Opportunity for Artists to Publicise their Work

The editor of journal Dappled Things, Bernado Aparicio, has contacted me asking for submissions from up and coming artists who would like to have their art featured in the magazine. This is a chance for people to showcase their work in a magazine that is read by Catholics who are interested in liturgy and culture. The magazine is richly illustrated and the reproductive quality is high. They are looking for artwork for a number of future issues. My sense is that if there is work that they are impressed with it, they will do their best to showcase at some point in the future so they are not limited by numbers. They do not pay, but this is way for people to showcase what they do with thousands of readers who are likely to be interested in what they are doing. Perhaps this could spark some commissions! Regular readers will be aware of Dappled Things, but for those who aren't it is a quarterly journal which is focussed on trying promoting all aspects of Catholic culture. They are interested not only in the subject matter but also in ecouraging high quality writing that is both academically sound and engaging. Through this they are highlighting and developing writers who can effectively communicate aspects of faith and culture. For this reason it describes itself as a literary journal.

Those who are interested in submitting work should go to the website, here, and follow the directions.

A walk along an ancient aqueduct in southern Spain

When I was in Spain in May, some neighbours of my parents offered to take me on a walk that followed the line of an ancient aqueduct built by the Moors centuries ago. Phil and Brenda took me to a spectacular route that started in the town of Canillas (about an hour from Malaga). The aqueduct was a small channel providing water for irrigation and drinking water for the town. It is about a foot square in cross section and open topped. It weaves its way around the hills through olive groves and wild flower meadows, climbing at a rate only slightly greater than a contour line. This lead us eventually up high into a fast running stream in a narrow gorge, which was the source of the water.What was interesting was that this was still the means of irrigating the olive groves on the hillside. So in some sections, where the Moorish stonework had begun to leak, the channel had been mended. Somtimes with stone and cement, and sometimes even with sections of black plastic pipeline. From time to time, there would be small sluice gates that could be dropped into the channel, blocking it off and then directing the water onto the fields below that section. I have spoken in the past, here, about how there is a 'right to roam' in European countries. It's exact form takes different shapes, but for the most part, provided you don't take produce or destroy property and respect the land and personal rights of those who own it, you are entitled to go onto privately owned land. It means that in Europe that those who live in cities and suburbs and are not landowners, nevertheless have access to the land and have a sense of connection with it. People can also experience the peace and see the beauty of well managed agricultural land which has a very different effect on the soul than seeing 'wilderness' - land unaffected by man. New-world countries, such as America, Australia and New Zealand do not have such laws and so it is much more difficult to get access to agricultural land (as opposed to wilderness parks). Ironically, this means that even in New Zealand, a country in which perhaps 30% of the land is preserved as national parkland, there is still a greater sense of being deprived of contact with the land than you would have in a western European country. The reason for the difference between old and new worlds is that the new societies, driven by Enlightenment ideas of individualism that started to take hold in the 18th century rejected the traditional idea, which comes from Catholic social teaching, of land being a 'common good'. The traditional idea is that landowners balance their privelege of ownership, which is necessary so that the land can be cultivated in an ordered way, with certain responsibilities towards the community as a whole.

In Britain, which is a land of walkers (perhaps because the temperate climate is so condusive to it) there is a modern application of the custom, which has resulted in a network of public footpaths across its length and breadth. My guides Phil and Brenda, who were great company for the day, explained to me that because so many Brits live permanently in Spain now (about three quarters of a million), that the Spanish government has begun to establish British style footpaths through scenic areas and promote them to attract yet more people as tourists. Its not clear whether the Spanish people themselves are yet as enthusiastic about walking. It seems that perhaps Noel Coward was right, only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.

An irrigation channel seems to me an example of a project that is intended for the common good and requires each landowner to acknowledge this in allowing it to be built on his land and in the way in which he uses it. Once this was built if the landownder wanted to act against the common good he could and use all the water for himself: nobody below him would be able to stop him taking it. Taking what is necessary for himself is in accordance with the common good, because this is how he grows food for the community (which includes himself of course). Maybe a historian out there could help me, but I don't think this would have been built by the central government buying the land through compulsory purchase order on the land. My guess is that there has been a cooperative process between landowners.

Any, enough of the discussion, here's the walk -  we start by filling up the water bottles at the public drinking fountain:

And then gradually climb our way up, through olive groves and some pine groves, pausing occasionally to look back at the town below. In time the trees clear and we can see the gorge ahead.

Here, below, is a sluice gate (it's on the end of the chain only partly visible). This is a simple metal plate which is dropped into the channel at this point, directing the water out through the opening which is visible above the waterline, bottom, left. This allows the farmer who owns this part of the land to irrigate his olive groves in the hillside below. We would see these periodically as we climbed. Clearly, there is mutual trust here and an assumption that no single landowner is going to abuse the privelege of access to the water and deprive everyone else of a share. Subsequent photos show the flourishing olive groves (note how the hillside is stepped to enable access when the olives are to be picked).

