The Logos of Sacred Music, by Paul Jernberg

A composer tells us his approach in composing works that are fresh and new, while reflecting the timeless principles that constitute sacred music. Listen also to his beautiful newly composed Mass.  The following is an essay written by the composer Paul Jernberg. Paul has composed his Mass of St Philip Neri for the new translation of the Mass. In the essay below he discusses the principles that guide him in composition and which enable him to compose new music in accordance with timeless principles. We have been singing his compositions at Thomas More College - I have been working with him in creating psalm tones for the vernacular that are modal and so sit within the tradition.This has enabled us to chant, for example, the traditional Latin proper for communion and then a communion meditation in English without any sense of disunity.

What characterises both the compositions you can hear here and the music he has composed for us at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts is how simple it is to perform, yet how good it sounds. He really has hit that standard of noble simplicity - music that is so beautiful that you want to sing it, and so simple that you can. Furthermore, there is not even a hint of sentimentality in his music.

I have punctuated the text of his essay with links through to audio of the St Philip Neri Mass so that you can pause and listen as you read along. The attached audio files have been recorded by members of the Parish Choir of St. John's in Clinton, MA and of the Chorus of Trivium School, a Catholic high-school in Lancaster, MA (plus myself and Dr Tom Larson from Thomas More College of Liberal Arts and an additional member of Tom's amateur chant and polyphony choir, the Schuler Singers). Please bear in mind as you listen to them that they are not professional recordings and precisely because it is amateur singers that you are listening to it represents an endeavor to incarnate the ideal articulated in the essay on the Parish level:

The Logos of Sacred Music

An introduction to the Mass of Saint Philip Neri

The composition of this work has been my response to the need for a fitting musical setting of the Ordinary from the new English translation of the Roman Missal. In the creation of this music it has been my goal to fulfill three essential criteria, namely, that it have a true sacred character, that it be imbued with the qualities of authentic artistry, and that it possess a noble accessibility will allow it to be received into the hearts of ordinary people of good will throughout the English-speaking world.

Sacred Character

Music in the Liturgy of the Catholic Church should by its nature have a distinct identity that is contemplative, vibrant, and rooted in ancient tradition. In the perennial Catholic vision of the Liturgy, all of its sensible elements are intended to provide a sacred space that is worthy to welcome the sacramental Divine Presence. This intention would seem to surpass the reasonable scope of ordinary human creativity, as the finite aspires to welcome the infinite, the creature to create a worthy space for the Creator. And yet, both faith and aesthetic sensitivity perceive that an inspired tradition has indeed developed over the course of the centuries – including aspects such as architecture, visual arts, and music - which has fulfilled this task in a marvelous way.

In the West, this inspired musical tradition has as its foundation a vast repertoire commonly known as Gregorian Chant. Any composer who wishes to approach the task of composing music for the Roman Catholic Liturgy in a serious way, should thus be thoroughly versed in the study and performance of this repertoire, realizing the littleness of his own efforts in relation to the greatness of the tradition. The composer should also seek to understand and apply those musical principles of Gregorian Chant that have allowed it to serve its purpose so aptly. As expressed by the authors of the post-conciliar Church document, Musicam Sacram:

Musicians will enter on this new work with the desire to continue that tradition which has furnished the Church, in her divine worship, with a truly abundant heritage. Let them examine the works of the past, their types and characteristics, … so that “new forms may in some way grow organically from forms that already exist,” and the new work will form a new part in the musical heritage of the Church, not unworthy of its past.[1]

And furthermore:

Let them produce compositions which have the qualities proper to genuine sacred music, not confining themselves to works which can be sung only by large choirs, but providing also for the needs of small choirs and for the active participation of the entire assembly of the faithful.[2]

Along these same lines Pope Benedict XVI recently pointed out:

It is possible to modernize holy music, but this cannot happen outside the great traditional path of the past, of Gregorian chants and sacred polyphonic choral music… [3]

What are the “qualities proper to genuine sacred music” that need to be followed attentively in the composition and performance of new works? This is in fact a crucial question which requires much more space than the scope of this introduction would allow, in order to be answered adequately. However, a few first principles can be briefly articulated here:

• The human voice is always the primary instrument, and often the only instrument. Being an integral part of man, rather than his exterior creation, the voice has a unique capacity for intimate expression of the depth and breadth of human feeling and experience. It is equally accessible to all people and all cultures. When the organ or other instruments are used, it is for the purpose of supporting or enhancing, rather than dominating or supplanting, the voice.
• The rhythm of the music is united with the natural rhythm of the given sacred text, either through assuming the textual rhythm as its own, or by engaging in a gentle interplay with it. Any strong metrical or rhythmic effects that might overshadow the meaning of the text are avoided. With a few exceptions, Gregorian chant is characterized by a non-metered rhythm that allows great freedom in respecting the meaning and flow of the Word.
• Melodic lines and harmonies are carefully chosen to evoke dispositions and emotions that are appropriate to liturgical worship and interiority, and which steer clear of secular associations. This distinction is not meant in any way to demean the multifarious beauty that belongs to secular life and art, or to deny its transcendent dimension, but rather is meant to facilitate the flourishing of each - the sacred and the profane[4], divine worship and social intercourse - in its own proper time and place.

Authentic Artistry

It does not do justice to the nature of the Liturgy for its music to be merely correct, even according to the above-mentioned principles. In order for sacred music to reach its full stature, composers and musicians need to exercise true artistry, in which knowledge, inspiration, and skill all play a vital role.

Many may object here, saying that liturgical music is meant for “prayer rather than performance,” implying that prayer, being a humble, intimate communication with God, excludes or minimizes the need for artistry, which by its nature demands a focus on the externals of music-making. There is an element of truth in this, namely, that the relational dimension of the Liturgy is of immeasurably more importance than the artistic dimension. However, it is this very relational dimension which should motivate and empower composers and musicians as they devote all of their skill to create something as beautiful as possible for God, the Beloved. In addition, a certain level of artistry in composition and choral performance provides a foundation from which the other participants in the Liturgy can more fully interiorize the meaning of the words and more prayerfully join in the singing of their parts.

In the context of sacred music, compositional artistry will be manifested in gracefulness and dignity   of melodic line, harmony, and dynamics, rather than in striking effects or grandiosity. The artistic performance of this music by cantors and choirs requires, among other things, diligent attention to precision of pitch and rhythm, natural resonance, lively and sensitive dynamics, appropriate tone quality, and clear diction. Qualities such as interiority and unity of sound among voices should preclude any harsh effects or displays of virtuosity, however appropriate these latter might be in    other contexts.

Composers and performers of all kinds of music bear witness to the fact that the phenomenon of inspiration is a mysterious but important element in their creative process. How much more should the composer of sacred music, conscious of the dignity of the Liturgy, prayerfully seek that inspiration which will give his music a living, joyful, peaceful identity, beyond the mere notes on the musical score? When this gift is skillfully cultivated, choirs and congregations can in their turn participate in an experience of inspired beauty, which is directed toward the praise and glory of God.

Noble Accessibility

One of the clearest messages from the Second Vatican Council to composers of sacred music, was the need to create music that would facilitate the “full, conscious, and active” participation of the faithful:

In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy, this full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else, for it is the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit…[5]

How can music help to achieve this goal, while faithfully maintaining the other foundational qualities listed above? On the one hand, unceasing and genial efforts should be made to help priests and lay people to re-discover the great traditions of sacred music that are in fact their rightful patrimony. Too often this heritage has been ignored or rejected on the false premise that it is no longer relevant to modern man. On the other hand, the legitimate development of culture, as well as the authorized use of the vernacular in the Liturgy, beg for the conception of worthy new music to accompany both Latin and translated Liturgical texts. And in order for this music to fulfill its purpose, it needs to be imbued with a noble accessibility that allows it to be not only admired, but also deeply welcomed  by “ordinary” people so as to become a fitting and authentic expression of their faith.

