named after their great-grandmother, the Annie Moses Band is an Americana string band of six siblings, raised by award-winning Nashville songwriters Bill and Robin Wolaver, who are committed to godly excellence in the arts. This Christmas concert of theirs, featuring outstanding arrangements of a range of classic carols and one original, was released on DVD in 2018 and just made available by the band for free on YouTube!

Here’s the set list. Links are to standalone videos, excerpted from the performance above. My favorites are probably the opener, “On This Day,” and “We Three Kings”:

Carol of the Bells / Sing We Now of Christmas
Jingle Bells (instrumental)
When the Christmas Baby Cries
Go Tell It on the Mountain (instrumental)
Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella
On This Day, Earth Shall Ring
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen
Gabriel’s Message
Ave Maria
We Three Kings (instrumental)
Holy Night

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ARTICLE: “Saint Joseph as Baby Daddy: An Illustrated Medieval Guide” by Ela Bobek, DailyArt Magazine: In 2021 on Instagram I shared a small compilation of images that show Joseph as helpful and industrious at the Nativity, as opposed to the more classic depiction of him sitting off to the side with his head in his hands. I’ve since collected over a dozen more and have been wanting to develop a reflection on this motif into a full-fledged article (and probably still will someday), but Ela Bobek has beaten me to it! Check out the images she has compiled that show Joseph cooking, doing laundry, sewing clothes, preparing a bath, and swaddling or holding the baby—allowing Mary some much-needed rest. What a loving, caring, actively involved father and husband!

Konrad von Soest_Nativity — Conrad von Soest (German, ca. 1370–ca. 1422), *Nativity*, panel in the left wing of the Niederwildungen Altarpiece, 1403. Tempera on wood, 73 × 56 cm. Stadtkirche St. Nikolaus, Bad Wildungen, Germany. [view full altarpiece]

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SONGS:

>> “Christmas Ko Ramjham Ma” by Milan Bhujel and Surya Rasaili: This Nepali Christmas song was written by Milan Bhujel (words) and Surya Rasaili (music) in 2022 and is performed here (with dancing!) by Bhujel and friends. I couldn’t find a translation of the Nepali lyrics, but the gist of it is “Let’s dance and rejoice, let’s celebrate the birth of Jesus, who has come to save us. Jesus is a light dispelling all darkness.” [HT: Global Christian Worship]

>> “Christ Is Born (This Day)” by Todd Family Hymnal: This song by Jason B. Todd and Sara K. Todd, a married couple who make music together, is the second track of their Christmas EP from 2020. Jason (who goes by “JB”) is the pastor of administration and music at Westport Baptist Church in Denver, North Carolina.

>> “Funky Little Drummer Boy” by the Good Shepherd Collective: A cover of the funk arrangement of “The Little Drummer Boy” by Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, this performance video premiered last week at Good Shepherd New York’s Christmas Eve digital service. The soloist is Stephany Mora. Watch the standalone video on Instagram, or listen on YouTube at this cued-up link.

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“The Vigil of Joseph” by Elsa Barker (poem)

December 27, 2024 Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

*Saint Joseph at the Nativity*, ca. 1100, mosaic detail from Daphni Monastery, Haidari (outside Athens), Greece [ view full scene ]

After the Wise Men went, and the strange star
Had faded out, Joseph the father sat
Watching the sleeping Mother and the Babe,
And thinking stern, sweet thoughts the long night through.

“Ah, what am I, that God has chosen me
To bear this blessed burden, to endure
Daily the presence of this loveliness,
To guide this Glory that shall guide the world?

“Brawny these arms to win Him bread, and broad
This bosom to sustain Her. But my heart
Quivers in lonely pain before that Beauty
It loves—and serves—and cannot understand!”

from The Frozen Grail and Other Poems by Elsa Barker (Duffield & Company, 1910)

Elsa Barker (1869–1954) was a novelist, short story writer, and poet from New England. She lived for extended periods in London and Paris and was a member of the Theosophical Society.

25 Poems for Christmas, vol. 3

November 29, 2024December 13, 2025 Victoria Emily Jones4 Comments

This is the third installment of my annual “25 Poems for Christmas” series. Included too, on the front end, are poems for Advent, the four-week season of preparation, hope, and expectation leading up to Christmas.

[Read volume 1] [Read volume 2]

1. “Advent (III)” by W. H. Auden, from For the Time Being: Voiced by the Chorus, who cry out from “a dreadful wood / Of conscious evil,” this is the third section of part 1 of Auden’s book-length Christmas poem in nine parts, For the Time Being—“the only direct treatment of sacred subjects I shall ever attempt,” he said. He wrote the poem in 1941–42. He had originally conceived it as the libretto of an oratorio that Benjamin Britten would write the music for, but the text turned out to be too complex, and Britten abandoned the project. The final two lines of this section set us up for the seemingly impossible feat of divine incarnation: “Nothing can save us that is possible: / We who must die demand a miracle.”

Source: For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio (Princeton University Press, 2013)

2. “Advent” by R. A. (Robert Alan) Rife: Ten sensory metaphors for Advent, conveying its mood of anticipation.

Source: https://innerwoven.me/ (author’s website)

3. “O Orient Light” by James Ryman: Loosely influenced by the O Antiphons (a set of short chants used in medieval Advent liturgies), this Middle English lyric is by the fifteenth-century Franciscan friar James Ryman of Canterbury; it’s one of 166 sacred poems he published in a 1492 collection. Each stanza consists of one rhyme repeated six times, and the Latin refrain translates to “O Christ, king of the nations, / O life of the living.” The fourth stanza is a standout, connecting the salvation wrought by Christ to the healing properties of plants: “O Jesse root, most sweet and sote, / In rind and root most full of bote, / To us be bote, bound hand and foot, / O vita viventium.”

Source: Cambridge University Library, MS Ee. 1.12; compiled in The Early English Carols, ed. Richard Leighton Greene, 2nd ed., revised and enlarged (The Clarendon Press, 1977). Public Domain.

Helmantel, Henk_New Life II — Henk Helmantel (Dutch, 1945–), *Nieuw Leven II* (New Life II), 1999 (after the 1972 original that was stolen). Oil on canvas, 27 × 24 cm.

4. “Merger Poem” by Judy Chicago: “Merger Poem” is an aspiration that artist Judy Chicago wrote to accompany her 1979 monumental artwork The Dinner Party, a celebration of the richness of women’s heritage, expressed as place settings around a table, that is housed at the Brooklyn Museum. Her vision in the poem is not theistic, at least not explicitly so, but she uses the language of “Eden,” and her descriptions evoke passages from Isaiah about a future harmony, a merging of heaven and earth, in which justice and equity are achieved at last—not to mention the strong eschatological tones that feasting has in Christianity. Each line begins with “And then,” cumulatively generating a longing in the reader for “then” to arrive.

Source: The Dinner Party, exh. cat. (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1979) | https://judychicago.com/

5. “truth” by Gwendolyn Brooks: “And if sun comes / How shall we greet him?” the speaker asks at the opening of this poem. The sun here represents truth, revelation, illumination, which we may seek with weeping and prayer but which can be dreadful when it actually comes. It’s often more comfortable to stay asleep in the dark than to confront the stark brightness of day. But oh, what we miss when we do! Gwendolyn Brooks uses the pronoun “him” for the sun, and it’s easy to read the poem Christologically: you can read it in the sense of any of Christ’s three comings—as a baby in Bethlehem, in personal, inner ways (he reveals himself, and seeks entrance, to human hearts), or as a king and judge at the end of time. Did you catch the reference to Revelation 3:20?