Round a corner, below, and things take a turn for the spectacular:

We can see the gorge in the distance which is the source of the water for the aqueduct, you can see the it cutting across the hillside halfway up on the left:

If we walk on an turn back, we can see, below, how precarious the path is in some places:

On the photo above you can see the aqueduct cut into the cliff face on the near part. In the distance to the left you can make out the line of the road through the hills, which follows the old Moorish trading route through southern Spain. It is seen more clearly in this photo:

Then we walk up into the gorge and to the mountain stream that is the source of water:

The very start of the aqueduct is on the left in the photo above. The manmade channel has water running in it, but it is not obvious in the photographs because it is so clear.

We stopped for a drink of water at a small waterfall in the stream above this point:

And then returned to Canillas retracing our steps. The day ended with a late lunch in the village square: Spanish coffee, which is a strong and milky, and tapas.

Top Catholic Artist Offers Five Apprenticeships to Young Artists

Catholic artist James Gillick has begun a formal scheme of apprenticeships at his studio in England. He will take on 5 people per year and is even building an extension to his studio in Louth, Lincolnshire in order to house his students. James works in the baroque style and sells through one of the leading galleries in London at top prices. He sell as an artist of both sacred and mundane subjects. I have known James for some years now and he has always spoken to me about how he feels that artists don't seem to be aware beyond the basic skills of drawing and painting is his understanding of his market and that he wanted to be able to help people who wished to do this. For example, when he spoke to the students at Maryvale he would always play down the image of the sensitive artistic temperament. Rather, he likened what he did to the job of a bricklayer: 'A bricky gets paid on the number of bricks he lays,' said James. 'Similarly the artist gets paid for each painting he paints. If I am going to support my family, I must be able to paint quickly and to highest standard so that I have enough to sell. Then I have to find someone who is going to buy my paintings. If I don't do that we starve or I get job doing something else. I don't have the time to get precious about it.'

How he is helping directly by offering training and advice.

He is looking for young people who want to, in his words, 'spend the next 50 years' being an artist. They will have to pay small up-front fee to cover room, board and materials (amounting to approximately $120 per week) but once they get going they will be paid for assisting him in the preparation of his canvasses and materials, preparatory painting work and assisting him in his business including liaising with his clients and galleries and book-keeping. By the end of the year they will be able to recoup this initial outlay through what they are paid for this work. Through working with him students will learn the life skills of being artist and be in a position to set up as sole traders. James sees this as much about forming the person to lead a hard-working, disciplined (and frugal) lifestyle as well as teaching them how to creating paintings. The will be pushed hard during this year. Artistically, depending on how experienced they were when they arrived, students can expect to be at a level where they can contemplate selling, or at the very least be in a position to develop their own work without being dependant upon spending years at an atelier in Florence. Some will probably stay and work with him longer than the year, but there are no guarantees here.

Interestingly James, like my icon own teacher iconographer Aidan Hart, is largely self-taught. Both were able to do this by studying in such a way that they discerned at a deep level the principles behind the traditions they were working in. The training I was given by Aidan was not so much about how to paint icons (although clearly it did involve some of this) but more about passing on what I needed to understand so that I could train myself. This is what Jim will be doing with his students.

This is an exciting development and I recommend young artists to consider this. He is looking for people who have the right qualities - self-discipline and preparedness to deal with the business side of being a succesful artist - as much as artistic talent.

Now that I am in the United States, I asked him about the possibility of training students from abroad. Jim said that he was certainly open to this - he was providing basic accomodation, so as long as they were prepared to travel to England he would take them on. He did note that the individuals would have to have to adapt the business elements to American situation once they left (for example, the regulatory aspects of establishing a business).

Enquiries should be made through his website www.gillick-artist.com/

Geometric Tile Patterns in Andalusia

  Here are some photographs of decorative tiles that I took on my trip to Andalusia. These designs are commonplace in Spanish towns here and will be seen on both old and new buildings. They are obviously derived from those of the Islamic Moors who ruled this part of southern Spain for nearly 800 years. The last Moors were defeated and surrendered the Alhambra - the palace in Granada - in 1492.  These were taken in two villages Alcaucin and Canillas de Aceituno about 20 miles inland from Velez-Malaga on the Costa del Sol.

The photo above is of the public drinking fountain in Alcaucin. What I found delightful about these villages is the effort made to decorate details of the exterior. For example, you will see here some steps, small interior parts of doorways. I have included some street scenes of the villages to give you a sense of the villages, and not all of them have geometric patterns.