When this quest for full participation has been separated from the need for true sacred character and authentic artistry in liturgical music, as has often been the case over the decades since Vatican II, the results have been deeply disturbing for those sensitive to the musical, psychological and spiritual dimensions of the Mass. As world-renowned maestro Riccardo Muti recently observed:

The history of great music was determined by what the Church did. When I go to church and I hear four strums of a guitar or choruses of senseless, insipid words, I think it's an insult… I can't work out how come once upon a time there were Mozart and Bach and now we have little sing-songs. This is a lack of respect for people's intelligence. [6]

This interview, in which Muti praised the efforts of Pope Benedict to promote a renewal of sacred music, was a tremendous encouragement to me in my composition of the Mass of St. Philip Neri. He speaks authoritatively on behalf of all great musicians and all devout Catholics when he pleads for the renewal of sacred music in the Church’s Liturgy. At the same time he understands the need for accessibility:

Rather than obsess over creating masterpieces, contemporary composers should “prepare the future for a new language in the world of music - not one but several languages - that are more closely connected to the needs of people.” [7]

In searching for compositional models that do integrate sacred character, authentic artistry, and noble accessibility, I have in fact found two wonderful sources of inspiration. The first is the harmonized liturgical chant of the Russian Orthodox Church, developed by composers such as Smolensky, Chesnokov, and Rachmaninoff. The second is the music of Jacques Berthier written for the ecumenical Taizé Community in France, which has brought an elegant simplicity and power to the singing of sacred texts by very large groups of people. In each of these cases, composers with highly sophisticated skills have deliberately set aside the kind of harmonic and rhythmic complexity appropriate to the concert hall, in order to bring intense depth and beauty to simpler forms that thus become nobly accessible to “common” people from a wide variety of backgrounds. Both of these sources have been my constant companions in the composition of this musical setting of the Mass.

St. Philip Neri

I have chosen to name this work in honor of Philip Neri, because his life and apostolate, which effected such a great spiritual and cultural renewal in 16^th century Rome, have also been an ongoing inspiration to me and the choirs that I have had the privilege of directing. Through his Oratory movement, which combined prayer, study, works of mercy, joyful fellowship, and the cultivation of the arts, he became a patron to great composers such as Palestrina and Animuccia. Influenced by the contagious holiness and joy of St. Philip, they were able to create a magnificent new repertoire of sacred polyphony, rooted in the ancient tradition of Gregorian chant, but also responding to the new needs and inspirations of their day. My hope and prayer is that the Mass of St. Philip Neri might be one small flame in a similarly authentic renewal of sacred music, faith and culture that is so needed in the Catholic Church today!

Paul Jernberg                                                                                                                                             Clinton, Massachusetts                                                                                                                 February 24, 2012

You shall sprinkle me, listen here

Lord, have mercy, listen here

Glory to God, listen here

Alleluia

Mystery of Faith

Holy, Holy, Holy

Lamb of God

---

[1] Musicam Sacram, Art. 59; quote from Sacrosanctum Concilium, Art. 23

[2] Sacrosanctum Concilium, Art. 121

[3] Comments by Pope Benedict during a concert conducted by Dominico Bartolucci, June 24, 2006.

[4] The word ‘profane’ here is used in its first meaning, which is ‘outside the temple’ (Gr. pro - fanus).

[5] Sacrosanctum Concilium, Art. 14

[6] Riccardo Muti interview with ANSA.IT, May 27, 2011

[7] John von Rhein interview with Muti in the Chicago Tribune, January 29, 2012

A Traditional Western Icon - from the Rheinau Psalter

How we might re-establish Catholic traditions in sacred art After my references to Western icons and also my assertion of the importance of re-establishing the gothic style as living traditions, people have been asking me to give examples of the images I am talking about. I am going to do a regular series of features of such examples in order to promote these styles. My hope is that we in the West will follow the remarkable work of the Russians and Greeks who reestablished the iconographic tradition in the Eastern Church in the middle of the 20th century (figures such as Ouspensky and Kontoglou). The first stage in doing this is the artistic study - copying with understanding - of the works of a past tradition. And then the second stage, if this is to become a truly living tradition, is the creation of new works that are consistent with the core timeless principles of the tradition. The great achievement of our Eastern brethren is to moved through to the second stage. In the West our artistic heritage is richer (in the sense that we not only have iconographic tradition, but also the gothic and the baroque as authentic and complementary sacred art traditions). This means that in once sense, given there are three traditions, the task ahead is greater but in another, because we can follow the methods used by the Russians and Greeks (and more recently Copts with Dr Stephane Rene doing great work) it is less because we can use the principles that they used.

We have made a start at this effort in cultural reform at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts and my classes there now focus on these Western forms. What is interesting is to see how the students take to these forms very happily and seem to enjoy creating them. As a result they are producing some of the best work I have seen students of mine produce. (I will post some of their work at the end of the semester once they have finished their projects). My sense is that just seems more natural to us Western Catholics to paint like images like this than to paint Eastern icons. Similarly, the Way of Beauty Summer Atelier (see here for details), which is offering an icon-painting summer school will focus on these forms, which come from illuminated manuscripts. These are excellent examples to study if you are a beginner because they are strongly line based, rather than relying on the modelling of form through gradual blening of tone and colour. This latter requires sophisticated handling of the paint which is very difficult in egg tempera, the medium used. We use egg tempera paint on high quality watercolour paper to replicate these manuscript images.

The image shown here is a remarkable plate from a 13th-century German psalter. Rheinau is the town in Germany where it was created. The artist's name is unkown. It is consistent with the iconographic prototype. The draughtsmanship is wonderful. I love the contrast between the sure smooth flow of the lines that describe the human forms, which contrast with the vigorous angular handling of those lines which describe the drapery. Artists today could learn from this, because this use of a faceting in the description of drapery helps to give the image a greater strength and less sentimental feel. Sentimentality is the scourge of modern sacred art. This device is not limited to iconographic or gothic art - even Bernini used it when he sculpted drapery in the baroque era. Note also how the Rheinau image conforms to the Western preference for patterned borders (which is not unknown but certainly less common in the Eastern variants).

Some might question the ideas this is iconographic by pointing the fact that some of the figures are in profile (not seen in icons usually). However, it seems to me that the artist is being selective in accordance with the iconographic convention. The two figures who have halos, Christ and St Peter are not in profile. All the other figures, with Judas most prominent, are part of the crowd of men who are arresting Christ. These are not saints and so this is indicated not only by the absense of halos but also by drawing them in profile.

Upcoming Event: I am speaking in Portland, Oregon on May 3rd

Our Lady of Peace Retreat Centre, Beaverton, OR; May 3, 7pm. Details here. If any are interested in hearing me speak about the Way of Beauty, then please come along, I would love to see you there. The talk will focus on the themes that I have mentioned before - Catholic culture, liturgy and family: the Mass is a jewel in its setting which is the Liturgy of the Hours;  Liturgy (with the Eucharist at its centre) is a jewel in its setting, which is the cosmos. The cosmos reflects the patterns of the heavenly liturgy and show us the way to connect the earthly and the heavenly liturgy - the liturgical seasons follow the patterns of motion of the planets, the stars and especially the sun and the moon. I will illustrate this connection with slides of art, architecture and music reflect these patterns, too, so that we can see that the whole culture and creation are in harmony with each other, the beauty of which directs our souls to the Creator, Christ in Heaven and Christ really present in the Eucharist.

A Weekend Course that Teaches About Western Culture and the Liturgy

Learn the Way of Beauty at Thomas More College, NH. Here is a reminder about part of the summer school at Thomas More College that might be of interest to readers. There are two weekend courses at Thomas More College that will teach those who attend about the connection between the liturgy and the culture and also give them a chance to experience it directly. You will learn about traditional culture – art, architecture, music – and how it reflects the rhythms and patterns of the cosmos. You will also explore how the cycles and rhythms of the liturgy participate in the same heavenly standard. Participants will also learn to sing the Divine Office in such a way that it manifests all the principles that they learn about in theory in the classes. No special singing ability is needed here. We aim for the principle of noble simplicity - the chant is simple enough that people can sing it, and beautiful enough that they want to. This is the form that the community of students and teachers at the college sings daily during term time. Much of the material arises from my investigations into how artists were trained traditionally (with a view to trying to establish an art school that might train artists for the New Evangelisation). The training methods of the great artists of the past didn't just teach them the skill of their craft. They were taught in a way that required them to submit to the directions of a master and so engendered a genuine humility that permeated the practice of their craft. At the same time they would have a spiritual life that encouraged an openness to inspiration and a desire to follow it if given. In short, their training taught them to be open to God's inspiration and to recognise it when it was given. This is the source of the great beauty and rich creativity of their work. I believe, therefore, that this has application in the lives of everyone, not just the arty or the musical.

There are two weekends. Both have a program of lectures and prayer - we teach everyone to sing the Divine Office in the way that we have developed at Thomas More College. The first is for those who are attending for the first time and has more of a focus on the talks about the culture. The second is being offered after requests from those who attended the first one last year. They told me that they enjoyed the atmosphere of reflection and prayer that arose through singing the Divine Office so much, that it felt as though they were on a retreat. They asked me to offer something similar that did not repeat the content, but brought out this reflective mood so that they could come back again. As a result, the second weekend was developed in which there will be talks about individual works of art (with less emphasis on the general traditions) and people will spend more time learning to sing the Divine Office so that they will be able to teach it to their families or parishes. Having said this, now that I developed the content, each weekend will work as a stand alone event and does not need attendance at the other to be worthwhile.