Source: Annie Allen (Harper & Row, 1949); compiled in Blacks (Third World Press, 1987)

Raj, Solomon_Waiting for My Lord — P. Solomon Raj (Indian, 1921–2019), *Waiting for My Lord*, batik, published in *Living Flame and Springing Fountain* (ISPCK, 1993)

6. “Advent” by Mary Jo Salter: In this poem a mother and daughter are building a gingerbread house when a wintry gust tears a shutter on their actual house off its hinges, the shock of the thud causing, inside, a gingerbread wall to split. I think “house,” here, could be a metaphor for a faith structure; a house of belief. Shutters are doing a lot of work in the text: one falls off in a storm, and the daughter’s Advent calendar consists of twenty-five shutters, one opened each day until Christmas to reveal a Bible verse or narrative scene.

I’m not quite sure how to interpret the poem overall, but it seems to be addressing themes of (in)stability, brokenness and repair, the desire to believe versus the impulse to shut out belief, openness (“The house cannot be closed”), (dis)enchantment, the mother-child bond, and safety and danger (the Christmas story, like faith itself, characterized by both). I can’t decide if the “blank” in the final tercet sounds hopeful or bleak: does it connote possibility or lack? And is the mother suggesting in the final line (a repurposing of the final line from stanza 15) that what’s most real to her is not Mary and the baby Jesus but herself and her own child, right there in that moment?—or is she finding a point of kinship with Mother Mary in the love she feels for her offspring?

Source: Open Shutters (Knopf, 2003)

7. “Nativity” by Li-Young Lee: “What is the world?” asks a little boy in the darkness; and again as an adult. A poem of spiritual questing, Li-Young Lee’s “Nativity” deals with existential questions, ending with a tercet that evokes Isaac Watts’s famous carol line “Let every heart prepare him room.” Within us we must make a manger, a “safe place,” to receive the wild God.

Source: Book of My Nights (BOA Editions, 2001)

8. “Nazareth” by Drew Jackson: Ancient Nazareth, where Jesus grew up, was an insignificant village that many believed no good could come out of (see John 1:46). This poem by public theologian Drew Jackson accentuates Jesus’s origins there, his identity as a “southsider” (Nazareth is in southern Galilee). Today some urban neighborhoods on the “South Side” are disparaged, their residents dismissed as poor and lacking education and potential. God chose to incarnate in a rural neighborhood with a similar reputation, not simply dropping in and then leaving but, as the second person of the Trinity, being formed and nurtured in that environment. “Nazareth” is from Jackson’s debut poetry collection, in which he works his way through the first eight chapters of Luke’s Gospel, drawing out the theme of liberation and making contemporary connections.

Source: God Speaks Through Wombs: Poems on God’s Unexpected Coming (InterVarsity, 2021) | https://drewejackson.com/

9. “The Visitation” by Calvin B. LeCompte Jr.: The poet imagines the fields that Mary passes on her way to her cousin Elizabeth’s house joining in the Magnificat, praising the Savior in her womb.

Source: I Sing of a Maiden: The Mary Book of Verse, ed. Sister M. Thérèse (Macmillan, 1947)

10. “My Darling” by Alexandra Barylski: Mary and Joseph are cuddling in bed as she reflects on the divine interventions that brought and kept them together. The poem references the legend, originating in the second-century Protoevangelium of James and repeated in the seventh-century Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, that Joseph was chosen to wed Mary when from his staff, submitted to the high priest along with those of other single men, there miraculously emerged a dove. Mary expresses appreciation for Joseph’s “visionary love,” patience, and courage in their relationship, his spiritual leadership and support.

Source: Reformed Journal, May 11, 2021

Mynheer, Nicholas_Annunciation — Nicholas Mynheer (British, 1958–), *Annunciation*, 2017. Oil on handmade paper, 20 × 20 cm.

11. “A Blessing for the New Baby” by Luci Shaw: The speakers of this poem give a lovely benediction over Christ—preincarnate and then embryonic in the first stanza, then out of the womb in the second and third.

Source: Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation (Eerdmans, 2006) | https://lucishaw.com/

12. “Love’s Delights” by Meister Eckhart, rendered by Jon M. Sweeney and Mark S. Burrows: The medieval German mystic Meister Eckhart didn’t write poetry, but many of his sermons have a poetic quality to them, so contemporary poet Mark S. Burrows and writer Jon M. Sweeney, working from an English translation of the Middle High German by Frank Tobin, reworked select excerpts into verse. Adapted from a sermon Meister Eckhart preached on Isaiah 60:1, this poem meditates on the downward movement of love that raises up.

Source: Jon M. Sweeney and Mark S. Burrows, Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart: Meditations for the Restless Soul (Hampton Roads, 2017)

13. “Word Become Flesh” by Seth Wieck: Pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing take a toll on the body. Voiced by Mary, this poem highlights the bodily realities of Jesus’s first coming—Mary swollen, bruised, cracked, and bleeding. She was wounded for our transgressions, in the sense that she endured kicks to the ribs, postpartum hemorrhoids, etc., in order to bring forth our Savior, and by these wounds, because they gave life to Jesus, our healing was made possible. The last sentence is a zinger. Mary gives (physical) birth to Jesus, and he gives (spiritual) birth to her.

Source: Fathom, December 21, 2017 | https://www.sethwieck.com/

14. “Prince of Peace” by Brian Volck: The poet provides his own introduction to this poem on his website: “Octavian Augustus, first emperor of Rome, was known by many titles, including Divi Filius (Son of God) and Princeps Pacis (Prince of Peace). An inscription in Asia Minor states that Augustus’s birth ‘has been for the whole world the beginning of the gospel (εύαγγέλιον) concerning him.’ How strange, then, to use the same names for a contemporaneous but obscure Palestinian Jew, whose understanding of peace, politics, and power was so radically different. How strange to have so long diluted the scandal of the gospel (good news) with accommodations to an Augustan vision of a peace built on the use or threat of lethal violence. Here’s a Christmas poem calling attention to that contrast in a conscious act against forgetting.”

Source: Flesh Becomes Word (Dos Madres, 2013) | https://brianvolck.com/

15. “The Burning Babe” by Robert Southwell: Consisting of sixteen lines in iambic heptameter, this poem by the Jesuit martyr-saint Robert Southwell [previously] relates a mystical vision of the Christ child, who appears to the narrator on a cold winter’s night, enflamed and hovering in midair. The poem develops the metaphor of the love of Christ as a fiery furnace that both warms and purifies.

Source: St Peter’s Complaint, and Other Poems (London, 1595). Public Domain.

McNichols, William Hart_Robert Southwell and the Burning Babe — William Hart McNichols (American, 1949–), *Holy Poet-Martyr St. Robert Southwell and the Burning Babe*, 2015. Acrylic on wood. [purchase reproduction]

16. “Advent 1966” by Denise Levertov: This poem is shocking in its horror. Written in 1966, it picks up Southwell’s image of the Burning Babe and transposes it to the napalmed villages of Vietnam, where children were being physically (not symbolically or ethereally, as in Southwell’s poem) set on fire by chemical weapons deployed by the US military. Denise Levertov [previously], who was an antiwar activist as well as a poet, uses repetition to strong effect, conveying a sense of the seemingly relentless carnage (the war produced an estimated two million civilian casualties, more than half the total number). Though addressing a specific historical event, this elegy for the innocent provokes us to consider where similar atrocities are happening today.