 

Some Recently Completed Sacred Art

Here are two recently completed works of my own. The first is my own version of a Western iconography. It is Christ in Majesty and will go into the chapel at Thomas More College in Merrimack. I have created the basic design on a Romanesque illuminated manuscript. Christ is enthroned in heaven in glory, surrounded by the six winged seraphim and the four angels representing the four evangelists take the Word to the four corners of the world. In considering how to do this, I felt that in this the figure's sitting pose in the original is too unnatural and primitive for the modern eye. So I looked to the 20th century Russian iconographer, Gregory Kroug for the basis of the central figure. Kroug is interesting to study. Although the form is highly stylised, he was a very skilled draughtsman who placed the relative positions of limbs and torso accurately to reflect the gesture he wanted to show. The third inspiration for me is a 16th century Christ in Majesty that I saw at the Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, Massachusetts in which the six winged seraphim who surround the throne are portrayed in monochrome in a deep green background. And finally, the face is my own style, but heavily influenced by my teacher, Aidan Hart, the British iconographer. I started this painting over the Christmas break and finished it in early May. The panel upon which it is painted is about six feet long. The second is an icon of St Victoria. I chose this subject because I painted it to give to a friend for the baptism of her baby daughter, Victoria. It is much smaller, about 10 inches long and painted on good quality watercolour paper. This took me about eight hours to paint. St Victoria according to the source I read, died in 304 and lived in Italy. When she refused marriage and to sacrifice to pagan gods because of her faith, she was martyred (that is why she is holding a cross in the icon).  The guard converted because of her witness to the faith and was himself martyred.

It is interesting to not that my source makes two observations. First is that very little is known about her life, and secondly that the story that we do have is 'probably a pious myth, though they did actually live'. I would love know why this final comment is made. I might be wrong, but the word 'probably' makes this sound like the historical-critical method at work to me. Historical-critical analysis is an overly skeptical form of analysis that assumes that something is untrue unless confirmed by historical evidence. So by this method, the main source of this information, which is tradition, is not accepted as a valid source of information. I prefer to work the other way around and assume that tradition is true unless proven otherwise. So in the absence of any other information I say wholeheartedly, St Victoria pray for us!

 

Wild Flowers in Spain (and Possible Implications for Population Control and the Culture of Death)

During my visit to friends and family in Europe, I spent a a few days in Spain (during the last week of May). My parents have retired there (along with another million Brits). I was lucky in that the time of my visit was just the time when wild flowers are in bloom. I am no plant expert, but I did recognise a lot from my memories of my parents' garden in England when I was growing up. So I asked them if they would help me identify some of the plants and we set off to high meadows to photograph and identify them. Also, I am trying to plant an English style perrenial garden in the farm that will be the new Thomas More College campus in Groton, Massachusetts. (I say 'will be' because we have to raise the money to build. This is not easy in the current economic climate, so please if anyone feels like donating, don't hesitate to contact us!) We have been following the planting scheme of the English garden designer Gertrude Jeckyll. From my first spring of planting here in the US, I recognised that many of the Spanish plants are in American gardens too. The photo above is of a thistle called echinops. We bought three to plant and they look pretty lonely at the moment while we wait for them to flourish and multiply. Here in Spain, there is a whole field of them next to my parents' house just growing wild.

The terrain in this area around Spain is man made. Even the areas where the flowers grow and seem uncultivated would be completely tree covered if they had not been cleared by man. It is dry, shrub filled landscape common in Mediterranean areas called 'maquis'. Very often the flowers flourish most on road or field edges in the areas where the soil has been turned over by human activity but it has not been paved over or planted with crops. A common plant in the maquis terrain is the broom. There are two common varieties here: Spanish broom and genista (French broom) which has smaller flowers, both are bright yellow. The photo below shows some genista growing on the edge of a cultivated olive grove. In the distance you see a ridge of mountains with pass, appearing as a notch cut into it. For our flower hunting expedition we headed for that pass. There is a footpath there on a disused railway line which allowed for great views and a great variety of species.

The fact that the whole terrain is formed by man raises a question in my mind. What is the natural environment for wild flowers? Would these flowers be here at all if it weren't for man? If there were no man affected areas, would there be any terrain for them to grow in? Certainly, the ones I saw don't grow in the areas that are wooded, only on the edges made by man. Perhaps there are some plant experts out there who can answer these points definitively. What I can say is that these flowers are flourishing in those areas affected by man. If this man-affected terrain is the natural environment for wild flowers, and wild flowers are considered part of the natural world (along with the insect life engendered), then we would have to consider man's activity natural too.