The weekend summer retreats are hosted by the Way of Beauty Atelier at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, New Hampshire. It is a peaceful campus with a traditional New England feel. To find out more details, follow the link through to the college website, here.

The 'Fiveness' of Mary - Is it Genuine?

How do we authenticate traditional number symbolism? I was recently asked to contribute an icon to an exhibition. The exhibition is about 'the Blessed Virgin Mary and the number five'.

The promotional flier lists examples of how the number five is associated with the Virgin Mary. For example, one of her titles is Morning Star, which is the planet Venus and this links to five because the planet Venus traces a path across the sky that has a fivefold symmetry. The Lady Chapel at Wells Cathedral, it said, has a shape that constitutes three sides of a pentagon; and there are five decades of the rosary.I would like to believe that this association is part of our Catholic tradition, but I cannot find any reliable written evidence of such a traditional association. I would consider the above examples insufficient in themselves to prove such a connection; and the are many other associations that someone could point to in order to make the case for other numbers, for example, seven - the seven joys and the seven sorrows of Our Lady. I am hoping that some knowledgeable reader might be able to help me here. Do we have anything from, for example, St Augustine, in which he makes this connection between five and Our Lady?I asked the writer of the flier for some further and more conclusive evidence. I was hoping he might be aware of some reliable Catholic source that I didn't know about, but disappointingly he was unable to give any.

I am used to the idea of five being associated with human life and St Bonaventure for example, makes this connection in describing the five corporal senses and the five spiritual senses of man. Given that Our Lady who gave, so to speak, Christ his humanity, the linking of Our Lady to the number five does seem to be a natural extension of this, but if this extension had been made in the past one would have thought that there would reference to it somewhere in the writings of the saints. Similarly, we know from historical documents that gothic masons used geometry in the design of their cathedrals (Milan Cathedral is designed on a triangular grid, for example). I have heard of no similar document making the connection between a building dedicated to Our Lady and a pentangular design, although I have heard similar claims about other buildings such as the rose window at the gothic cathedral at Amiens dedicated to Our Lady - 'Notre-Dame d'Amiens' (shown above). There is every chance of course that these records do exist and it is simply that I do not know about them, so I keep an open mind.

Suppose, for arguments sake that we can find no real justification for concluding that there is a historical connection between the number five and Our Lady, and that the examples listed are to be considered just coincidences - after all you have to pick some sort of symmetry in a well ordered design. Does this mean that we can't make the association now? In my opinion, the answer to that is no. There seems to be logic behind the arguments for the connection, so even if the connection wasn't made in the past, we can make that connection now. If a tradition is to be a genuinely living tradition, it has to allow for development in the present. It cannot only be about reestablishing what was done in the past.

Then, assuming that we make the connection even if we assign five to the Blessed Virgin, what do we do with it? Why bother to do such a thing? This brings us down to the fundamental question as to the purpose of such symbolic numbers. There are different reasons why they are useful. Sometimes is allows for a deeper interpretation of scripture and St Augustine especially was very interested in this.

Also we can order time and space according to it. Number has a special property in that it can be both conceived in the abstract and then assigned to matter and time. In this sense it occupies both the material world and the world of ideas (or perhaps more accurately the 'immaterial' world). We can order time and space in accordance with it, for example designing a work of art, or the dimensions of a building, or even a cycle of prayer around fivefold symmetry, five relative units of length, or five repetitions respectively.

There is an important point to make in regard to this: the symbolism is not arbitrarily assigned. If there is anything to it all it is because the number symbolism reflects and reveals some underlying truth, and so helps us to understand better (sometimes at an intuitive level) what it is pointing to. This being so, when we design a window, for example, that is based around an image or theme of Our Lady and if the number five is truly symbolic of her, then the window will be more beautiful and suited to its purpose in all ways if its design is ordered to it - a fivefold symmetry, for example. One of the attributes of beauty listed by St Thomas is 'due proportion'. The argument here would be that ordering the design of things associated with Our Lady to the number five is appropriate or 'due'. In another recently posted article I argued, here, that the octagonal design, linked to the symbolism of eight as the eighth day of creation, in Raphael's Mond Crucifixion contributed significantly to its beauty and its effectiveness as a work of art. This is true, and here is the important point, regardless of whether or not the viewer is conscious of the design feature or of the symbolism. In the case of the Raphael, I was attracted by the beauty of the painting long before I noticed this design feature. Once I had noticed it, it gave me greater understanding of Raphael's methods, but did not change one iota my appreciation of his painting.

If we forget this and are not discerning in our interpretation and application of these numbers, there is a real danger that the whole topic degenerates into a game in which the initiated communicate with each other via a secret language. Some who I have met do treat this as a secret knowledge that only those who are ready may know. This strikes me as a modern day Gnoticism that is to be discouraged.

My introduction to these ideas came through people who, despite their great interest in tradition, subscribe to a philosophy they called perennialism or universalism, which as I understand it gained popularity in the 20th century. As far as I was able to grasp their position, they maintain that the major religions are equally valid revelations by God to different cultures. This meant the people I met were always looking for elements common to all as the basis of truth. While I am grateful for the work these people have done in showing me and many others aspects of my own tradition that I would very likely not have known otherwise, I am wary in accepting uncritically any interpretations they give. I try to seek authenticatification from a Catholic source, such as the writings of a Church Father, before wholeheartedly embracing it.

As to whether or not I will use fivefold symmetry in paintings of Our Lady? I need to think about it and perhaps give it a try, and see how it turns out.

A plan of the Lady Chapel at Wells Cathedral (the alcove top, centre in the diagram). The furthest three facets do correspond, within the bounds of accuracy of working in such a diagram, to part of a pentagon.

The path traced by the planet Venus across the night sky. This diagram comes from a modern analysis. Some may question to as to whether this would have been known by the classical world or the medievals. I do not know, but think it is possible. The reason that Venus, which would otherwise be another bright light in the sky, was differentiated from the other stars is that it appeared to move independently of the rest of the stars, which all moved together as a single canopy rotating around the pole star. If they could distinguish Venus as being different, then I would imagine that they studied its motion across the sky with great precision.

The Green Green Grass of...Texas

How traditional farming methods flourish in Texas, for the good of all. I spent this Easter in Greenville Texas, where I was a guest of Mr R.W. Holleman and his family on their farm - which is the foundational farm of a cluster that sell under the brand of Holleman Farms. I went down to Texas at the request of St William's, Greenville, to chant the Easter Liturgy , from Thursday through to Sunday morning. Thomas More College's choir instructor, Dr Tom Larson (who also runs the Schuler Singers) is a good friend of Fr Paul, the wonderful pastor of the parish who has a love of liturgy, and the Larsons, Tom and his wife Sherri and now four children go every year. For most years, in a noble and marathon service for the Church, Tom has been singing the whole Easter Liturgy there on his own. For the last two years I have been asked to go to Texas too - creating a choir of two - and this has been a great opportunity for me to learn from Tom. One of the highlights was singing the gospel of John on Good Friday. For this we had the addition for the first time of Tom's eldest son Ben, who is just 14, singing the high register parts. He did a wonderful job and was seemingly nerveless, which given that the church was packed is amazing.

Which brings me to farming in Texas. The Hollemans are parishioners who offered to host all the Larsons and myself for this period. As well as the guests, RW and his wife Kristina have eight children (the latest addition, baby Charlie, arrived less than month earlier). As you can imagine it needed all 200 acres of Holleman Farm just to give the humans elbow space, never mind grazing for the animals.

I am interested in this for a number of reasons. At the simplest level there is the pleasure of spending time on a farm (especially when everyone else is doing the work!). But beyond that there are some exciting things happening: RW is steadily increasing productivity using modern developments of traditional farming methods that produce good quality food without use of chemical pesticides, fertilisers, hormones or antibiotics. The phrase that is now used to apply to this is 'beyond organic'. They had to go 'beyond' because 'organic' has become a devalued label that is now more marketing ploy than substance.

When these methods are used, the result is a beautiful landscape and I believe that this is because there is greater harmony between of the work of man and God's creation. Man is meant to cultivate the earth. When he does it well, the land will be highly productive and it's beauty will be enhanced. The Hollemans take seriously their responsibility of managing the resources that God gives us for the benefit of the common good. Their hope for Holleman Farms incorporates this broader vision of beauty into what they are doing.

The other aspect is the RW is a gifted and imaginative businessman who has been succesful for many years in the corporate world. He understands therefore the need to sell what they produce in order to make it viable. On order to compete, he is continually developing new avenues of distribution, a lot of them making use of marketing contacts accumulated over more than 20 years in business with people who have nothing to with farming. The great thing about this is that it doesn't matter what his contacts do for a living, everybody likes good and wholesome food.

