Highly Favored

The Annunciation

Fra Angelico, Tempera on Wood, c. 1426

Museo del Prado, Madrid

With the beginning of June, MARYS for May has run its course. I've enjoyed posting these images and reflections for you, and I'm thinking about ways to continue to share beautiful and inspiring Marian art.

Here's one way: send me a link to your favorite image of Mary and why you love it, and I'll post it for others to enjoy.

My favorite? It's very hard to select just one, but I think this stunning painting by Fra Angelico which haunted my imagination for many years and overwhelmed me when I saw it the Prado five years ago is the one. Fra Angelico is not only a very great painter; he was also a Dominican friar who was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1982. His holiness deepens his artistic genius. For me he is the most Marian of all artists; the beauty of his Virgins is the fruit not only of art but of contemplation, prayer made visible in glorious color and form.

Fra Angelico gives us all of salvation history in this panel. At left, Adam and Eve are driven from the lush Garden of Eden, turned away from the light of God above them more by their own sin than by the angel. Following that golden light from the Hand of God to the Holy Spirit, we see the same angel greeting Mary. Messenger and Maiden bow to each other in profound recognition of the mystery unfolding as they speak and the Word becomes flesh. The graceful forms, the exquisite details, and the harmonious colors invite us not only to admire the painting but to contemplate the meaning of this encounter. 

A reproduction of this painting hangs just outside the door of my room, and, as I pass it, I am reminded of my vocation as a Marianst and of the great privilege of sharing in her mission of bringing Jesus into the world for the salvation of men and women.  

  

MARYS for May #31 – The Joy of Bringing Jesus to Others

The Visitation, James B. Janknegt, 2007, oil on canvas

In his homily this morning for the Feast of the Visitation, Pope Francis preached about joy and praise. The Holy Spirit is the "author" of Christian joy, he said, and to proclaim the Gospel we need to have joy in our hearts gifted us by the Spirit of God. The model of this praise, and this joy, is the Mother of Jesus "The Church – recalled Pope Francis – calls her the" cause of our joy, "Cause Nostrae Letitiae. Why? Because she brings the greatest joy that is Jesus ":

"We need to pray to Our Lady, so that bringing Jesus give us the grace of joy, the joy of freedom. That it give us the grace to praise, to praise with a prayer of gratuitous praise, because He is worthy of praise, always. Pray to Our Lady and say to her what the Church says:Veni, Precelsa Domina, Maria, tu nos visita, Lady, thou who art so great, visit us and give us joy. "

MARYS for May #30 – "I am with you always"

The Ascension

Giotto, Fresco from the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, 1305

". . . and the Mother of Jesus was there."

St. John Paul II:

Be imbued with the hope that is so much a part of the mystery of the Ascension of Jesus. Be deeply conscious of Christ’s victory and triumph over sin and death. Realize that the strength of Christ is greater than our weakness, greater than the weakness of the whole world. Try to understand and share the joy that Mary experienced in knowing that her Son had taken his place with his Father, whom he loved infinitely. And renew your faith today in the promise of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has gone to prepare a place for us, so that he can come back again and take us to himself.  – Homily, May 24, 1979

MARYS for May #29 – “Why are you standing there looking up to the sky?”

The Ascension

Mikhail Nesterov, Oil Painting, 1895

Nesterov was a deeply devout member of the Orthodox Church whose work combines traditional Russian iconography with post-impressionist symbolism of the late 19th century.  Even after the Russian Revolution, he continued to paint religious subjects despite the hostility of both the government and critics.

In Nesterov’s version of the Ascension, Mary is the strong center of his composition. As Christ ascends in the oval “mandorla” which signifies heavenly glory, Mary remains firmly rooted on the ground at the center of the gaping apostles.  As the woman of faith, she already understands what it means for Jesus to return to his Father. As the woman already “overshadowed” by the Holy Spirit, she knows that Jesus is not abandoning them but inviting them into an even deeper relationship with God. And as the woman of prayer, she sustains the bewildered community as they await the outpouring of the Spirit which will transform them. As the confused apostles look anxiously to the skies, a centered and certain Mary looks out towards us who glimpse the scene from below.

A commentator on traditional Russian iconography comments on the centrality of Mary in Ascension icons, a significance that Nesterov emphasizes by the solidity of Mary’s form and color compared to all the other figures in the painting:

Amid the confusion of the Church before Pentecost there is the Mother of God, prayerfully and peacefully entreating God, and hoping upon His promised return. Gazing out, she exhorts us, whilst still amid the confusion and disorder of the world, to do the same: spiritually gazing to the heavens in prayer, awaiting the return of Our Lord.