Some extreme environmentalists that I have come across tend to assume that man's activity is unnatural and always detrimental to the ecosystem. I'm guessing that there others who object to the activities of modern man, but would consider a pre-industrial revolution, agrarian society (which would still create the landscape for wild flowers) as the natural form of activity for man. The first group would like to see man's effect on the world eliminated altogether, the second vastly reduced.

The reason that this is important to consider is that the degree to which we consider mankind's activity natural or unnatural affects whether or not we consider the the growing human population of the world a good thing or a bad thing. In both the cases cited above, that is if either we consider man's activity necessarily unnatural; or, taking the less extreme position, we consider the work of modern man unnatural and only that of primitive man's activity natural, it makes sense to advocate population reduction in the world. The few examples of modern man there are, the less unnatural behaviour there will be. The next step is to push for population control via the use of contraception and abortion.

The traditional Christian view is different. For the Christian man is the crowning glory of creation and his activity is not only natural but, potentially, the greatest of all life on earth. In fact, to the degree that his work is inspired, man can actually raise the natural world up to something higher, creating something closer to what it ought to be and to what it would have been prior to the Fall. This is not deny that man's activity can be highly destructive also. It depends on how wisely he makes use of his God-given freedom to cultivate the land.

When we have the Christian outlook, the way to deal with polution and mismanagement of the environment, is not to reduce the amount of human activity (by reducing the population), but to seek to transform human activity into something that is in harmony with creation. This is possible (at least partially in this life) only through the Church and this takes us again to the question of cultural transformation and liturical reform. Two connected themes I have spoken about often in this forum.

Anyway, we have now reached the high meadow and start to walk along the path through the notch:

We surveyed the scene, book in hand:

And then we started to look more closely. You can see the red poppies and yellow daisies in the meadow. But as you look at the limestone rock outcrops there are more to be seen, for example wild tyme:

Orchids and wild irises:

 Here is another iris amongst a cluster of flowers of helianthemum, the rock rose, a common plant in the the garden.

In our day out, we did take time step back and enjoy the view of rural Spain from this elevated position.

Where irrigated, the ground is extremely fertile. This part of Andalusia exports fruit and vegetables. The view below is of the area beyond that notch in the ridge. There is a high fertile plain hidden away. The old railway track that we were walking on was built to carry the produce down to the coastline (near Malaga) for distribution. Now the transportation is by road you see trucks driving down the winding road all day during harvest time.

The examples of the flowers shown are as bright and beautiful as the garden varieties. There were many more that I could show, and will perhaps keep for another occasion. Many of these while beautiful in the wild, are not precisely what you would see in the garden, which would be hybrids. This again raises the question of what is more natural, a hybrid developed by man or a wild variety? Anyway, that's one for a future blog post.

Academic Art - cast drawings by students from Thomas More College of Liberal Arts

Here are examples of cast drawings by freshman students at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts They study the academic method of drawing. This is a systematic drawing method that developed in the High Renaissance and can be traced back to Leonardo. The name comes from the art academies of the 16th and 17th centuries that established it. We are lucky to have the world renowned Ingbretson Studio closeby in Manchester, New Hampshire. During the spring semester, students spent each Wednesday evening (that's about 12 sessions) at the studio. This is a sacrifice of time as they received no concessions in regard to their other studies. The results are excellent, I think you'll agree. The students whose work you see are Elizabeth Rochon and Nicole Martin. Each drawing is approximately 24''x30''.

Praying the Divine Office on Holiday When You Haven't Got Your Breviary With You

How do you pray the Liturgy of the Hours when the books are too heavy to put into your suitcase and your normal routine is disrupted? I have just returned from a visit to England and Spain to see my family. For various reasons I haven't been able to leave the US for a couple of years. I couldn't wait to see everyone again and I had a great time. Lots of time spent with family and friends, walks in the countryside in both countries, visits to English gardens and even a pilgrimage site in North Wales. There was plenty to report on and I will be writing about it in the coming weeks. First though, how to keep going with the prayer routine while travelling? The quickest answer is to use your smart phone and access the Office online. This was too expensive for me when going to Europe, so I had to go low-tech. Furthermore, not everyone has a smart phone even in the US, so for many this is never an option. The books for the Divine Office are bulky for travel - the time I was away was the transition from volume II to volume III in my three volume briviary, so I would need both. And if you are as careless as I am there is always the worry about the expense of replacing them if I lose them. (I can lose anything that isn't attached to me - I left the first book of Hours given to me by my spiritual director on a plane.) I could have taken the Shorter Morning and Evening Prayer, but this would still leave me with the problem of what to do for the minor Offices.