At the moment agriculture is a business driven by government regulations and subsidies. This tends to work against the small farmer and act in favour of the large factory farm. It is not fair and it is not good, in the long run, for any of us. The food that is produced is neither tasty nor highly nutritious. Refreshingly RW is not complaining. He is working on being more innovative in creating markets for what he does. At root of this is the understanding that the goodness of a product can create its own market (something that artists should also understand before he complains that no one commissions his work!). Without resentment he is prepared to roll up his sleeves and compete in the current market place, despite the iniquities. And it is working. This is early days though and if this project and any others like it is to be something that changes agriculture for the good, then along with everything else it must be able to compete at the bottom line with everything else that is out there in the long run.

RW wants to contribute in this broader way by being an example of what can be done that can inspire to emulate him and who knows, perhaps do it even better! This is healthy competition in every sense of the word.

The farming method he uses is one based upon a system sometimes called 'grass-fed' farming, in which land is left fallow and put out to pasture in a systematic rotation. In addition he rotates the animals that pasture on the land, so one method allows for sheep first, hens second and pigs third. This works because the animals' feeding requirements are complementary, but also because they contribute to the pasture land in complementary ways. The manure of different animals, for example, gives different nutrients to the land. As a result, the pasture land flourishes and the grass comes up again better than before. RW described how an ares that had been like scrub land was transformed into lush green grassland in a matter of months. The methods he used are based on those pioneered by a farmer in Virginia called Joel Salatin, who has written books and publishes a magazine about these methods.

Being the sophisticated Englishman that I am, my image of Texas hitherto had been formed by cowboy films. I pictured brown scrub grass on a semi-arid landscape that could support one cow per hundred acres (or something like that). This is not what I saw. I have been told that everything does turn when it gets much hotter in the summer, but nevertheless, I was pleased to see such green pasture land. I should have guessed - it must be called Greenville for a reason.

Below: sheep are the first animal onto new pasture. The electric fence that contains them has to be moved and then the sheep herded in.

As you can see everyone pitches in and helps.

Gus Holleman and Martha Larson are assigned to look after Charlie while everyone else attends the job in hand

Well nearly everyone else ... it's exhausting seeing off coyotes through the night.

Once the fence is up, then in go the sheep driven by the resident shepherdess.

 After the sheep have done their work, on the adjacent area the chickens come in and do their work. They peck at the ground and manure already their, eating the bugs and pests, aerating the ground and leaving nitrogen rich manure.

And, below, after the chickens go, the pigs move in. This is an old breed that is particularly good for low-fat, high flavour meat. I can attest to the flavour of the sausage meat! We had it everyday at breakfast.

 

In this particular rotation scheme, this is the final grazing phase before the pasture is left to grow again. There are other schemes in which other animals, for example cows, are added in too. And who would have imagined, that after the pigs have done all of this the grass can grow at all. In fact it comes back stronger than ever and the process can start all over again.

Noli me tangere

A comparison of the baroque naturalism of Alonso Cano and the baroque classicism of Anton Mengs After last week's comparison of two paintings of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, this week as an Easter meditation I offer something similar, but this time each painting is of the scene when Mary Magdalen sees Christ in the garden and he tells her not to touch him - noli me tangere. This time the offerning in baroque naturalism comes from Alonso Cano, the 17th century Spanish artist who had the same teacher as Velazquez, Francesco Pacheco. Cano is perhaps more well know for his wood carvings in polychrome (ie painted in many colours). The baroque classicist painting of the same subject is done by the German artist of the 18th century called Anton Raphael Mengs.

Baroque classicism (as exemplified here by Mengs) seeks to evoke more a sense of the classical heritage of Western culture and, inspired by Raphael the artist of 100 years before, often look as thought they are staged scenes from a Shakespeare play set in ancient Rome. Stylistically, there is always more colour and the edges are sharper and cleaner - sometimes this can tend to give them a more sterile and less lively feel, although I don't get this feeling with Meng's painting shown here. In contrast the baroque naturalist style use monochrome and broad focus much more and has a more vigorous, spontaneous feel. My preference generally is for baroque naturalism although I in this case I like both examples equally. To the modern eye, although once pointed out we can distinguish between the two streams, they still look similar. At the time though, each school thought of itself as very different from the other. Each saw theirs as the more authentic form of sacred art and and would be openly rude and dismissive about the other.

After the Englightenment the two streams of baroque art separated and became the Romantic and Neo-Classical movements. The developments, although subtle, were nevertheless destroyed the baroque and with it an authentic Christian tradition in sacred art.

Paintings: above and bottom, Anton Raphael Meng; immediately below: Alonso Cano

Pope Gregory IV and the Mystery of the Square Halo

I was contacted recently by a reader, a priest who had concelebrated a Station Mass at San Marco di Campidoglio in Rome. He had notice a square halo on one of the figures in the 9th century mosaic in the apse and wanted to know the reason for this. The figure, he told me, was Pope Gregory IV. A square halo signifies that the person portrayed was alive at the time of its creation. Although this church was founded long before Pope Gregory himself lived, he was responsible for much rebuilding, the bulk of what we see today. This is why, I am guessing, he is also portrayed carrying a church. We see also a very clear example of what my teacher Aidan Hart always referred to as hierarchical perspective. The most important figure portrayed, Christ, is by far the largest. Also we see the Evangelist himself is putting his arm around the Pope in a touching detail that gives more of a sense of personal tenderness than one normally associates with iconographic mosaics of this type.

This is church is not always open to the public so it is interesting to have this insight into the interior.

Christ's Entry into Jerusalem

The baroque naturalism of Van Dyck and the baroque classicism of Orente compared. We are now in Holy Week. To help our contemplation, here are two different paintings of the Palm Sunday scene - Christ's Entry into Jerusalem. Both are by 17th century painters from the heyday of the baroque period. The first is by Sir Anthony van Dyck, who was taught by Rubens and works in the baroque naturalism style (other painters in this form would be, for example, Velazquez or Zurbaran). The second is by lesser know Spanish artist who was trained by El Greco called Pedro Orrente. He painted this is 1620. In comparing the two styles we see many similarities but also a difference. Orente is working in a style called baroque classicism. This style seeks to evoke more a sense of the classical heritage of Western culture and, inspired by Raphael the artist of 100 years before, often look as thought they are staged scenes from a Shakespeare play set in ancient Rome. Stylistically, there is always more colour and the edges are sharper and cleaner - sometimes this can tend to give them a more sterile and less lively feel. In contrast the baroque naturalist style use monochrome and broad focus much more and has a more vigorous, spontaneous feel. My preference is for baroque naturalism. To the modern eye, although once pointed out we can distinguish between the two streams, they still look similar. At the time though, each school thought of itself as very different from the other. Each saw theirs as the more authentic form of sacred art and and would be openly rude and dismissive about the other. Paintings: Anthony Van Dyck is the small inset above, and right at the bottom. Pedro Orrente is immediately below this text.

Raphael's Crucifixion - a Portrayal of the Mass

This article about the 'Mond' crucifixion, which is in the National Gallery in London, is another by Dr Caroline Farey of the Maryvale Institute. She and I worked together to design the Institute's degree level diploma (6US credits): Art, Inspiration and Beauty in a Catholic Perspective. A distance learning course requiring one residential weekend. This can be taken either by application to the Institute in Birmingham, England, or in the US through their centre based at the Diocese of Kansas City, Kansas, (email ecat2@archkck.org for details). In addition to these courses by the Institute, Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in New Hampshire has a summer programme run by myself. This programme includes an icon painting class and weekend retreats for artists, details here.

Caroline writes: Time and eternity, death and life, heaven and earth are represented here as contrasts or paradoxes and yet Raphael also presents them as in harmony.

Contrasts. Look now for as many contrasting elements as you can.Perhaps the most obvious is that of the sun and the moon both appearing together

Look for life and death contrasts.Do you notice that the most animated parts of the picture are the ribbons and dresses of the flying, dancing angels.These, the most alive are positioned closest to the dead figure of Christ.It is as though whatever is touched by the blood of Christ is given abundant life.

Look for time and eternity contrasts.Can you see that the people of the earth seem caught in a seemingly eternal stillness while the eternal beings, the angels, seem to be part of that moment in real time at the actual crucifixion catching Christ’s outpouring blood for every future Mass.

Look at the background contrasts of colour and content.The dark cross rises out of the dark, bare earth, passing barren but golden hills behind, passing on and up through water, always symbolic of Baptism, past a great city and on up into the skies where there is the sun and the moon are attending the great cosmic event of the death of their Creator.