Source: To Stay Alive (New Directions, 1971); compiled in Making Peace, ed. Peggy Rosenthal (New Directions, 2006)

17. “Christmas Eve” by Christina Rossetti: The Victorian poet Christina Rossetti [previously] opens this lyric with two paradoxes that characterize Christmas—bright darkness and chilly warmth—referencing the general mood of cheer and comfort that coexists with the bleak English midwinter. Why this mirth? Because “Christmas bringeth Jesus, / Brought for us so low.” Jesus was brought down from heaven in the Incarnation, but he would be brought lower still: his spirits sunken in Gethsemane, his body buried in a grave. The second stanza evokes a wedding: dressed in a bridal gown of gauzy snow, earth receives her heavenly Bridegroom.

Source: Time Flies: A Reading Diary (London, 1885); compiled in The Complete Poems (Penguin, 2001). Public Domain.

18. “Hill Christmas” by R. S. Thomas: In a poor rural Welsh village, parishioners make their way across snowy fields, weather-beaten, on Christmas to feed their bodies and souls with a snow-white bread loaf and crimson wine. In the celebration of the Eucharist, they hear love cry “in their heart’s manger.” Then they return to the day’s chores. I think the last line refers to a wayside crucifix.

Source: Laboratories of the Spirit (Macmillan, 1975); compiled in Collected Poems, 1945–1990 (Dent, 1993)

19. “back in the day” by Carl Winderl: In a practice known as “setting lambs on,” when a baby lamb dies in birth, sheep farmers will often take a live lamb (an orphan, or a twin or triplet from another ewe) and cover it in the skin of the deceased one so that, when the grieving mother smells the familiar scent of her deceased offspring, she accepts the lamb as her own. In Carl Winderl’s poem, Mother Mary reflects on that practice and has a premonition of a dead lamb.

Source: Christian Century, December 27, 2023

20. “Hymn 4 on the Nativity of Christ” by Ephrem the Syrian: St. Ephrem, a church father from the fourth century, wrote his theology in verse and is one of the most significant Early Christian hymnists. His Nativity hymns are my favorite; I’m particularly struck in Hymn IV by his meditation on how the Christ who suckles at Mary’s breast also gives suck to the whole world. “He is the Living Breast of living breath,” as Kathleen E. McVey translates the Syriac.

Source: Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns, trans. Kathleen E. McVey (Classics of Western Spirituality) (Paulist Press, 1989)

Maria lactans (Ethiopian) — Maria lactans, late 18th century. Fresco, Church of Narga Selassie, Dek Island, Lake Tana, Ethiopia. Photo: Alan Davey.

21. “Nativity” by Scott Cairns: This is the first in a pair of ekphrastic poems called “Two Icons,” in which the poet, who is Greek Orthodox, describes an icon from his home prayer corner. The first three stanzas engage in constructive wordplay: Jesus is wrapped in swaddling bands by his mother, and she is rapt—enraptured, wholly absorbed—by him. She holds him in her gaze and in her hands, and is beholden to him. Icons are about just that: beholding Christ and the sacred mysteries and deepening our affection for the One who holds us in affection. In Nativity icons our gaze is directed to “the core / where all the journeys meet, appalling crux and hallowed cave and womb,” where we are beckoned, like the magi, to bow before the incarnate God.

Source: Compass of Affection: Poems New and Selected (Paraclete, 2006)

22. “Star of the Nativity” by Joseph Brodsky: The Nobel Prize–winning Russian poet Joseph Brodsky was born into a Jewish family, but he was captivated by the story of Jesus’s birth and wrote many poems about it. The final stanza of this one gives us the unique perspective of the Star of Bethlehem, looking down—the Father’s beaming pride.

Source: Nativity Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001)

23. “Wise Women Also Came” by Jan Richardson: The Gospel of Matthew tells us that when Jesus was born, wise men came from the east to worship him. But wise women came too, Jan Richardson surmises. They came during Mary’s labor—midwives assisting with the birth. They came with lamps, fresh water, and blankets.

Source: Night Visions (Wanton Gospeller, 2010)

Richardson, Jan_Wise Women Also Came — Jan Richardson (American, 1967–), *Wise Women Also Came*, 1995. Collage. [purchase reproduction]

24. “Green River Christmas” by John Shea: Theologian and storyteller John Shea reflects on how, after experiencing something scary or unpleasant (like getting a shot or a teeth cleaning), mothers often give their child a treat. Christmas is a kind of supreme treat after the penitential season of Advent, during which we confronted the state of our spiritual health and remedied any shortfalls. Think, too, of the liturgy of (somber) confession and (sweet) pardon every Sunday at church, a prelude to the feast of bread and wine. At the Lord’s Table, we are fed—the gifts of God for the people of God. The Eucharist is the subtext of the final stanza, where Shea describes the presentation of Jesus in the temple forty days after his birth. There he is received by “the long-starved arms / of Simeon and Anna.” They had hungered for salvation, endured a long period of waiting; now they are filled.

Source: Seeing Haloes: Christmas Poems to Open the Heart (Liturgical Press, 2017)

25. “Taking Down the Tree” by Jane Kenyon: “Tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop.” This poem is about the passing of time—the death of another year—and the glumness that often sets in after the holidays are over, but it’s also about the storage of memories. In many households, Christmas ornaments are a multigenerational collection of memories. As with hanging them on the tree, taking them off and packing them away is a ritual that may prompt us to revisit certain past experiences or periods in our life. After we unplug the stringed lights and wrap up the baubles for safekeeping, then what? How will we inhabit the twelve months until next Christmas?

Source: Collected Poems (Graywolf, 2005)

Roundup: Unique Nativity from Burgundy, Jamaican choral work for Epiphany, Vatican-sponsored art contest, and more

January 3, 2024January 10, 2024 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

I’ve just published a new Spotify playlist for January (thirty spiritual songs on no particular theme), and I want to also remind you of my Epiphany Playlist.

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ANNOUNCEMENT: Vatican to hold Stations of the Cross art contest: Artists from across the globe are encouraged to participate in the Vatican-sponsored contest for fourteen new Stations of the Cross paintings. The winner will be announced September 30, 2024, awarded €120,000 (about $131,000), given a year to complete the commission, and then have their set of paintings exhibited in St. Peter’s Basilica during Lent 2026. The first step is to fill out an online application, which will become available January 8, with a deadline of January 31. Learn more at the link. (Update: The registration link is now live at https://contest.viacrucis2026.va/en/registration.)

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ART OBJECT: Burgundian Crèche, ca. 1450: In researching depictions of Joseph at the Nativity, I came across this charming little limestone-carved crèche from fifteenth-century Burgundy, France, acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Set inside a dilapidated brick interior patched with wattled matting, the scene portrays the infant Christ lying in a wattled manger that rests on a crumbling wall ledge. Such an unusual composition! I’m not sure why the infant is placed so precariously and at a height when there’s a carved cradle available on the ground, where angels kindly fluff his pillow, but I suppose it was to avoid overcrowding and for visual balance.

Burgundian creche — Circle of Antoine Le Moiturier (French, 1425–1495), *Nativity*, Burgundy, France, ca. 1450. Limestone with later paint and gilding, 17 3/4 × 25 7/8 × 7 1/4 in. (45.1 × 65.7 × 18.4 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

A donkey licks Christ’s feet while an ox licks his hand, which he appears to delight in, as he lifts his arm for better access. To the left and right of him are a trio of angels and shepherds, respectively, excitedly leaning in from outside to get a better look. Mary gazes up at her son in adoration while Joseph dutifully tends to a parental chore: drying one of Jesus’s freshly washed linens at the fire. (Dad doing laundry—huzzah!)