Here's what I did. In his book Earthen Vessels published by Ignatius Press, Gabriel Bunge OSB explains that the essence of the Liturgy of the Hours is marking the Hours and saying the psalms. As a lay person I am not bound to the weekly cycle of the psalms as set out by St Benedict, or the four-weekly cycle that secular priests are bound to. I can devise any cycle of the psalms that suits me and pray them at the hours and this still constitutes liturgical prayer and if I follow it I will still be praying with the Church. I happened to have with me a tiny edition of the New Testament with the Psalms so I made us of this. At each Hour I read the next psalm (or two or even three if they were short) in the order that they come in the bible, 1- 150. I did start with Psalm 94 each day, the invitatory psalm, and where I knew there were penitential psalms (eg psalm 50), I tried to save them for Friday. At the Hours of Lauds, Vespers and Compline, I delved into the gospels and sang the Benedictus, the Magnifcat and the Nunc Dimittis all from Luke. I have included some photos of my little chapel on the patio at my parents' place in Spain. They have a great view and their garden is lovely, so the motivation to sit out their with a pot of coffee and the psalms was great!

We have been developing psalm tones at for English for use at Thomas More College. These are designed so that any tone can be applied to any psalm. I apply the inflexions in the melody to the natural emphases in the text. This meant that even with just two or three simple tones sticking in my memory, I could sing the whole Office if I wanted to. This is did if I thought I was out of earshot. I am not yet at the level of evangelical fervour to be able to sing the psalms solo in a busy shopping mall (although I am getting there - I am much less self conscious about singing in front of others than I used to be). The great thing about working from such a small book is that I could fit it in my back pocket and during the course of the day, wherever I happened to be, could pull it out and read the next psalm.

For the Vigils (the Office of Readings) I would always read a passage from the New Testament. The Office of Readings also includes each day a reading from the works of the Church Fathers. By chance, for my holiday reading I had with me the collected addresses (70 0f them) by Pope Benedict XVI on the Church Fathers called Great Christian Thinkers, From the Early Church through to the Middle Ages and so I read one of these each day. Incidentally this is a wonderful survey of the mystical and theological writings of the great figures of the Church. If anyone is interested in a guide for reading the Fathers, this is the place to start.

I was also in a position to supplement this with mental prayer and so each day did in addition to this some lection divina. I did a short series of articles on how I was instructed to pratise this ancient form of prayer, here.

If I went for a walk in the hills (we about 45 minutes from Malaga in southern Spain) then my little bible was so small that I could fit it in my back pocket and at a convenient place pull it out and sing the psalms to the plants and any passing mountain deer. I picked a rock among the wild flowers to sit on...

in position where there was a pleasant view of the of Spanish farmland, and began.

Glory be to God for dappled things...!

Cosmati Tiled Patterns for a Church Floor - designed by students from Thomas More College of Liberal Arts

I show these to For the final part of the spring semester, the students were assigned a project in which they were asked to design a church floor using traditional forms. I gave them two options. First, they could design a sanctuary floor, which must include the quincunx - four circles spinning out of a central circle. This is a geometric representation of the four Evangelists taking the Word of God, represented by the central circle, out to the four corners of the world through their gospels. Second, they could design the floor of a nave, the main body of the church, and this must employ a shape called the guilloche, which is a chain of interconnecting circles. In each case they had to follow the general design principle of ordering the space into regular orthogonal shapes and then filling in each compartment with a repeated geometric pattern. In the nave desings you can see that each has been sub-divided into a series of rectangles. I gave a selection of tradition romanesque geometric patterns for them to choose from.

The students whose work you see are, from top: Nicole Martin, Augustine Kamprath, Erin Monfils, Aleth Sargent, Teresa Webster and Cecilia Black.

Do You Need to Study Anatomy in Order to Draw the Human Figure?

Or...do you need to see people in the nude in order to paint them with their clothes on? In commenting on recent article someone based what they were saying on an assumption that in order to paint the human figure well, the artist needs to understand anatomy. He was referring to a naturalistic drawing method in which the artist painted a portrait by going through a process, in his mind if not directly on paper, of establishing first the positions of the skeleton, then  the muscle groups on the skeleton, then the skin is placed  over this and finally, if the figure was to be clothed, put clothes on him. There is a drawing method that is based on a process something like this. I have not studied it deeply, but was told that this is descended from the methods of Michelangelo. However, it is not necessary to do this. There is a method that is based solely upon training the eye to see well and the artist to represent what he sees. This is the method that can be traced back, some say, to Leonardo and Alberti. In this second method there is not need to understand how the human figure is made up anatomically, one simply paints what one sees. Great exponents of this method from the past have been to name just a few Velazquez, Van Dyck, Joshua Reynolds, John Singer Sargent. This is the method that is taught in the atelier that I attended in Florence, Charles H Cecil Studios and the one that Paul Ingbretson teaches at his Ingbretson Studio in Manchester, New Hampshire. Students from Thomas More College of Liberal Arts learn to draw at Ingbretson Studio.