Harmony

How does the painter hold the picture together and illustrate the harmony achieved by Christ through such an ignoble death?The heavy dark cross is the strong uniting feature.This is so theologically and so it is particularly appropriately pictorially as well.Christ’s death on the cross is the great act of love which purifies the created world in order to unite heaven and earth.It is this same act of unity that takes place at every Mass. In the painting it stretches from the top to the bottom of the picture.

The colour red has particularly strong significance. Every figure has a touch of red, every figure in the picture is pictorially touched and redeemed by the blood of Christ.

Other colours also link the elements of the picture.What are the colours in the top half of the picture that are repeated in the bottom half?The blue of the sky is picked up in St Jerome’s clothes; the green of one of the angels is also in St John’s garments; the gold of the second angel is in the sun and the hills and lights up the clo ak of St Mary Magdalene who is radiating light reflected from the sun but also the Son whose love changed her life; the colour of the flesh of all the figures binds them to the body of Christ whose flesh dominates the centre of the picture.

The painting is an altarpiece.It is designed for the Mass.

In a painting, people’s looks are often messages.In this painting the direction of each person’s gaze speaks a language of engagement for the sake of the congregation at Mass inviting them to join the scene at the cross.Let us begin with Jesus.He has his eyes closed so he is not looking at anything on this earth.His concentration we know is on his Father in Heaven.Now look at some of the others.What is the angel in green looking at? The angel in green turns our attention to Jesus’ blood.

Who is the angel in gold looking at?The angel in gold is looking at St John the gospel writer who is looking straight at us.

The two kneeling figures are St Jerome and St. Mary Magdalene.Who are they looking at? St Jerome and Mary Magdalene turn our attention to Jesus’ body on the cross.

The two standing figures are Our Lady and St John.Who are they looking at? When someone looks out at you from a painting he or she is trying to draw or invite you into the scene.Our Lady and St John are painted in a way that suggests that they are quietly hoping that we too will kneel or stand, and beg forgiveness like St. Jerome or adore and give thanks like St Mary Magdalene.

Almost everything in this painting is about the Mass: we gather together at Mass around the sacrifice of Christ on the cross; Mass brings us salvation through the cross; we kneel and worship at Mass like Mary Magdalene kneeling at the foot of the cross;we pray at Mass in different ways, such as asking forgiveness like St Jerome, adoring or thanking God, like Our Lady; we receive the blood of Christ in a chalice at Mass like the cups carried by the angels and, of course, angels are present at Mass.

I would add this one additional reference to the Mass in the comspositional design of the painting. If you trace a line through the four heads of the observers below to the outer feet of each angel and then to their heads, it traces the shape of a regular octagon. This is a visual reference to the 'eighth day' of creation - in which the birth, passion, death and resurrection of Our Lord ushers in the new age. My sense is that this is not intended by Raphael as a symbol to be read, so much as a design feature that he feels is appropriate to the subject and so enhance its beauty will naturally aid the communication of its message at an intuitive level. (DC)

How to develop creativity and stimulate the intuitive faculty

Anyone can be creative and intuitive The training methods of the great artist of the past didn't just teach them the skill of the craft. They were taught in a way that required them to submit to the directions of a master and so engendered a humility. At the same time they would have a spiritual life that encouraged an openness to inspiration and a desire to follow it if given. In short, their training taught them to be open to God's inspiration and to recognise it when it was given. This is the source of the great beauty and rich creativity of their work and here's what's so good about this. You don't need to be an artist to benefit from their training methods. If any of us do what they did, we can be creative and intuitive in pursuing our own personal vocation. And if you don't know what your personal vocation is yet, this will help you to find that too. The weekend summer retreats hosted by the Way of Beauty Atelier  at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, New Hampshire, can teach you these traditional methods.  It is a peaceful campus with a traditional New England feel and the perfect place to learn and grow. To find out more details, follow the link through to the college website, here.

The Art of Nina Somerset at St Silas the Martyr Church, in London

The following works of art were brought to my attention by a reader. They are by a lady who is otherwise unkown to me and who died in 1982, called Nina Somerset. The website of the church in which these appear, St Silas the Martyr says talks about a devout Christian who was a daily communicant (I can't see any direct reference on the site, but I am guessing that this is a high Anglican church and not Catholic. The website for the church is here). It says that she trained as an art student in the Bournemouth in the 1920s. I would describe her style as derived from the pre-Raphaelite and the Victorian neo-gothic movement.These movements took their inspiration from the late gothic period, prior to the High Renaissance. I am not always enamoured with the art of this inspiration (although I do like the neo-gothic arthitecture very much). Pre-Raphaelite painting in particular is too naturalistic to achieve the gothic look, which is much stylised, and it comes across as too sentimental. Nina Somerset's art works, I feel because it seems that she is working so as to try to remove as far as possible the illusion of depth. This two-demensionality offsets the naturalism. Having said that, my taste is for the yet-more-austere original gothic style and these are still a little on the sentimental side for my liking. Nevertheless the result is still well worth looking at. I thought that perhaps some readers will enjoy them without such reservations.Sentimentality is the scourge of naturalistic sacred art from the 19th century onwards. From this time on, the mainstream in art has moved more and more towards the ugliness and distorted naturalism and eventually abstraction that best incarnates the materialist secular worldview. The visual vocabulary associated with these styles has great power in communicating this distorted world view. If we try to communicate something good by the same means, such as one might in sacred art, the result is weak and superficial. As an illustration of this think how poor Christian rock is at communicating Christian values compared with the power with which the original communicates the hedonism of a lifestyle focussed on sex, drugs and rock'n'roll.It seems that all of us today are affected by this imagery, whether we like it or not. Even if we are trying to communicate something genuinely good we cannot help be affected in some subtle way by the style of mainstream art. To the degree that we are, sentimentality creeps in. Often we cannot see what it is we have done, but we can see the sentimetality that results from it. Therefore the artist today must anticipate that it is probably going to creep in and deliberately try to offset this tendency in his work. One way is to use media that give flatter, more two-dimensional images (see above, right). Egg tempera, embroidery, gouache, mosaic and fresco, will always look flatter than oil paintings even if the colours are placed in an identical way. This arises from different interaction with light - they reflect and refract it differently. Even if you use oil paint, if you can avoid using thin, translucent glazes will create that effect more. (The other side of this is that oil and water colour are much better for if you want to create the illusion of depth - for example if I was painting a landscape.)So, here we have the work of Nina Somerset.

 

 

Learn to paint icons the tradition way, the Catholic way

Many people think that icons are the preserve of the Eastern Church, or even the Orthodox Church. So it may surprise you to discover that this is not true. The iconographic tradition is as firmly rooted in the West as it is in the East. To give just one example, did you know that traditional Celtic art is iconographic? Did you know also that what we see taught in most icon classes today is not part of an unbroken tradition that goes back to the early church, but a modern construct created by Russian ex-pats living in France in the mid-20th century? If you want to understand what an icon really is and to learn how to paint icons in the traditional, Catholic way then come along to the icon painting week that I am teaching at the Way of Beauty Atelier is hosting at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts this summer in Merrimack, NH. For more details go to the page on the Thomas More College website, here. Hope to see you in the summer!

Hypothesis or Theorem? Evolution, Global Warming and Multiple Universes

How understanding the difference between hypothesis and theorem can often enable us to assess the validity of these proposals. There is a video produced by Illustra Media called Darwin’s Dilemma that discusses how recently observed scientific data raises doubts about the validity of Charles Darwin’s hypothesis concerning the origin of different species of animals – ‘evolution’. In order to be able to make a judgment as to whether or not Darwin’s proposal about the origin of species is scientifically proven or not, one must understand clearly the distinction between hypothesis and theorem. This is because hypothesis does not constitute scientific proof; theorem does. This video is good because it clearly explains the difference between the two cases. The scientific method involves the observation of natural phenomena and then a presentation by the scientist of a possible explanation of these observations in the form of the physical laws that govern the processes. This first explanation he produces is a hypothesis. Darwin’s ‘theory’ of evolution as most people refer to it was in fact presented not as a theory, in the strict scientific sense, but as a hypothesis. And here is the important point to understand: even if we assume that research and logic behind the hypothesis is sound, if all we have is a hypothesis, it does not yet constitute scientific proof. We might characterise it at this stage it as only considered possibly true. In order to make that transition from possibly true (hypothesis) to probably true (theorem) the hypothesis has to be tested. Most commonly, the scientist tests the hypothesis by looking for new phenomena that are predicted by the hypothesis and which could not have been predicted otherwise. If these data are subsequently observed repeatedly, then the hypothesis is confirmed and it is now considered a theorem; and probably true.