To learn more about this sculpture, see the journal article “Popular Imagery in a Fifteenth-Century Burgundian Crèche” by William H. Forsyth.

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ART COMMENTARY: On The Adoration of the Magi by Domenico Veneziano: From the Visual Commentary on Scripture comes this 2022 video, one in a series filmed on-site at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. Theologian Ben Quash and art historian Jennifer Sliwka discuss an early Italian Renaissance tondo depicting the Adoration of the Magi.

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SONGS:

>> “Rejoice with Exceeding Great Joy”: Written by Lanny Wolfe in 1978 and performed by Reggie Smith, Charlotte Ritchie, and Ladye Love Smith at Bill and Gloria Gaither’s Homecoming Christmas 2006:

>> “Star of Bethlehem”: Written by Noel Dexter, arranged by C. S. (Cedron) Walters, and performed by the Jamaica Youth Chorale at their 2019 Christmas concert. Noel Dexter (1938–2019) was a Jamaican composer, choir director, and music educator, and this is probably his best-known work. It’s set to a Nyabinghi rhythm.

When the star of Bethlehem arise, hallelujah
When the star of Bethlehem arise, hallelujah
When the star of Bethlehem arise
Come show me where the young child born!

There were wise men coming from the east, hallelujah
There were wise men coming from the east, hallelujah
There were wise men coming from the east
Come show me where the young child born!

They brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh . . .

Not a man can save my soul . . .
But Jesus!
Show me where the young child born!

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VIDEO: “#NatZooZen: Giant Pandas Mei Xiang and Tian Tian in the Snow”: This Smithsonian’s National Zoo cam footage from January 2021 shows two giant pandas at play, sliding down a snowy hill! So adorable. Tian Tian and Mei Xiang arrived at the National Zoo in 2000 and in 2020 produced a cub, Xiao Qi Ji. All three pandas returned to Beijing in November, having been lent to the US by China as part of a cooperative research program whose contract has expired.

“Christmas” by Adeline Dutton Train Whitney (poem)

December 25, 2023 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

Herbert, Albert_Nativity with Burning Bush — Albert Herbert (British, 1925–2008), *Nativity with Burning Bush*, 1991. Oil on board, 27.9 × 35.6 cm. Private collection. Photo courtesy of England & Co., London / Bridgeman Images. © Estate of Albert Herbert.

            What is the Christ of God?
It is his touch, his sign, his making known,
His coming forth from out the all-alone,
            The stretching of a rod,

            Abloom with his intent,
From the invisible. He made worlds so:
And souls, whose endless life should be to know
            What the worlds meant.

            Christ is the dear “I am,”
The voice that the cool garden-stillness brake.—
The human heart to human hearts that spake,
            Long before Abraham.

            The word, the thought, the breath,—
All chrism of God that in creation lay,—
Was born unto a life and name this day;
            Jesus of Nazareth!

            With man whom he had made
God came down side by side. Not from the skies
In thunders, but through brother lips and eyes,
            His messages he said.

            Close to our sin he leant,
Whispering, “Be clean!” The high, the awful-holy,—
Utterly meek,—ah! infinitely lowly,—
            Unto our burden bent

            The might it waited for.
“Daughter, be comforted. Thou art made whole.
Son, be forgiven through all thy guilty soul.
            Sin—suffer ye—no more!

            “O dumb, deaf, blind, receive!
Shall he who shaped the ear not hear your cry?
Doth he not tenderly see, who made the eye?
            Ask me, that I may give!

            “O Bethany and Nain!
I show your hearts how safe they are with me.
I reach into my deep eternity
            And bring your dead again!

            “My kingdom cometh nigh.
Look up, and see the lightning from afar.
Over my Bethlehem behold the star
            Quickening the eastward sky!

            “From end to end, always,
The same Lord, I am with you. Down the night,
My visible steps make all the mystery bright.
            Lo! it is Christmas-day!”

This poem was originally published in Pansies: “…for Thoughts” by Adeline T. Whitney (London: Strahan & Co., 1872) and is in the public domain.

Adeline Dutton Train Whitney (1824–1906) was an American writer of poems and juvenile fiction, living in Massachusetts.

25 Poems for Christmas, vol. 2

November 24, 2023November 25, 2025 Victoria Emily Jones12 Comments

Following the popularity of last year’s “25 Poems for Christmas,” I’ve decided to publish a brand-new installment, and will perhaps make this a yearly tradition! All the selections can be read online—just follow the links.

Despite the pithy title of this post, not all the poems are “Christmas” poems, strictly speaking, but rather they encompass the season of Advent too, as well as Epiphany. Advent is a four-week season leading up to Christmas that is characterized by a mood of longing and expectation; it is oriented not only toward Jesus’s first coming but also toward his second. Christmas, of course, celebrates the birth of Jesus, the Word of God made flesh. And Epiphany, on January 6, commemorates the visit of the magi to the crib, representing God’s self-revelation to the wider world.

Each poem is accompanied by a micro-commentary or short descriptive blurb, which I suggest you read after reading the poem itself. There’s a benefit to first entering a poem without having any context—then after registering your initial impressions and questions, to consider another person’s framing or analysis or highlights, and reread. And then a third time! Each reading can potentially reveal new meaning.

Ventura Stone Nativity — Stone Nativity by Juan Manuel Cisneros, Ventura, California, December 2016 [learn more]

1. “Haiku for an Advent Calendar” by Richard Bauckham: Church services during Advent tend to focus on messianic prophecies from the Hebrew Bible, rumblings of a coming savior. In this sequence of twenty-four haiku, Richard Bauckham pulls a detail from each book of the Jewish scriptures, finding anticipations of Christ. For example, Isaiah: “In the wilderness / a voice cries for centuries / seeking an echo.” Or Job: “God answered Job but / not his question. Maybe he / will do that again.”

Source: Tumbling into Light: A Hundred Poems (London: Canterbury Press Norwich, 2022) | https://richardbauckham.co.uk/

2. “How Christ Shall Come” (anonymous): The cosmological Christ blew in from the four cardinal directions, coming as lover, knight, merchant, and pilgrim. So says this fourteenth-century Middle English lyric, rich in metaphor, compiled in a book of preaching aids and sermons by John Sheppey (d. 1360), bishop of Rochester. (It is unclear whether he is the author of the poem.) The great medieval literature scholar Carleton Brown gave it the title “How Christ Shall Come” in his landmark Religious Lyrics of the XIVth Century (1924), and Grace Hamman brought it to my attention recently in her wonderful monthly Substack, Medievalish, providing a modern English translation and commentary.

Source: Merton College MS 248, fol. 139b. Public Domain.

3. “Hawk Lies Down with Rabbit” by Seth Wieck: What would it look like for death to no longer have dominion in the animal world? Grappling with Isaiah’s end-time vision of a peaceable kingdom void of predation, this poem describes in graphic terms a bird of prey making its kill, feeding on flesh, and wonders how a hawk could still be itself with rewired impulses. Hear the author read and provide context for the poem on the Reformed Journal Podcast.