So, to answer the question above, if one learns the Leonardo method and trains one's eye, if you the end goal is to paint someone clothed, there is no need to paint or even imagine them in the nude in the process...thank goodness.

There is an excellent essay about the history of this method, as it was taught at the Cecil Studios in Florence, written by Nick Beer, who used to teach there (perhaps he still does?) an has his own teaching studio in Salisbury, England called Sarum Studio. His essay is here. In it he describes the method, called' sight-size' and traces the history of it from the 15th century through to the present day.

All paintings shown are by the English artist Sir Thomas Lawrence.

Geometric Art Based Upon Islamic Art - work by students from Thomas More College of Liberal Arts

In the second of a series of three, here is some geometric patterned art done by students from Thomas More College of Liberal Arts during the course of the year as part of the Way of Beauty class. In this exercise I asked them to construct an eight pointed pattern that is traditional in Islamic art. I wanted them to make sure that they did an over-and-under feature as the 'tape' that defines the pattern cuts back across itself. Also, I wanted a pattern that had a unity in itself, and so they had to design a simple border for it and designs for the four corners. In the class that I teach, the Way of Beauty, this is an exercise that prepares the student for a larger project in which they are asked to design the floor of either a church sanctuary or nave using traditional Romanesque design patterns. These will be shown in the next posting in this series in a week's time.

We go to Islamic art for these exercises because this is a living tradition and there are text books that explain how to construct these patterns. It is not a new idea for Christians to look to Islamic culture - I have written a number of times in the past of occasions when this was done, most notably in a series of churches built in Sicily when ruled by the Normans in the 11th century. Islam took geometric patterned art from the Byazantine Christian lands that it conquered during its early expansion and then developed it into a distinct and complex form.

The student's whose work is featured are in the order that they appear: Cecilia Black, Amy Green and Nicole Martin

 

What Does It Look Like When We Participate In Christ's Glory through the Liturgy?

The Transfiguration as a symbol of the liturgy and our participation in the glory of Christ As I have written before, I recently read Jean Corbon's book The Wellspring of the Worship. In it Fr Corbon describes how an ordered participation in the liturgy opens our hearts in such a way that we accept God's love and enter into the mystery of the Trinity; in which we worship the Father, through the Son in the Spirit. This renews and transforms us so that we are rendered fruitful for God by participating in the glory of Christ. Some who read this might wonder what this glory as manifested in the people of the Church looks like. Can we really see people shining with light? I have not seen one person shining with light that I am aware of, so does that mean that none of my Christian friends are properly participating in the liturgy?

The answer to this might come through consideration of Corbon's description of the symbolism of the icon of the Transfiguration. It is an icon of the liturgy.

At one level the icon of the Transfiguration portrays, of course, the events as they happened in the bible. The composition of the icon shown above, by Theophanes the Greek, is ordered to Christ. He is flanked by the prophets Moses and Elijah who bow reverently. His appearance changes so that he and his clothing shine with uncreated light. Peter on the left is shown talking to Christ, he and the others all looking disoriented by what they are seeing and hearing. Three rays extend to the ears of the apostles as they hear the voice of the Father.

The biblical description of the Transfiguration, says Corbon, point not only to Christ's transfiguration but also to our own through participation in the liturgy. Through the liturgy, he says, the Church becomes the 'sacrament of communion between God and man' and as members of the mystical body of Christ we we partake of the divine nature becoming 'God as much as God becomes man' (quoting Maximus the Confessor). We participate in this glory. The disciples see Christ because they are raised up also in purity, symbolised by their going up the mountain. This enables them to see and to hear the divine light and voice. In this life we too by degrees, through our participation in the liturgy and participate in this glory and ascend the holy mountain. The complete transformation does not take place until the next life.

For Corbon, there is a threefold manifestation taking place here. First the revealing of Christ, second the purification of the hearts that enable us to see and grasp the truth; third and finally 'if we are given the gift of "believing in his name" and if we have received "power to become sons of God" (Jn 1:12), it is in order that he may send us into the world as he himself was sent by his Father. His Spirit gives us a new birth in order that his glory may be manifested to others through us and that they in turn may be transformed into the body of the Lord. This final extension of the life giving light is intended to communicate the reality that is the body of Christ and introduce into communion with it the scattered children of God.

This tells us how that in order to be agents of evangelisation, we must shine with the light of glory and it is through our ordered and active participation in the liturgy. 'If we consent in prayer to be flooded by the river of life, our entire being will be transformed: we will become trees of life and be increasingly able to produce the fruit of the Spirit : we will love with the very Love that is our God...This process is the drama of divinisation in which the mystery of the lived liturgy is brought to completion in each Christian'.