Darwin’s hypothesis predicted the existence of fossils of intermediary species that indicated that all known species of animals were descended from a common ancestor. The dilemma referred to in the title is that the fossil evidence has not yet supported the hypothesis. This does not in itself disprove the hypothesis. It is still possibly true and in the past many argued that we still might find the fossils in the future because the fossil record is incomplete. The point that the video makes is that after more than 100 years of scientists looking for such fossils, they still have still not been found. Furthermore, advances in science coupled with the recent discovery of many new fossil records seem to indicate that a strong argument could made that the fossil record is close to being complete. This being the case it is most likely that we will never find fossils of those intermediary species. Therefore, it argues, it might be time for even the hypothesis to be discarded as probably not true; at the very least we should start looking for an alternative explanation for the origin of species.

In reaction to this the following points are probably worth making also: first, invalidating one hypothesis doesn’t automatically make another true. Each should be considered on its own merits. For example, intelligent design or creationism should not be considered true simply because we consider that we failed to demonstrate that evolution constitutes a theory. These hypotheses should be considered on their own merits.

Second, it is important to be aware of whether or not a proposal is hypothesis or theorem before we can decide whether or not to take action in response to it. Just as one can be too quick to accept a hypothesis as truth, one can in the other extreme be overly skeptical and reject proven theorems. Scientific proof is not a formal proof of truth according to deductive logic (for reasons too long to go into here). This means that even when a proposal makes the transition from hypothesis to theorem it does not go from being categorized as ‘possible’ to being categorized as ‘certain’; but rather from ‘possible’ to ‘probable’. We cannot be absolutely certain of our theorem because unless we have data in regard to our proposal as it applies to the whole universe over all time (which we never do) it is always possible that in the future new data will emerge which will undermine it. All theorems are in this sense merely provisional. However, although we say that an element of doubt remains, we say also that once a theorem has been established that we consider it to be sufficiently close to certainty that we behave as though it is true. So we go ahead and build the bridge, construct the building, or manufacture the drug and entrust our safety to them all. Some who are overly skeptical of science as a discipline reject even proven theorems on the grounds that some doubt remains, or that past theorems subsequently proved false and had to be revised. This is not, in my opinion, a reasonable course of action. At some point you have to act with the balance of probability and behave as though it is true, and the transition from hypothesis to theorem is that point. The steady progress of our scientific knowledge since the scientific method was developed in the middle ages points to the general (if not perfect) reliability of acting on the assumption that a scientific theorem is true.

To summarize: to the degree that we must act on a proposal, we treat a hypothesis as not true, and a theorem as true. Certainly, sometimes this will end in disaster - bridges do fall down from time to time, and medical cures sometimes prove to have previously unforeseen side effects. However, in order to lead a life at all, we have to do the best we can with the best information available and this is why we do it.

In regard to Darwin’s proposal concerning the origin of species: some protestant Christian denominations especially seem anxious to establish that evolution could never become proven theorem, because they fear that it undermines the truth of the Bible rather than a desire to find out what is true. As a Catholic I have no such worries and can look at how the science plays out with a detached interest.

To understand the distinction between hypothesis and theorem often allows non-scientists to assess the validity of most discussions about science without ever needing to see the raw data or understand deeply the scientific analysis of it. A huge proportion of the articles written about hot scientific topics, such as anthropomorphic global warming, make arguments (pro- and con-) that claim to be based in scientific fact, but are in fact presenting hypothesis and not theorem. Often they do not use scientific arguments at all. They might for example give anecdotal stories based upon personal memories about how hot or cold it was in the past compared to now, especially if we are now going through a cold snap or a heat wave. Notwithstanding the unreliability of memory in gauging temperature, this ignores the fact that extreme conditions do not indicate general trends. Sometimes we are told that something must be true because ‘2,000 scientists say so’ (when democracy is not a principle for determining truth in science - it has to be tested using objective standards); or tell us we have to act now because the penalties of not doing so are too great to contemplate (without regard to the actual likelihood of it being true, which is absurd). None of these types of argument should be taken seriously when considering whether or not something is true and demanding greater clarity from our journalists might actually force them to be more responsible and rigorous in reporting on such things (although I’m not holding my breath).

Incidentally, this lack of rigour in reporting science is not new. The dispute between members of the hierarchy of the Church and Galileo was about many different things, but in regard to science it was about whether his proposal could be considered a hypothesis or a theorem. Galileo was told, you can teach this, but only as a hypothesis. Galileo insisted on describing it as proven theorem however. In this regard Galileo was wrong and St Robert Bellarmine was right. The necessary data that confirmed the proposal as a theorem was not observed until the 19^th century.

Praying the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours teaches us how to discerning God's will

Liturgical prayer is a means for discerning our personal vocation and God’s will for us…and so much more In the Lenten readings from the Liturgy of the Hours we have an example how through the Liturgy the Church instructs us about the value of praying the Liturgy with the Church. The reading from Vespers on Monday of weeks 1 and 2 in Lent reads: ‘My brothers, I implore you by God’s mercy to offer your very selves to him: a living sacrifice, dedicated and fit for his acceptance, the worship offered by mind and heart. Adapt yourselves no longer to the pattern of this present world, but let your minds be remade and your whole nature thus transformed. Then you will be able to discern the will of God, and to know what is good, acceptable and perfect.’ (Rom 12:1-2)

This passage is telling us in order to discern the will of God, we ought to make a ‘living sacrifice’ of ourselves. That living sacrifice is specifically our worship of God, that is, our participation in the liturgy - the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours. What makes this living sacrifice  ‘worthy and fit for his acceptance’ is that it is a participation in the only living sacrifice than can have that high worth, that is the sacrifice of Christ himself. There is only an upside to this. We get a free ride - we pray the liturgy, and in so doing open ourselves up to the reception of all the benefits of the supreme act of living made by someone else, without experiencing any of the pain. Christ bears all of that. It is an absurdly one-sided arrangement in our favour. It is such good news that it is scarcely believable, yet this is truly what we are offered through the Church. There is a standing offer already made, and our prayer is the act of acceptance.

Then, just in case we doubted that this living sacrifice is the prayer of the Church, we read the next morning in the Office of Readings a commentary by St Augustine on Psalm 140, 1-2. The Psalm passage he is commenting on reads as follows:

‘I call upon you O Lord, listen to my prayer, Give ear to the voice of my supplication when I call to you.

Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, And the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice.’

Within the commentary he explicitly makes the connection between the sacrifice and prayer of the faithful as part of the body of Christ, that is, the liturgy. He also explains how the pain and anguish that Christ felt in his passion is due to His bearing our sins and agony. The blood that streamed over his body when experiencing the agony in the garden was not due to anxiety for himself but, says Augustine: ‘Surely this bleeding of all his body is the death agony of all the martyrs of his Church’. We have just had the Feast of the martyrs Perpetua and Felicity. What is so striking the account of their deaths (again given in the Office of Readings) is how cheerfully and gracefully they bore the grevious mutilations that eventually killed them. I wonder at their purity and cooperation with grace and I wonder also at the fact that this pain is what Christ is choosing to experience on their behalf.

Augustine goes on to encourage us by saying that this is available to all of us: ‘All of us can make this prayer; this is not merely my prayer; the entire Christ prays in this way. But it is made rather in the name of the body…The evening sacrifice, the passion of the Lord, the cross of the Lord, the offering of a saving victim, the whole burnt offering acceptable to God; that evening sacrifice produced in his resurrection from the dead, a morning offering. When a prayer is sincerely uttered by a faithful heart, it rises as incense rises from a sacred altar. There is no scent more fragrant than that of the Lord. All who believe must possess this perfume.’

Paintings by, from top: El Greco, Rubens and Titian

19th Century Visitation Academy in Frederick, Maryland

Here are some photographs of the well preserved 19th century chapel of the Visitation Academy in Frederick, Maryland. Sitting on three-acres the Chapel and monastery were completed in 1852 and and the remaining school buildings a year later. The school describes the chapel as in the 'Corinthian' style. The main altar is crafted in marble and the oil painting above depicts the “The Presentation in the Temple”. Franz Mayer stained glass windows border the altar with images of the founders of the Visitation Order, St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane de Chantal. There is a temporary altar in the picture, but this is easily removed for ad orientem Masses if required. Although the nuns have recently gone, the school remains. I have friends in Frederick whose children attend the school and they are working hard to keep it open. They have rededicated it to its Salesian educational mission, to the delight of the order based in Georgetown. Accordingly they have instituted the Salesian daily prayers to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and pausing for reflection during the day, the 'Salesian minute'. In order to raise money for the school and for the upkeep of the buildings, the chapel along with the courtyard is offered for hire and is appropriate particularly for weddings. So if anyone is interested contact Kirsten Tydings at 301-908 1366 or www.facebook.com/visitationacademyweddings.