MARYS for May #28 – Mary Ponders

The Virgin Enthroned with a Book

Panel from the Ghent Altarpiece 

Jan van Eyck, Oil and Tempera on Wood, 1426-29

St. Bavo Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium

Could Mary read? Ancient traditions attest that she was sent to the Temple in Jerusalem as a young girl where she learned to read and write. Certainly, she is often depicted with a book, as in this glorious panel from the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, most often referred to as the Ghent Altarpiece. A large and complex composition by the Flemish artist Jan van Eyck and his brother, the altarpiece, commissioned for the Cathedral of St. Bavo, is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of European art.

Why do artists so often paint Mary with a book? She reads at the feet of her mother Anne. She is absorbed in her book as the angel Gabriel alights with his message. She lays her book aside to tend to her playful young son and his cousin John. In van Eyck’s painting, she reads even while enthroned as queen of heaven. (Does anyone else think it’s wonderful to think that there will be reading in heaven?)

I think the book is an emblem for Mary’s prayer and her pondering. When Mary is reading, she is at prayer. She “reads” in the fullest sense: she searches, she understands, she opens her mind and heart completely to whatever message the Word of God wishes to speak to her. As she ponders the word, it penetrates every part of her being. She becomes the word she reads and the Word takes flesh in her flesh. Her attentiveness leads her to “read” the signs of the times. She anticipates her son’s first miracle when she tells the stewards at Cana: “Do whatever he tells you.”

The book is also a symbol for Mary. The Blessed Virgin is the book in which the Church reads what it means to live with faith. She is "the sacred book of the divine precepts, in which what pleases God is made known to us.” (St. Theodore of Studion, d. 826). The Virgin Mary with her book teaches us to pray better and to ponder more attentively. In her we study the most faithful and fruitful illustration of the Word made flesh.

MARYS for May 27: The Abiding Presence of Mary

Pentecost in the Upper Room

Unknown Portuguese artist, 1540-50

Museu de Alberto Sampaio, Portugal

The upper room, called the Cenacle, is the birthplace of the Church. This room is the setting of the Last Supper and the First Eucharist, a place of service, sacrifice and betrayal, of farewell and forgiveness. The Acts of the Apostles records that the apostles gathered there after the Ascension and “devoted themselves with one accord to prayer, together with some women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.” (Acts 1:14)

Mary’s presence is significant. She is the “woman” who was present at Cana, at the beginning of Jesus’ mission, and the one who prompted his first miracle, the first sign of the coming Kingdom.  She is present throughout Jesus’ ministry even to the foot of the cross. And now she is present as the community awaits a new sign and begins a new mission. How appropriate that artists often place at the center of the gathered disciples.

At the conclusion his pilgrimage to the Holy Land this weekend, Pope Francis gathered the bishops of the Holy Land together in that same upper room and reminded them of the significance of this room to the whole Christian family:

The Upper Room reminds us of sharing, fraternity, harmony and peace among ourselves. How much love and goodness has flowed from the Upper Room! How much charity has gone forth from here, like a river from its source, beginning as a stream and then expanding and becoming a great torrent.  All the saints drew from this source; and hence the great river of the Church’s holiness continues to flow: from the Heart of Christ, from the Eucharist and from the Holy Spirit.

Lastly, the Upper Room reminds us of the birth of the new family,the Church, our holy Mother the hierarchical Church established by the risen Jesus; a family that has a Mother, the Virgin Mary. Christian families belong to this great family, and in it they find the light and strength to press on and be renewed, amid the challenges and difficulties of life. All God’s children, of every people and language, are invited and called to be part of this great family, as brothers and sisters and sons and daughters of the one Father in heaven.

These horizons are opened up by the Upper Room, the horizons of the Risen Lord and his Church.

From here the Church goes forth, impelled by the life-giving breath of the Spirit. Gathered in prayer with the Mother of Jesus, the Church lives in constant expectation of a renewed outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Send forth your Spirit, Lord, and renew the face of the earth (cf. Ps 104:30)!

Read his whole homily here: http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2014/05/from-here-church-set-out-from-here-she.html

MARYS for May #26 – No Greater Love

Lamentation over the Dead Christ

Fra Angelico, Tempera on Panel, 1436-1441, 

Museo de San Marco, Florence

“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” John 15:13