Source: Reformed Journal, January 31, 2023 | https://www.sethwieck.com/

4. “john” by Lucille Clifton: Written in the voice of John the Baptist, this poem is part of an extraordinary sixteen-poem sequence titled “some jesus,” which features a range of biblical characters. In her retelling of his ministry as forerunner to the Messiah, Lucille Clifton casts John as a Black Baptist preacher, preparing his listeners to receive the one who “com[es] in blackness / like a star.” Clifton’s larger body of work would suggest that “blackness” here is multivalent, describing what Jesus comes into and as: the word suggests the darkness of the world that Christ entered, on the one hand, but also functions as a positive racial identifier. In Clifton’s revisioning, Christ comes as a Black man, wearing “a great bush / on his head”—which, again, could be read as an Afro, and/or as a mystical reference to the site at which God revealed himself to Moses in the Sinai desert. Luminous with truth, Christ comes, “calling the people brother.”

Source: Good News About the Earth (New York: Random House, 1972); compiled in The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton (Rochester: BOA Editions, 2012)

Gargallo, Pablo_The Prophet — Pablo Gargallo (Spanish, 1881–1934), *The Prophet (St. John the Baptist)* (detail), 1933. Bronze, 91 3/4 × 29 1/2 × 19 in. Wurtzburger Sculpture Garden, Baltimore Museum of Art. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.

5. “Christmas Mail” by Ted Kooser: Every December the story of an ancient birth comes alive again in couriers’ mailbags, in tin boxes at the ends of driveways, on mantels and fridges. This poem honors those postal workers who deliver good tidings in the form of Christmas cards, the magic spilling out the envelopes to make even the most tiresome routes sparkle a bit.

Source: Poetry Foundation | https://www.tedkooser.net/

6. “December 25” by George MacDonald: Through the mid-nineteenth century, denominations influenced by the Reformed tradition, including the Church of Scotland in which George MacDonald was raised, typically did not observe Christmas, the rationale being that no one day should be thought of as holier than any other. But in his book-length dramatic poem Within and Without, MacDonald refers to December 25 as “this one day that blesses all the year”—and in this seven-liner from his Diary of an Old Soul, he describes Christmas as a gleaming blue sapphire, a structural center, around which all the other jewels of the church calendar are oriented.

Source: The Diary of an Old Soul (privately published, 1880). Public Domain.

7. “On a Cardinal Climbing Down a Manhole to Restore Power to 400 Homeless People” by Michael Stalcup: On May 11, 2019, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the papal almoner (Pope Francis’s special appointee to distribute charity), crawled into a manhole and broke a police seal to personally restore power to a homeless shelter in Rome whose electricity had been shut off due to its failure to pay its bills. The shelter was occupied by some 450 people at the time, 100 of them children, who had been without electric light, hot water, and refrigeration for nearly a week. In this poem, which can be read Christologically, Michael Stalcup celebrates this defiant humanitarian act that brought light to a people living in darkness.

Source: Commonweal, April 2020 | https://www.michaelstalcup.com/

8. “Incarnation” by Amit Majmudar: “Inheart yourself, immensity. Immarrow, / Embone, enrib yourself.” So begins the five-poem sequence “Seventeens.” Musical and witty, this first poem is a plea to the great I AM to take on a body and “be all we are, and all we aren’t.”

Source: Heaven and Earth (West Chester, PA: Story Line Press, 2011) | http://www.amitmajmudar.com/

9. “The Lord Is with Thee” by Micha Boyett: Written in 2010 as the third in a five-poem sequence commissioned by John Knox Presbyterian Church in Seattle, this poem centers on the Visitation episode described in Luke 1:39–58. It’s about Mary finding belonging in God’s story, especially through the companionship of her elder cousin Elizabeth, who has nurtured Mary’s faith since infancy and continues to do so in this her moment of crisis. “How easily she spoke of God, / as if he were a neighbor, a fish vendor on the street,” Mary admires. Elizabeth supports Mary physically, emotionally, and spiritually, holding her hair back as she vomits, protecting her from vicious rumors, affirming the work of God in her life, and accompanying her at the start of this wild path God has set them both on.

Source: The By/For Project | https://www.michaboyett.com/

Redon, Odilon_Mystical Conversation — Odilon Redon (French, 1840–1916), *Mystical Conversation*, ca. 1896. Oil on canvas, 65 × 46 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu, Japan.

10. “Our Lady” by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge: The great-grandniece of the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861–1907) grew up in a home visited by family friends Alfred Lord Tennyson, Anthony Trollope, John Ruskin, and Robert Browning, among others. In this poem she marvels at how God chose the common-born Mary for such a task as mothering the Christ, singing along with Mary’s Magnificat about how God raises up the lowly.

Source: Fancy’s Following (privately published, 1896). Public Domain.

11. “Traveling Man” by Marjorie Maddox: With his pregnant wife alongside, Joseph plods down south to Bethlehem, “convinced of the predestined / roll of dice chrismated with Miracle.” An epigraph from a Leonard Cohen song sets the tone.

Source: Begin with a Question (Brewster, MA: Paraclete, 2022) | http://www.marjoriemaddox.com/

12. “Sonnet in the Shape of a Potted Christmas Tree” by George Starbuck: This charming shape poem contrasts the extravagance of our popular celebrations of Christmas with the poverty of the first-century event it marks. The first half describes the furious wind of decorative activity that uproots evergreens from their natural habitats to bring them indoors and deck them with baubles and ribbon. I don’t know how to interpret “no scapegrace of a sect,” but “Daughter-in-Law Elect” refers to a duet from the Gilbert and Sullivan opera The Mikado. The turn comes with “a son born / now / now,” the latter two lines styled as the visible trunk of the tree; here the scene shifts to the simple stable of old, where Mary lies “spent” next to her newborn along with a cow and donkey, a sole “firework” guiding the magi and us all to the spot.

Source: The Works: Poems Selected from Five Decades (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003)

13. “Christmas (I and II)” by George Herbert: George Herbert (1593–1633) is one of the most celebrated poets of the English language. In part 1, a sonnet, of this two-part poem, he imagines himself a weary traveler who chances upon a humble inn where he unexpectedly finds his Lord, the infant Christ. It’s the inn of Bethlehem. Having then received rest from Christ his host, in the closing couplet he expresses his desire to reciprocate—to offer his own soul, lowly though it is, as a residence for Christ, praying that God first adorn it to make it hospitable. In the second part of the poem, Herbert uses a metaphysical conceit (extended metaphor) comparing his soul to a shepherd whose flock of thoughts, words, and deeds pastures on God’s word and who, like the shepherds of Bethlehem, sings glory to God. His shepherd-soul seeks eternal daylight, which he finds in the Son/sun, whose beams so intertwine with his song that the beams sing and his song shines.

Source: The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (Cambridge, 1633). Public Domain.

14. “Descending Theology: The Nativity” by Mary Karr: The physicality of childbirth, from the contractions (which pierce the Virgin like a star, Karr writes) to the bodily fluids, is heavily featured in this poem. Jesus emerges from his mother “a sticky grub” with a “lolling head” and “sloppy mouth” that seeks out her breast for food. And as she feeds him physically, he feeds her spiritually. Then he falls asleep. His first nap, Karr writes, is a foretaste of the sleep of death he will eventually come to taste. But for now, he wakes up crying—as all babies do.