So do we really shine with light? I have never seen anyone shining like Christ as portrayed in these examples of the Transfiguration. If what Corbon says is true, one might at least expect to see a few halos or feint light of partial divinisation occasionally, if not full-blown transfiguration. I fact, I feel I probably have seen saintly people without knowing it. The fact that I do not see the light of glory in them is as much a reflection on me as the people I have met.

When I was learning to paint icons, my teacher who was an Orthodox monk told me a story that explains this. I cannot remember the detail but the essence of it was this: two saints met and as they spoke to each other, each saw the other shining with halos of uncreated light. They were both amazed and later described what they had seen to a third party. On hearing the tale from each one, the third party realised what was happening, that each was a holy man, shining with the uncreated light but unaware of it. Because of their holiness and purity they were able to see the uncreated light of the other. The third person, who knew both, could not see the light in either.

If this is the extent of it, then it doesn't help us much, for only the holy, the already converted, are open to being conversion because they are the only ones who can see the light of glory. However, through God's grace there are other ways that we grasp with our inner eye of faith the glory that shines out of those we meet. In my own conversion there are a number of things that brought me to the Church. One was the beautiful liturgy of the Brompton Oratory. But it was also the examples of the people that I met who had an effect on me: their conduct, the glint in their eye, the sense of peace, the dignity and calm with which they went about their business. Although they didn't speak of their Catholicism much - just the occasional reference to it - I somehow knew that these qualities in them. This drew me to them and because I wanted these things too, to the Church which was the source. Christ's glory was shining through them. It was one of these people who, in a matter-of-fact way suggested that I might like to visit a church in South Kensignton one Sunday 'but make sure you go to the eleven o'clock,' he said. I didn't know it, but he was directing me to Solemn Mass at the Oratory.

Corbon is telling me how I can be one of these people who is an agent of transformation in the lives of others. Because society is the vector sum of personal relationships, this is the answer to the transformation of society as well. In the final slim but powerful chapter of the book he describes how this is the answer to the transformation of every aspect of the culture, including even economics and injustice in the workplace (I was amazed by this and wrote about it in my blog here).

The second painting is by Fra Angelico. Interestingly in this St John is the one shown looking directly at Christ. One wonders if perhaps Fra Angelico is indicating that John has that purity of heart that enables him to look directly at the Lord. St Augustine tells us (cf Office of Readings, Saturday after Ascension) that the Church knows two lives: one is through faith, the other through vision; one is passed on pilgrimage in time, the other in our eternal home; one is life of action, the other of contemplation. The apostle Peter personifies the first life, John the second. Maybe this is what Fra Angelico is trying to communicate to us.

Western Iconography - work by students from Thomas More College of Liberal Arts

I am going to post short series of features that display the work of the students at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts done during the course of the year. The first will be figurative art from Western illuminated manuscripts. I have written before about how I think that this is something we should start to focus on in the Church in order to reestablish our traditions of sacred art. I tried it for the first time this year with the students and with, I feel, great success. The medium used is egg tempera on good quality watercolour paper. This is just the sort of work that students who attend the iconography class at the Way of Beauty Atelier, this summer can expect to be doing if they wish to. They are in the order they appear: St Christopher by Nicole Martin; St Jerome by Ian Kosko; St Maurice by Amy Green; and Daniel in the Lion's Den by Alison Trapp.

Of these students Nicole Martin has had some experience of academic art classes and arrived with some skill with brush and pencil. The other,  as far as I am aware are largely untrained prior to the class.

The Traditional Symbolism of Four

This can be something of interest to us and the basis of a powerful lesson for our children. Recently I wrote an article about the idea that the number five was symbolic of Our Lady, here. In it I raised a doubt in mind about the suggestion that it was part of the tradition. This doubt existed because of the lack of scriptural references or works of the Church Fathers citing it.

This can be contrasted with consideration of symbolism of the number four. Unlike the number five we have references from many different sources that point to a longstanding and firmly established tradition of Christian symbolism of the number four. We can also see how this symbolism has been reflected in the culture, through art for example. There are biblical references and the writings of the Church Fathers, some of which are included in the liturgy of the Church.

What brought this to mind was a passage in the Office of Readings from the book of the Apocalypse. The passage is from Rev. 7 and begins as follows: 'I, John, saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, so that no wind  should blow the earth, the sea or any tree.'

This statement links the created world, the earth, to the number four. We can also see how these expressions (the four winds and the four corners of the earth) derive these common usages. We can see also, why it would be natural to divide the points of the compass up into four quadrants. There are other references to the four winds in the bible, most importantly, Christ himself spoke of the four winds in Matthew 24 and Mark 13  in which we can see the parallels with the passage in the Apocalypse immediately, for example:

"And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." (Mt 24: 30,31) This seems to extend the number four to a way of meaning 'everywhere' because he is applying it here to heaven as well.