The Need for Beauty and Form in Poetry

I want to say at the outset that, as a general rule, I hate poetry. In fact my idea of perfect hell is to spend an evening at a poetry recital. I say that this applies generally because occasionally some do strike a chord and I love the psalms, which I am told are poems. I chant and read them just about every day. I am talking here about the sort of stuff that people who do English Lit study and feel the need, irritatingly, to talk about at dinner parties. It's all that analysis and discussion I can't stand. As soon as that happens I feel like running to the nearest television to watch an elevating game of football, or to a laptop to play a computer game (that is, if I knew how to play one).

I was once told that when asked if he had any regrets Woody Allen said that he had one: he wished that he had never read Beowulf. Well I am one up on Mr Allen. I have never read it and have no intention of doing so. Most of the things that people want me to read, rather than revealing truth, seem to hide it behind a veil of long or obscure words and convoluted sentences; or even no sentences at all. If I make the effort to get past this and work out what they are on about or perhaps someone explains the meaning to me, like Mr Allen  I usually regret having made the effort. My reaction is usually, well if that is what you are trying to say why make us wade through your turgid verse in order to do so? Why not just say it in a way we can understand?

Before anyone tries to contact me and tell me that I am a brutish and uncultured so-and-so then let me say that you are probably right. But I am unrepentant. You read poetry if you want to, I'll look at art, listen to music and go for country walks. I have no sense of any obligation to try to understand something that is written to entertain, when I don't find it entertaining.

Now that I've got that out of the way, I present an essay on form and beauty in poetry. It is not written by me you won't be surprised to hear, it is written by Mark Anthony Signorelli (h/t Tom Larson of Goffstown, NH). I present it because despite what I have just written I am prepared to acknowledge that I am an ignorant philistine in this regard and that poetry, or some of it at least, does have something to recommend it, even if usually I can't see it. I like this essay because the arguments he makes in regard to poetry correspond very closely to what I argue in regard to art. Put simply, he says that the best poetry is the most beautiful poetry because this will communicate truth most eloquently. I would say that this is the poetry that even when read by someone like me, strikes to the spirit and is understood intuitively. Signorelli argues that in order to be beautiful, the poet must take into consideration the form as well as the content. The form, that is, the style, reflects the worldview of the poet as much as the words contained within it. And traditional values are communicated through the medium of traditional form. This corresponds, I would argue, to the principles that apply in art. I have written about this in an article called Make the Form Conform - How the Style of Art Reflects Truth.

You can read Mr Signorelli's piece here, it is called Form and Transcendance: A Reply to Micah Mattix. Please do read it, even if you don't like poetry. It is well worth it!

I should say that beyond what it written here I know nothing about the site on which it appears or Mr Signorelli...except that this is what he looks like:

Giusto's Institution of the Eucharist

This article is by Dr Caroline Farey of the Maryvale Institute. She and I worked together to design the Institute's degree level diploma (6 US credits): Art, Beauty and Inspiration in a Catholic Perspective. A distance learning course requiring one residential weekend, this can be taken either by application tothe Institute in Birmingham, England; or in the US through their centre based at the Diocese of Kansas City, Kansas (link here). Dr Farey writes:

Between 1465 and 1474, Giusto executed the Communion of the Apostles (The Institution of the Eucharist) which Vasari has described, and is now in the museum of Urbino. It was painted for the brotherhood of Corpus Christi at the bidding of Frederick of Montefeltro, who was introduced by Caterino Zeno, a Persian envoy at that time on a mission to the court of Urbino. Giusto is Joos van Wassenhove who was a Netherlandish painter, part of whose career was spent in Italy, where he was known as Giusto da Guanto (Justus of Ghent). He brought to Italy some of the characteristics of Dutch painting and combined them with the local Italian style.

This painting unites Jesus Christ, the Church and the Eucharist in a single harmonious illustration of the Catholic faith. It is perhaps important to begin with an initial teaching point: it is worth helping people realise that such a painting as this is has both an historical and a contemporary dimension to it. We do not need to believe, therefore, that the artist wishes us to see every part of the painting as an historical depiction. He is not necessarily wishing to communicate to us that the upper room really looked like this, or that the table was historically laid out like this, or that the apostles necessarily knelt to receive the body and blood of Christ as he has painted it here. Of course, they may have done. However, what the artist is also trying to show us in the painting is that what Christ did at the last supper with the apostles he, personally, still does for his disciples today at Mass.

One way to introduce this painting to those whom we are catechising is to begin by teaching about the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper from this piece of art. Then we can continue by explaining what the painting reveals about Mass today.

Christ at the Last Supper

Let us look at this painting first of all as depicting an event in the life of Christ.For this we can follow the Gospel accounts, especially that of St Luke.

• In the Gospel of Luke chapter 22 we read that, during the Last Supper, a dispute arose amongst the disciples as to who was the greatest. Jesus replied to them ‘which is the greater, one who sits at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who sits at table? But I am among you as one who serves’(Lk 22:27).Much in this painting depicts this dialogue. The Persian in the turban and the members of the confraternity in the red hats are disputing and Christ is portrayed as the one who is not sitting at table now but is among his disciples, serving.Look at the bending figure of Christ, beautifully depicting the reality of Christ the Servant.

• We can also see here an artistic depiction of the central truth of the Faith, that God condescended to be born and to live among us, that the divine Second Person of the Trinity took flesh for our sake In the General Directory for Catechesis the part on the Pedagogy of God opens with a quotation from Hosea, ‘I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them’ (Hos 11:4, in GDC 137). The bending figures of the apostles around Christ also emphasises this mystery. By contrast, the Persian in the turban stands erect, with his head and shoulders thrown back. The painting is also showing us the amazing truth that Christ only ever serves himself to us – ‘This is my Body’. The Church, in her Tradition, follows this truth without deviation, accepting that Christ gives his whole self to us.

• Christ, the one who serves, is portrayed as ‘greater’ by his stature and centrality in the picture. You can see that Christ is painted disproportionately larger in height than any other figure.

• Directly in front of Christ on the floor we can see the jug of water and basin.The Gospel of Lukes tell us that the disciples were to meet a man carrying a jar of water and to follow him into the house which he enters (Lk 22:10).

• John’s Gospel also links the Last Supper scene to water: ‘He rose from supper, laid aside his garments …poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet’ (Jn 13: 4-5). It seems that in this painting this may have already happened – look at the bare feet in the picture!

• John’s Gospel also speaks of Judas as the one with the money box, or bag (Jn 13:29), and we can see him in this painting clutching a moneybag in both hands, looking back into the room as he edges out of the open doorway into the night with dawn breaking already in the distance.

• Eleven reverent apostles remain, three kneeling on the right and eight on the left. One in white at the back, perhaps the young John, still holds a bottle as though he had been serving, too, with his other hand raised as he gazes adoringly at Christ.

• The one next to him is quite different. See how he seems to be staring intently at the disputants.He is holding a lighted candle, representing perhaps the light of faith, of truth, of Christ. He has seen the truth of Christ as the greater who has come among them as a servant and longs for the disputants to be enlightened by this same truth!

Christ in His Church

Let us look now for every indication that the painter is portraying Christ as present and active in his Church. What does the picture tell us about the Mass as it is celebrated in the Church?

·The building is the first sign, with its pillars and its windows portrayed like the apse of a Cathedral Church.

·The sanctuary lamp hangs directly above the figure of Christ, in shadow in the central round window between the pillars of the apse where the tabernacle would usually be found.

·The table is painted as though an altar, and the chalice and sacred hosts are placed as though on the altar at Mass.

·The apostle in white at the back on the left hand side acts like a server acolyte at Mass and the one beside him carries a tall candle.

·The jug and basin directly in front of Jesus remind the congregation of the sprinkling of water that can take place before mass on Sunday to remind us of our Baptism.

·Christ takes up the position that we normally associate with the priest.The priest is called ‘in persona Christi’, ‘in the person of Christ’ at this moment of distribution of the sacred species and throughout the Mass.

• The apostles are painted kneeling and receiving the body of Christ on the tongue, as they would have done for most of the Church’s history until recently, as a sign of the holiness of the moment, hence the use for many centuries of the name ‘holy communion’.

This is the greatest moment possible on this earth of communion with Jesus, the Son of God, and it is the holiest moment possible, receiving the body and blood of Christ himself. The angels kneeling and adoring above the scene help to indicate this holiness.

