Feast of Ignatius of Loyola

Happy Feast of Ignatius of Loyola! This is a link to a [2007] blog post about Ignatius, his feast, his rooms in Rome (which I had the joy of visiting), some new statues, the Infanta Juana, and related topics. I just fixed about half a dozen broken links, so everything should work.

This comes with deep gratitude to the worldwide Ignatian community.

Cross-posted on Facebook.

March 25: Feast of the Annunciation

"Annunciation," lithograph by Salvador Dali.

For more art (and links to yet more art) on the theme of the Annunciation from different eras and from around the world, see here.

Wulfstan of Worcester: Anniversary

Today is the 9th anniversary of my formal reception into the Episcopal Church and the feast of Wulfstan of Worcester, about whom I wrote at some length two years ago.

Bishop Wulfstan's Crypt, Worcester Cathedral, England

The oft-recycled Epiphany sermon (with asides on James Taylor, T.S. Eliot, Sadao Watanabe, and Masao Takanake)

Sadao Watanabe, The Magi's Dream

Bear in mind that I wrote this Epiphany sermon a little over a year after 9/11. It's from eight years ago, Epiphany 2003. I stand by what I said. Click here to read it.

I looked for artistic representations of Herod, since a good deal of the sermon focuses on him. What I found, for the most part, were representations of the consequences of Herod's actions: the slaughter of the innocents; the Magi returning home by another way; the flight into Egypt of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus.

Later on of course there is another Herod, Herod Antipas, who is the son of Herod the Great, and it is he who is involved in the deaths of both John the Baptizer and Jesus according to the Gospel stories.

The only scenes in which Herod shows up as a visible protagonist are, once in a while, Herod with the Magi, and, more often (at least in Western art), Herod's feast, but that one is Herod the son. The feast is the one at which which Herod Antipas's stepdaughter Salome dances and asks for the beheading of John.

In painted scenes of Jesus' infancy, even with Herod the Great's presence in the stories, artists tends to focus on the Holy Family, the shepherds, the animals, the angels, and the Magi. Makes sense. "But Herod's always out there. / He's got our cards on file," James Taylor's song notes. And... See the sermon for more.

Of course I also read --or listen to-- the T.S. Eliot poem "Journey of the Magi" every year, but I only cited a line or two of it in that sermon.

The link at the name of the poem will take you to the text of "Journey of the Magi" and to an audio of T.S. Eliot himself reading it. Well worth a listen.

Don't mix that with the sermon though -- very different animals. Read them separately, or just read one or the other.

Note: I never see the work of the Japanese artist Sadao Watanabe (see above) without thinking fondly of Dr. Masao Takanake, who during his time at Harvard introduced me and others to Watanabe's work. Watanabe's art graces the cover of at least one of Takenaka's books, The Bible Through Asian Eyes. A scholar of Christian ethics, Takenaka also wrote God Is Rice: Asian Culture and Christian Faith and other works. He was for many years the President of the Asian Christian Art Association.

New Year resolutions: a meditation on the Feast of the Epiphany

It is Twelfth Night, and tomorrow is the Feast of the Epiphany.

As the Twelve Days of Christmas end, I am re-reading old blog posts and was glad to find this one. In the interest of recycling, and because I still stand by what I wrote (and needed to remember it!) I offer it here, three years later.

See here.

The photo over at that post, is from my trip to Istanbul three years ago. My friend Deirdre Good is there right now and I enjoyed her recent blog report.

Photo above: Chinese Nativity. (Make sure you read the explanatory comment about the two fathers!) As you can see, the wise men are on the left. From a blog I just discovered called World Nativity: Nativities from Third World & Developing Countries.

December 26: St. Stephen's Day - blog flashback

Well, the Episcopal Church has transferred the feast of Stephen till tomorrow, today being a Sunday (you can't liturgically celebrate a Sunday and a saint's day on the same day, or rather you can, but you may not).

Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic Church --or at least the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops-- has bagged Stephen entirely, because the 26th is not only a Sunday but the first Sunday after Christmas, which in the Catholic Church is the Feast of the Holy Family.

Since I have no liturgical celebrations to attend or at which to preach or officiate, I'm sticking to the original calendar. Today is the feast of Stephen, so there.


No energy, or rather, still hardly any words. Writer's block or something. Here is last year's post on Stephen, which itself has a flashback to two years before that and a feast of St. Stephen poem. Gentle readers, you have probably forgotten both posts anyway, so enjoy the (re-) read.

And thank you for bearing with me. I am well but in a bit of an odd relationship to words. Trying to find a voice again. My job tends to destroy it and I recently spent two or three weeks correcting final papers in other people's voices, many of them with bad grammar, syntax, and usage. Lord, have mercy on your indentured servants in the academy.

Posted on December 27, dated December 26.

Orthodox icon: Stephen the Protomartyr

Christmas, a year ago

I have been reading a lot of Merton during Advent.

Coincidentally (or not), I put together this post exactly a year ago. My friend Ann Fontaine just posted the same quotation* on Facebook tonight. Friends think alike.

*Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ has come uninvited... [More at the link "this post" above.]