Happy Feast of St. Josemaria Escriva!
This painting is done by Sr. AnneMarie Heyne, who is currently a novice with the Sisters of the Sacred Heart in Florence, Italy. If you would like to support her vocation and promote the sacred arts, consider purchasing her paintings. Contact me at ruahfellowship@gmail.com if you’re interested.
For more on St. Josemaria:
Happy Feast Day, artists! Especially if your work tends toward the Liturgical and Devotional Art end of things, because today, you may know, is the feast of St. John of Damascus, or St. John Damascene, Doctor of Christian Art. Monsignor gave a great homily today on St. John, telling us about his heroic defense of holy images against iconoclasm, which should be a reminder to us all to have holy images around us. We don’t have to look like a walking Leaflet Missal Catalogue, either, but the use of sacred images is tremendously important. Do you know how to defend the Church’s teaching on images to Protestants or Muslims?
Though I’m posting this in the evening, here are some ideas for celebrating this feast day–h/t to Catholic Culture for the links:
- Pray for a renewal of the sacred liturgy and the liturgical arts, and make a donation to organizations that specifically promote renewal in sacred liturgy and arts
- Read about his life and writings
- Learn about the value of sacramentals
- Place an icon of St. John in a prominent place with a votive candle
My friend, Matthew Milliner, wrote some time earlier this year a succinct summary of everything I believe about contemporary art, namely that contemporary art is corrupt, is based on poorly formed principles (if any) sans the transcendant, and needs very much the simple, faithful return to classical foundations in a truly creative way that is based in, above all things, the sacred Liturgy, whether directly in the liturgical arts or flowing from the altar itself by grace. His very direct and lovely way of communicating this comes down to two bird analogies: the swallows of Capistrano (as taken from Jody Bottum’s article in First Things) and the sparrows whose littleness trumps the eagles of the art world (as taught by John Walford of Wheaton College).
Do read the article. It’s not a sound bite, hyper-summarized, bite size chunk of cultural niceties and theoretic sentamentalism, so don’t expect something that the average Facebook user would read and dig. It’s probably not something your average artsy fartsy person would dig either. Average, I said. It’s edgy, and a little (wee) bit long, but it’s worth the perseverance. So read it. It might offend you, and that’s okay I say. Truth offends. If we had more people willing to offend the Church we’d be in a much different place in respect to many things today.
Favorite quotes:
“A nearly universal response to contemporary art today–one that impressively transverses race, creed age, or class–is ‘What?’”“The decades to follow gave us conceptual art, landscape art, performance art, outsider’s art, found art, and (most revealingly perhaps) auto-destructive art.”
“The cult of celebrity–with its exorbitant votive prices–drives the art world today, leaving envy and resentment in its wake: a convocation of belligerent eagles.”
“We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another–doubtless very different–St. Benedict.” And lo, our Benedict has come.” [Props to Matt for the B16 reference--check his flickr account for his pics from the April Pope visit]
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