Source: Sinners Welcome (New York: HarperCollins, 2006) | https://www.marykarr.com/

Erickson, Scott_With Us, Face to Face — Scott Erickson (American, 1977–), *With Us, Face to Face*, 2016. Digital art. [available for purchase]

15. “from spiralling ecstatically this” by E. E. Cummings: What a fantastic opening line! The heavenly spheres whirling, twirling, down into the “proud nowhere”—Bethlehem—“of earth’s most prodigious night.” Heretofore living in mundanity, the domestic animals, hungry for miracle, for newness, are vouchsafed to be witnesses of this supernatural event, before which they kneel “humbly in their imagined bodies.” Overhead floats the “perhapsless mystery of paradise,” a phrase suggesting that heaven is beyond human understanding but not without certainty; it’s a declarative reality, not subjunctive, even if it can’t quite be put into words. Mary herself has no words—she silently, knowingly smiles, while the created world erupts in song around her. The “mind without soul” is a reference to Herod, who seeks to snuff out this new life, but to no avail.

The omission of spaces after punctuation marks (e.g., “a newborn babe:around him,eyes”) is not a mistake; that’s how E. E. Cummings liked it. Scholars say it’s to create a faster rhythm, but in this poem I don’t think that choice is as effective, as pauses and slow savoring seem more appropriate to its contemplative mood.

Source: Atlantic, December 1956; compiled in E. E. Cummings: Complete Poems, 1904–1962, exp. ed., ed. George J. Firmage (New York: Liveright, 2016)

16. “How the Natal Star Was Born” by Violet Nesdoly: Narrated by the angel Gabriel, this poem imaginatively describes heaven’s nervously awaiting the birth of Jesus during the nine months following Gabriel’s dispatch to Mary, and then busting out in celebration when at last they hear his infant-cry. When his Son is born, instead of cigars, the Father passes out trumpets to his company of friends, who sound them all the way to Bethlehem’s fields, and pops open a bottle of champagne whose bubbles spray far and wide.

Source: Calendar (Surrey, BC: SparrowSong Press, 2004) | https://violetnesdoly.com/

17. Sections 9–10 of “The Child” by Rabindranath Tagore: Hinduism was the religion of Rabindranath Tagore’s birth and upbringing, but he also held deep respect for Jesus Christ. (For more on the influence of Christianity on Tagore’s thought and writing, see chapter 4 of Rabindranath Tagore and Interfaith Dialogue by Manas Kumar Ghosh [DMin thesis, Charles Sturt University, 2010].) “The Child” is a free-verse poem that Tagore wrote in English in 1930 after seeing a passion play in Germany and then translated into Bengali in 1932 with the title “Sishutirtha” (Pilgrimage to Childhood). In it a “Man of faith” gathers people from all walks of life to join him on a “pilgrimage of fulfilment,” to “struggle [through the dark] into the Kingdom of living light.” Initially met with enthusiasm, the Man later becomes a target of the people’s anger and distrust, and they kill him. Disorientation ensues. But a man in the crowd is able to rally the others to repent and resume their quest, following the spirit of “the Victim.”

The final two sections, 9 and 10, are the selection I’ve chosen. (Scroll right to read the last.) At “the first flush of dawn,” when the time is ripe, the pilgrims arrive at a thatched hut in a palm grove, where they finally meet the eternal Light they’ve been seeking: “the mother . . . seated on a straw bed with the babe on her lap, / . . . the morning star.” Here is the Child of the title, humanity’s redeemer.

Source: The Child (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1931)

Sahi, Jyoti_Adoration of the Shepherds — Jyoti Sahi (Indian, 1944–), *Adoration of the Shepherds*, 1983. Oil and acrylic on canvas.

18. “Love’s Bitten Tongue (11)” by Vassar Miller: This poem, “You, my God, lonesome man, Love’s bitten tongue,” is from a crown of twenty-two sonnets, a type of sequence in which the last line of each sonnet is repeated as the first line of the next, but each time with a new twist of syntax and sense. The crown as a whole expresses the poet-speaker’s struggle against her ego, and her desire for Christ (whom she gives such an evocative name in the title!). In this particular sonnet she describes waiting at the edge of her bed every Christmas Eve as a child in anticipation of both Santa’s arrival with gifts and the holy mystery of Christ’s birth, an admixture of sacred and profane longings that fill her still as an adult.

Source: Struggling to Swim on Concrete (New Orleans: New Orleans Poetry Journal Press, 1984); compiled in If I Had Wheels or Love: Collected Poems of Vassar Miller (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1991)

19. “Gloria in Profundis” by G. K. Chesterton: G. K. Chesterton’s poems are of variable quality, but this one is brilliant, emphasizing God’s descent from the rich heights of heaven into an obscure cave in a simple town. “Glory to God in the lowest!” it exclaims, a clever inversion of the angels’ song to the shepherds in Luke 2:14. The poem was originally published in a 1927 Christmas pamphlet with wood engravings by Eric Gill. The Latin title translates to “Glory in the Depths.”

Source: Gloria in Profundis by G. K. Chesterton (Ariel series pamphlet) (London: Faber and Gwyer, 1927); compiled in The Spirit of Christmas (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1985)

20. “Silent Night” by Bonnie Bowman Thurston: Rev. Dr. Bonnie Thurston invokes a tradition that says the night of Christ’s birth, there was a whole hour in which time stood still and all was silent. What a fascinating legend! Thurston told me its origin is northern European, said she remembers reading it in some scholarly Celtic studies; I wasn’t able to locate any such mentions, but the second-century Protoevangelium of James, chapter 18, probably written in Egypt or Syria, does describe everything momentarily freezing in place around Joseph as he steps out to find a midwife for Mary. Anyway, the poem ends with a striking metaphor! Word, flesh: fire. (Reminds me of this digital artwork by Scott Erickson.)

Source: Remembering That It Happened Once: Christmas Carmen for Spiritual Life All Year Long, ed. Dennis L. Johnson (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2021)

21. “After Luke 2:19” by Michelle Ortega: When the shepherds recounted to Mary what the angels had told them in the fields about Jesus being the promised Messiah, “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart,” Luke narrates in his Gospel. Poet Michelle Ortega expounds on this verse, emphasizing the relationship of Mary’s body to her son’s from conception to birth and now postpartum—an intimacy known well by mothers across the centuries. As wondrous as it was to be part of a cosmic story writ large in the skies, Ortega suggests that Mary treasured just as much as the grand pronouncements those small moments of being just an ordinary mama.

Source: Mary, Mary: Contemporary Poets and Artists Consider Mary (Arlington, VA: St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, 2021), a free e-book accompanying an art exhibition

22. “Christmas: 1924” by Thomas Hardy: “We the civilized world have given Christianity a fair trial for nearly 2000 years, & it has not yet taught countries the rudimentary virtue of keeping peace,” lamented the British novelist and poet Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) in a letter to Florence Henniker dated February 25, 1900, during the Boer War. World War I only increased his cynicism, which is on display in this sour little epigram that opens with an ironic quotation of the angels’ proclamation to the shepherds the night of Jesus’s birth.

Source: Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres (New York: Macmillan, 1928). Public Domain.

Hoyland, Francis_Nativity polyptych — Francis Hoyland (British, 1930–), *Nativity*, 1961. Oil on canvas, 90 × 120 cm. Methodist Modern Art Collection, HOY/1963/1.

23. “Eating Baklava on New Year’s Eve” by Anya Krugovoy Silver: Poet Anya Silver (1968–2018) reads a spiritual benediction in her piece of baklava, layered and sweet and consumed on the eve of a new year.

Source: Second Bloom (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2017)

24. “A Ballad of Wise Men” by George M. P. Baird: Jesus so often confounds the wisdom of the wise, starting with his birth. With gentle humor and in iambic rhythm and rhyme, this poem celebrates the simple access we all have to Christ.

Source: Rune and Rann (Pittsburgh: Aldine Press, 1916). Public Domain.

