Faith


Sign or Saviour -4th Week of Lent- Tuesday-John 5: 1-16

Announce a ‘healing service’ in your Church and you will have to provide for many more chairs. Lead your congregation in prayer before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and you may have to take away a couple of benches. Ironic but true, we are looking for signs not a Saviour! The gospels don’t mince words, “its a wicked generation that wants a sign.” The gospel of John teaches us that Jesus’ words are the real source of faith and not the signs (John 4:50).

Let’s look at some of the issues that this gospel raises. Why did Jesus choose this cripple? Why not the rest? We are told that ‘many invalids’ lay there (5:3) and there were great ‘crowds’ (5:13). What about the intention of the cripple? He does not seem to even want to be healed! To Jesus’ question, “do you want to be made well”, he launches into his problems (sounds like us) rather than a direct yes that should have been on the lips of one suffering for “thirty eight years”.

Spread the love ♥
5      
5
Shares
Continue Reading
Faith

 

 

Spread the love ♥
14      
14
Shares
Continue Reading
Art/ Heritage

The Miracle of Christ healing the blind – painting by ‘ El Greco’

Doménikos Theotokópoulos, nicknamed ‘El Greco’ (the Greek) was born in 1541 in Crete, a Greek island that had passed from Byzantine to Venetian rule in 1212. Initially trained as an icon painter, he soon transformed himself from the flat symbolic world to master the dynamic humanistic elements of the Renaissance. However the vision of embodying a higher realm of spirit remained common.

Among the finest of his works is the ‘Miracle of Christ healing the blind’. El Greco painted this dramatic storytelling either in Venice or in Rome, where he worked before moving to Spain in 1576. He spent the rest of his life in Toledo and died there on April 7, 1614.

Spread the love ♥
19      
19
Shares
Continue Reading
Faith

Testimony, par excellence- 4th Sunday of Lent – Year 1
John 9: 1-41

Today’s Gospel was intended for two audiences; Jesus’ audience, which by extension includes us, and the audience of John’s community. Just as there was a controversy in today’s gospel between the Pharisees in the story and Jesus, so also, the Christian community of John faced hostility. It was they who were expelled from the synagogues in the first century. This expulsion and its repercussions were ever present in the mind of the first century Christian, who until now, were still part of the synagogue service.

This expulsion from the synagogue is reflected twice in the narrative. The parents are afraid to testify to their son’s healing, lest they be expelled from the synagogue. Finally, the blind man is expelled himself, because he takes on the Jewish establishment in favour of Jesus. This talk of expulsion would ring a bell in John’s first century Christian community.

Spread the love ♥
22      
22
Shares
Continue Reading
Art/ Heritage

The ‘Annunciation’ painted by William Ewart Gladstone Solomon (1880–1965),  beautifully illustrates the Gospel  of Luke, chapter 1: 26-38. It illuminates the announcement of the Incarnation by the angel Gabriel and the ‘yes’ by the Virgin Mary.

The significant feature of this painting is the explicit use of a game of contrast and oppositions. In the foreground, occupying two thirds of the pictorial space, the painter represents the protagonist, the seated Blessed Virgin. To her right, in profile, is the winged Archangel Gabriel. The raised fingers of the Archangel signify the divine source of his message.

The Virgin is seated on a rug, in a meditative posture of obedience to divine will. At the feet of the Virgin lies a piece of fabric, constituting a representation of the late medieval tradition according to which the Virgin was weaving for the curtain of the Temple when the Archangel Gabriel visited.

Spread the love ♥
26 63    
89
Shares
Continue Reading