Two Icons by Kathy Sievers

Kathy Sievers teaches at an icon painting teaching program that takes place regularly at Mt Angel Abbey in Oregon (close to where she lives). She also teaches in Illinois and Florida. You can see more of her work at her website, here and more about the Mt. Angel program here A few things caught my eye about these two icons is the lovely rhythm and grace of the lines. As well as have that calligraphic flow in the abstract, they do describe form well (without deviating from the iconographic style); so that, for example, we can read the folding of the cloth and how it relates the form underneath very easily. This is the mark of a good draughtsman. Also, look at how she has modelled the form. She appears to do a base layer in quite mottled paint - probable quite a thin single layer of paint (I'm guessing) as a wet puddle of quite dilute paint. This evapourates unevenly an so creates that mottled effect as the white gesso underneath shows through more in some parts than others. Then she paints the mid-tones and highlights on top of that. These are much denser, opaque layers of paint. The overall effect is very attractive, I think. I am painting a large Christ in Majesty at the moment and want to paint a blue robe. I have been looking at different ways of doing this, and Kathy is giving me some pointers through her work.

Liturgy and Anthropology: Body, Soul, Spirit

Understanding that man is body, soul and spirit might be step towards establishing a culture of beauty. I have written before, here of the idea that liturgy and culture are linked. Each forms and reflects the other. If this is the case, then the answer to the question of how to reform a culture of ugliness, even a culture of death in any lasting way has its roots in, or at least must include firmly at its heart, liturgical reform.

A true Catholic culture is one that not only reflects the liturgy, but through its compelling beauty, is so powerful that it overcomes other cultures and dominates the profane (ie the wider culture outside the domain of religious practice). This is the case with the gothic and the baroque. All art, architecture and music during these periods, for example, seemed to be drawing on the forms that were set in the liturgy. In his book The Spirit of the Liturgy, Pope Benedict XVI says the following: 'The Englightenment pushed the Faith into a kind of intellectual and even social ghetto. Contemporary culture turned away from the Faith and trod another path, so that faith took flight in historicism, the copying of the past, or else attempted to comprimise, or lost itself resignation and cultural abstinence.'

In other words, by the 19th century and as a result of the Enlightenment, the culture of faith was separated from the wider culture. Catholic culture, as it was manifested at this time, was not a genuine Catholic culture of beauty, but rather an emasculated, paler version. In the area that I know well, art, we see this very clearly. There are some exceptions, but in general the academic art of the 19th century is only a poorly defined shadow of the 17th century baroque from which it is descended. For those who are interested to know more, you might read for example articles here and here or for a fuller account read the book Baroqueby John Rupert Martin.

If we accept the premise and this assessment of the culture, then it indicates that in the 19th century there were problems with the liturgy as well as the culture. This would explain why the response to the Enlightenment in this period was not only intellectual, but also liturgical, with the beginnings of a liturgical reform movement. This being so, the question remains as to what it is about the Enlightenment that affected the liturgy?I read recently Looking Again at the Question of the Liturgy with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger: the Proceedings of the July 2001 Fontgombault Liturgical Conference, edited by Alcuin Reid. One of the presentations was by Stratford Caldecott, who runs the Thomas More College Centre for Faith and Culture in Oxford. Mr Caldecott argues that the problems lay in the fact that the anthropology - the understanding of the nature of man - had strayed from a full recognition of the spirit as part of the anthropology described by scripture. St Paul for example, talks of body, soul and spirit. There had been tendency argues Caldecott, to equate, or at least insufficiently differentiate between (in our understanding), soul and spirit. (His presentation is online, at the Second Spring website, here. Go to the section on the left that says 'online reading' and then click the title of the article: Liturgy and Trinity; Towards a Liturgical Anthropology.)

His description of the 'spirit' is most interesting. Equating it with the intellectus of the Western medievals or the nous of the Eastern Church in the tradition of Church Fathers, the spirit is the spiritual receptive knowing power of the human mind. This is the aspect that 'sees', so to speak, God and is receptive to grace. The use of the termininology can vary from person to person and this can be confusing sometimes, for me at least, when trying to understand these things. One thing that the Catechism is clear on as that talk of the spirit, which is non-material and spiritual in nature, does not introduce a duality into the soul. So man is a profound unity of body and soul and this describes the human person. The spirit is the higher part of the soul or as I once heard it described, the 'soul of the soul'. It that part that is closest to God, the portal for grace which pours out from God, transforming us (transfiguring) into the image and likeness of Him. While the fathers do therefore sometimes use the word soul interchangebly with a description of the full spiritual dimension of man that includes the spirit, the distinction of the two in the minds of the medievals, it seems, is not lost either. Occasionally in icons the artist paints a 'bump' in the forehead. I was told that this shape drawn in the forehead, between the eyes, is sometimes considered a physical manifestation of the spiritual eye, the nous. (See the icons displayed here.)

A quote from Joseph Pieper's Leisure the Basis of Culture (p11-12) was helpful to me here: 'The medievals distinguished between the intellect as ratio and the intellect as intellectus. Ratio is the power of discursive thought, or searching and re-searching refining and concluding, whereas the intellectus refers to the ability of 'simply looking' (simplex instuitus) to which the truth presents itself as a landscape presents itself to the eye. The spiritual knowing power of the human mind, as the ancients understood it, is really two things in one: ratio and intellectus: all knowing involved both. The path of discursive reasoning is accompanied and penetrated by the intellectus' untiring vision, which is not active but passive, or better, receptive - a receptively operating power of the intellect.' It seems that the intellectus here could be identified with the nous or spirit.

Without a full acknowledgement of this tripartite anthropology, suggests Caldecott, a flawed dualism consisting only of body and soul is created and an instability in which one of the aspects tends to dominate the other to the exclusion of God (just as Cartesian dualism was inherently unstable and led in two very different directions: materialism and idealism). According to trinitarian anthropology, the human person is by its very nature other-centred. We love God, and this opens us to the life of the other; we love our neighbour, and this opens us to the love of God. Without fully appreciating the spiritual faculty of the soul we cannot properly understand either marriage (based on the self-giving love of man and woman) or the Mass (the marriage of heaven and earth). Thus the crisis over Humanae Vitae in the 1960s was paralleled by the crisis over reforms in the liturgy because both had the same root -- an earlier loss of the sense of the spirit uniting husband and wife in openness to new life on the one hand, and of the spirit uniting priest and laity in one single work of sacrifice on the other. To those who had acquired this mentality, it seemed that the Mass had become an exercise in which the priest did his thing at the altar and the laity waited and watched or prayed their rosary in the pews. This is why why they went to the other extreme of over-stressing "activity" in the Mass, along with human fellowship and social justice, as though these were the only things that were important. Many religious orders went into steep decline as the communitarian aspect of their mission took precedence over the liturgical, the love of neighbour over the love of God. It is the spirit in man that opens us to the "vertical" dimension of grace: without it, both marriage and the liturgy are reduced to activities performed on the horizontal plane, with little or no relationship to heaven.

It strikes me that such a neglect as a result of the Enlightenment should result in a cultural decline as well as a liturgical decline is made all the more understandible when one considers the role of the intellectus, or spirit, in the apprehension of beauty. In the first part of her little essay Beauty, Contemplation and the Virgin Mary, Sister Thomas Mary McBride, OP describes succinctly in just a few paragraphs, the traditional understanding of beauty and how man apprehends it (and as such I would recommend this piece for anyone seeking an introduction to this subject). She draws on the Latin medievals and states that beauty illuminates the intellectus, describing the apprehension of beauty as the 'gifted perfection of seeing'. Then echoing Caldecott in the connection between intellectus and spirit says: 'In the light of the above, this writer would suggest that the proper place of beauty is in the spirit.'

An appropriate active participation in the liturgy is one that engages the full person in order to encourage within us the right interior disposition. Any participation in the liturgy that does not engage body, soul and spirit therefore does not engage the full person. Our participation in the liturgy is the primary educator in the Faith at all levels. A true conformity of body, soul and spirit is what is desired. One can see that any participation in which consideration of the spirit is neglected (through a balanced active participation of soul and body) will result in therefore necessarily result in a deficiency in our ability to apprehend beauty, which resides in the spirit. This explains this link between culture and liturgy and how important liturgical reform is in our efforts to create a culture of beauty today.

St Ephrem the Syrian who lived in the 4th century AD in modern-day Turkey is a Doctor of the Church and one of the Church Fathers referred to by Pope Benedicti XVI in one of his weekly addresses and whom he encouraged us to read. St Ephrem wrote the following in the 9th of his Hymns to Paradise:

Far more glorious than the body is the soul, and more glorious still than the soul is the spirit, but more hidden that the spirit is the Godhead.

At the end, the body will put on the beauty of the soul, the soul will put on that of the spirit, while the spirit shall put on the very likeness of God's majesty.

For bodies shall be raised to the level of souls, and the soul to that of the spirit, while the spirit shall be raised to height of God's majesty;