25. “Excrucielsis” by Hannah Main-van der Kamp: Originally published at ArtWay.eu as a response to the contemporary Romanian sculpture The Spring by Liviu Mocan, this poem alternates between the weary journeying toward truth of one of the biblical magi and that of a modern-day seeker similarly “longing for / the something more.” It can be a trudge, finding the Light—it involves risk, a willingness to follow the signs, and the tenacity to hold on to your “vision burden,” “clutch[ing] the weight” of it all the way over rough and varied terrain. But the epiphanic moment awaits, to sound like a trumpet blast. The title of the poem is a neologism combining the words “excruciating” and “excelsis” (Latin for “the heights”); “every excelsis contains something excruciating, that’s how we get to genuine excelsis,” the poet told me in an email. Read a related prose reflection by Main-van der Kamp here.

Source: The Slough at Albion (Victoria, BC: Ekstasis Editions, forthcoming)

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Advent, Day 14: Joseph

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

LOOK: Saint Joseph by Antoine Alexandre Morel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christmas, Day 9

January 2, 2022August 26, 2023 Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

LOOK: Holy Family in Saffron by Frank Wesley

Wesley, Frank_Holy Family — Frank Wesley (Indian, 1923–2002), *Holy Family in Saffron*, ca. 1950. Watercolor, 21 × 16 cm. Gould Collection. Photo courtesy of the Asian Christian Art Association.

Frank Wesley [previously] was a fifth-generation Christian from North India who began painting biblical subjects in 1947 when the Christian Home Committee of the National Christian Council of India began licensing original images from him for their magazine, a relationship that lasted for decades. His initial training had been in commercial art, but from 1950 to 1952 he studied as a postgraduate at the School of Art in Lucknow under the Hindu artist Bireshwar Sen, kickstarting his fine-art career. The Lucknow school of watercolor painting, developed during the Bengal Renaissance in the first half of the twentieth century, is the style with which he is most associated, and which the above painting is representative of, with its graceful, calligraphic lines.

With the aid of an American patron, Wesley continued his art education at Kyoto Art University from 1954 to 1958, where he learned traditional and modern Japanese painting techniques, lacquer work, textile design, woodblock printing, and ink drawing, and in Chicago from 1958 to 1960, which included coursework at the Art Institute, where he learned about modern abstraction and how to work with oil paint.

Wesley returned to India in 1960 and, after a four-year courtship, married Athalie Brown, an Australian nurse working in a mission hospital in Azamgarh. They had two children. Seeking better opportunities, he emigrated to Australia with his family in 1973 and lived there until his death in 2002. Even in his new adopted country, he continued painting biblical scenes in an Indian style.

You can view thumbnails of other paintings by Frank Wesley at www.frankwesleyart.com. For better-quality reproductions along with more detailed biographical information, there’s the book Frank Wesley: Exploring Faith with a Brush by Naomi Wray (Auckland: Pace Publishing, 1993), but it’s out of print and difficult to find.

LISTEN: “Joseph Dearest, Joseph Mine” (original: “Josef lieber, Josef mein”) | Traditional German carol, 14th century (tune: RESONET IN LAUDIBUS) | English translation of verses by Percy Dearmer,* 1928; refrain translated by Edward T. Horn III, 1958 (from the carol “Long Ago and Far Away”) | Arranged and performed by Blue Water Highway on Christmastide, 2014

“Joseph dearest, Joseph mine,
Help me cradle the Child divine.
God reward thee and all that’s thine,
In paradise,” so prays the mother Mary.

He came among us at Christmastide,
At Christmastide, in Bethlehem;
Men shall bring him from far and wide
Love’s diadem: Jesus, Jesus,
Lo, he comes, and loves, and saves, and frees us!

“Gladly, dear one, Lady mine,
Help I cradle this Child of thine.”
“God’s own light on us both shall shine,
In paradise,” as prays the mother Mary.

All shall come and bow the knee;
Wise and happy their souls shall be,
Loving such a divinity as all may see
In Jesus, son of Mary.

Sweet and lovely, little one,
Princely, beautiful, God’s own Son,
Without thee all of us were undone;
Our love is won by thine, O son of Mary.

* Some sources cite Neville S. Talbot as the translator; I’m going with The Oxford Book of Carols, whose original 1928 edition, and subsequent ones, name Dearmer.

RESONET IN LAUDIBUS (Let the voice of praise resound) is a fourteenth-century German carol tune associated with a carol text of the same name as well as with “Josef lieber, Joseph mein.” The latter carol is from a medieval mystery play from Leipzig that survives in multiple manuscripts. It spotlights Joseph’s faithful presence and loving support during Christ’s infancy.

The original carol did not have a refrain; an unknown editor spliced that in from a different fourteenth-century German carol at some point, but it still often circulated with the verses only, including in the earliest English translations. In 1958, however, the American pastor Edward Traill Horn III (1909–1994) translated the refrain from German into English for incorporation into a new Christmas carol he wrote, “Long Ago and Far Away.” Blue Water Highway uses verses and refrain for their recording “Joseph Dearest, Joseph Mine.”

Find free sheet music here.

If you prefer choral music, I really like Kirke Mechem’s arrangement of the carol, from his Seven Joys of Christmas suite, as performed by the Stanford University Chamber Chorale and Orchestra under the direction of Stephen M. Sano.

See also the recording on Vaughan Williams: An Oxford Christmas (2021), where it appears under the title “Song of the Crib.”

Four scenes from a medieval German altarpiece

December 13, 2021December 13, 2021 Victoria Emily Jones6 Comments

When I was at the Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht, Netherlands, in 2019, one of the standout pieces I saw was an early fifteenth-century altarpiece from the Middle Rhine region of Germany. The central section, which I imagine would have been a sculpted Crucifixion scene, has been lost, and the surviving panels are arranged in a modern frame.

Middle Rhine Altarpiece (Catharijneconvent) — Altarpiece from the Middle Rhine, ca. 1410. Tempera on panels. Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, Netherlands. Photo: Ruben de Heer.

Ten panels depicting eight scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary decorate what would have originally been the interior wings—that is, visible when the altarpiece was open.

I’ll describe the first four, as they’re my favorites.

All photos in this post are from the museum’s website, which courteously provides them in high resolution under an open-access policy, promoting scholarship and digital engagement. The Annunciation image is a composite I made from two separate photos.

The Annunciation

In the Annunciation, Mary sits in her bedroom beside a window in front of an open pink chest (her dowry chest?), quietly reading the scriptures, when the angel Gabriel slips in through an open door, holding a banderole that bears his greeting: Ave gratia plena d[omi]n[u]s tecum (“Hail, favored one, the Lord is with you,” Luke 1:28). He then goes on to tell her that she has been chosen to bear God’s Son into the world.

What will Mary say? Four little angels look on in eager anticipation from a tower in the panel above, while in the room two angels already start rolling out the royal treatment, holding up a gilt-brocaded velvet “cloth of honor” behind the young maiden in recognition of her high calling.

A thin column divides Gabriel’s space from Mary’s, creating a sense of threshold. It marks a boundary that is about to be crossed. The separation between God and humanity will be broken down by the Incarnation.

Mary ultimately responds to the surprise invitation with acceptance: Ecce ancilla d[omi]ni fiat michi s[e]c[un]d[u]m verbu[m] t[uu]m (“Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word,” Luke 1:38).

Mary’s yes triggers the release of a thick stream of light—it looks to me like a golden conveyor belt!—from the heart of God the Father, who is peering down through an upper window. Riding that stream is a haloed dove (the Holy Spirit) followed by a tiny yet fully formed infant Christ who’s holding a cross and headed straight toward Mary’s womb.

Annunciation (Middle Rhine Altarpiece, detail) — “Weeee!!!”

The homunculus (“little human”) motif in Annunciation images, though relatively rare, always makes me chuckle. It’s one way artists came up with to visualize the unvisualizable mystery of Christ’s conception, one that includes the Second Person of the Trinity as an actor in the event and shows a very literal descent. Not long after the motif started appearing in the fourteenth century, it was disapproved of by theologians, such as Antoninus of Florence and Molanus, and it was finally banned in the eighteenth century by Pope Benedict XIV as being heretical, since it suggests that Jesus did not take his body from Mary.

For brief commentary on this particular scene by Msgr. Herman Woorts, a Dutch art historian and an auxiliary bishop in the Roman Catholic Church, see this video produced by Katholiekleven.nl:

(To translate the Dutch into your language, click the “CC” button on the player, then the cog icon, and select Subtitles→Auto-translate.)

The Visitation

In the Visitation panel, Jesus and John the Baptizer are visible in their mothers’ wombs, each encased in a mandorla (almond-shaped aureole). This visual device of showing the cousins in utero was not uncommon at the time, especially in the Low Countries; art historian Matthew J. Milliner amusingly calls it “ultrasound Jesus”! Here you can actually see little John kneeling before his cousin in adoration.

Elizabeth has emerged from a door at the right, whose frame is labeled “Civitas Juda,” City of Judah (and notice the dog in the doorway! a traditional symbol of faithfulness). As she and Mary embrace each other in celebration of their miraculous pregnancies and imminent salvation, scrolls unfurl with their words from the Gospel of Luke: Et unde michi hoc q[uo]d mater d[omi]ni mei venit ad me (“And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Luke 1:43), at right, and at left, Magnificat a[n]i[m]a mea d[omi]n[u]m. Et exultavit sp[iritu]s meus i[n] deo salutalutari (sic) meo (“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,” Luke 1:46–47). The scrolls provide a delicate, wing-like framing around the two women.

And at their head, in the center, an open-beaked dove descends, signifying the Holy Spirit—an extremely rare appearance in Visitation images. This is God breathing on his daughters, blessing their ministries, receiving their praise. Like the prophets of old, they are filled with God’s power and truth spills forth from their lips.

Visitation (Middle Rhine Altarpiece, detail)

At their feet flows a spring of water, a possible allusion to Isaiah 35:6b–7a: “waters shall break forth in the wilderness, / and streams in the desert; / the burning sand shall become a pool, / and the thirsty ground springs of water.” Not to mention the Living Water that is Christ (see John 4).

Another charming detail of this panel is the angels, with their wispy red wings, peeking in at this intimate moment from behind rocks. I’m reminded of the epistle of 1 Peter, whose author says that the mysteries of salvation are “things into which angels long to look!” (1:12). Here they seem to whisper their song that will be exclaimed at full blast on the night of Jesus’s birth: Gloria in exelsis deo (“Glory to God in the highest,” Luke 2:14).

The Nativity

Poor Joseph is often overlooked as a player in the Christmas story, and yet he, too, faithfully responded to a (quite terrifying!) divine calling: to be the adoptive father of Jesus, raising him as his own. Though he initially had doubts about Mary’s story of supernatural conception—who wouldn’t?—an angel set him straight, and he ultimately acted in love and loyalty to Mary, and to God. He was an advocate and a provider for his family, looking out for their best interests all along the way.

I mention this because the Middle Rhine Altarpiece shows an actively caring and resourceful Joseph at the Nativity, cooking porridge over an open fire to nourish his hungry and tired wife, who reclines on a rollout mat with her newborn.

Also, notice that his left foot is bare. A legend of unknown origin says that Joseph removed his stockings (German hosen) following Jesus’s birth, cutting them into strips in order to swaddle the child. This narrative detail appealed to popular imagination and was referred to in stories, poems, songs, and the visual arts from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries in the Netherlands and the Rhineland. At the time this altarpiece was made there was even a venerated relic at Aachen Cathedral purported to be the stockings-turned-swaddling bands.

As had become standard in images of the Nativity, this one includes an ox and an ass. The canonical Gospels don’t mention any animals at the birth—though the mention of a manger in Luke 2:7 implies an animal presence. The seventh-century Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew specifically names the ox and ass, citing their supposed adoration of the Christ child as a fulfillment of an Old Testament “prophecy”: “And on the third day after the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, the most blessed Mary went forth out of the cave, and entering a stable, placed the child in the stall, and the ox and the ass adored Him. Then was fulfilled that which was said by Isaiah the prophet, saying: The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master’s crib (Isa. 1:3).” These two domestic animals are also mentioned in the Nativity account that appears in the Golden Legend, an immensely popular text from the thirteenth century.

Here the ox is nose-deep in straw, while the ass looks up with his mouth agape. Perhaps he’s excited at having just spotted the Spirit-dove under the rafters.

The shepherds are about to arrive at the stable, as in the right background the birth is announced to them. The scroll held by the angel reads, Evanglizo vob[is] gaudi[um] magnu[m] (“I proclaim great joy to you,” Luke 2:10), and above the shepherd is the inscription Transeamu[s] us[que] Betleem (“Let’s go to Bethlehem,” Luke 2:15).

The Adoration of the Magi

In the Adoration of the Magi panel, Mary holds the Christ child on her lap, who is nude save for a thin diaphanous drape, emphasizing his full humanity. She wears a crown, alluding to her identity (in Catholic tradition) as Queen of Heaven. As in the Annunciation, she’s backed by a cloth of honor, which Joseph pulls aside to see what new visitors have come calling. And again, the ever-present Holy Spirit hovers above!

The pointing angel at the top, with the aid of a star, has directed three magi, portrayed here as kings, from their far-off homelands to the Christ child. Ite in iudeam ubi / nascit rex iudeor[um] (“Go to Judea where the king of the Jews was born”), he says.

Having cast his crown at the child’s feet, one of the magi kneels down and kisses the hand of the King of kings. He presents a container of gold coins as tribute, which Jesus rifles through with curiosity (ooo, shiny!).

Two other magi stand behind with their gifts of frankincense and myrrh. One of them, whom tradition calls Balthazar, is African. In the eighth century the historian Bede described Balthazar as having a “black complexion,” and from around 1400 onward he came to be portrayed that way in art, reflecting the growing visibility of other races in Europe.

Exterior Panels

Just to give you a full picture of the altarpiece as a whole . . .

The exterior panels, which were visible when the altarpiece was closed, comprise ten scenes from Christ’s passion. Three, however, are missing, and several of the remaining ones are damaged.

So all together, the altarpiece would have told the gospel story from Christ’s conception and birth to the Crucifixion to the Resurrection and Ascension to Pentecost. And it would have served as the backdrop to the celebration of the Eucharist, spiritually forming parishioners week after week.

Art museums are full of such treasures as these. I encourage you to visit one of your local museums (or maybe take a weekend trip to one), find a piece of historical art that intrigues you, and sit with it for at least ten minutes. What do you notice? What is strange to you? What makes you smile? What was the object’s original context? What lineages is it a part of (e.g., what communities has it passed through, what iconographies or textual traditions does it draw from and develop, etc.)? What theological ideas, if any, does it express?

If you struggle to meaningfully engage with an artwork, I’m sure a docent would love to help you.

You might also take a photo of the artwork and share it on your social media. Ask your friends what stands out to them.