Famously, St Irenaeus wrote in the 2nd century AD in his treatise, Against Heresies:

"There are four gospels and only four, neither more nor less: four like the points of the compass, four like the chief directions of the wind. The Church, spread all over the world, has in the gospels four pillars and four winds blowing wherever people live. These four gospels are in actual fact one single Gospel,  a fourfold Gospel inspired by the one Spirit, a Gospel which has four aspects representing the work of the Son of God. These aspects are like the four cherubs described by Ezekiel. In the prophet's words: `The first had the like ness of a lion,' symbolizing the masterly and kingly role of Christ in priesthood; `the second had the appearance of an ox,' the beast of sacrifice, recalling the perfect sacrifice of Christ; `the third had the face of a man,'  undoubtedly referring to the coming of the Lord in human nature; `and the fourth had the aspect of a flying eagle,' with a clear allusion to the grace of the Spirit hovering over the Church. [cf. Ezek. 1:10; Rev. 4:7] The four Gospels correspond to these symbols. Christ is at the center of them. John actually speaks of his kingly and glorious Sonship to the Father in his opening words: `In the beginning was the Word.' [John 1:1] Luke begins with Zaccharias offering sacrifice. Matthew chooses first of all the Lord's human genealogy. And Mark leads off by calling on the prophetic Spirit which invests humanity from on high."

Then in art we can see many examples of painting of Christ in Majesty from Eastern and Western traditions portraying this. Furthermore, as I have mentioned before, here, the quincunx, used in many decorative patterns in Churches, particularly on Church floors always strikes me as a geometric portrayal of this. The quincunx is a pattern that comes originally from the Romans and was brought into the Christian culture.

Last week I wrote about the importance of praying the Liturgy of the Hours in forming the minds of children. I cannot overemphasise how much the liturgy teaches directly as well as nourishes spiritually. On any given day the scriptural passages are selected that have common themes and so parallels between, for example, old and new testaments that would be lost if I was only attending Mass. These are often emphasised further by the choice of passage from the Fathers in the Office of Readings. In regard to this particular instance, imagine how much of an impression it would make on any impressionable mind to hear this passage read and then as part of their art lesson for that day to hear the other references to it, then to asked both to copy an illumination of the scene from a traditional psalter and to construct with just straight edge and a pair of compasses the quincunx. This I suggest would connect forever in their minds the liturgy, the cosmos, the four Evangelists and their gospels, and the culture.

Images from top: Psalter of St Louis and Blanche of Castille, 13th century; Peterborough Abbey Psalter, 13th century; the De Lisle Psalter, 14th century; the final three photos are of Trinity Chapel in Canterbury Cathedral. The floor design date is uncertain, but possibly 12th or 13th century.

How the Way of Beauty Atelier has helped an Aspiring Architect

An architecture student who attended the Way of Beauty program at Thomas More College in New Hampshire tells how what he learnt about traditional proportion has improved his designs and enabled him to get a prestigious scholarship. Last summer an young Catholic architecture graduate, Geoff Yovanovic attended one of the Way of Beauty Atelier. As well as improving his drawing, he hoped that what he would learn might give him insights in to how architecture can conform to a culture of beauty; and give him an edge in his search for placements with architecture firms that had more traditional work. He was recently graduated from university, looking for a placement to work towards full profession qualification.

The lectures and talks were given helped him, but also because he expressed this interest to me. In response, I did my best to give him as much additional reading as I could and we began a dialogue in which we discussed how this information might be applicable to his particular situation. I encouraged him to believe that using traditional proportion would allow his work to stand out in the pack even if he was doing mundane projects, as I wrote in the article Proportion Adds Value to Property. He took what I said seriously, did work to learn more about his (even writing an article for this blog during the year, here). Then just this past week I got the following email from him describing his latest success which he attributes, in part, to what he learnt on the course. Here it is:

'Dear David

Last fall I did a little design exercise for a local priest friend who's parish is relocating.  At the time, there was no real design concept so he gave me permission to work on a conceptual design for a church and school on the stipulation that it was an exercise.  Having learned about Oxford University courtyards last summer from your class, I integrated into the design the academic courtyard with the chapel and cafeteria opposite from each other.  I explained to him the philosophy/ theology behind the arrangement.  I also integrated a garden into the design.  He loved the design, especially the courtyard and garden, and wanted to bring me on as the design architect for the project.  Unfortunately, once the diocese got involved, they brought in their "approved" architect and dismissed any idea the priest had of me as architect.

Tonight, I visited the church and saw the design which the architect had done, and there was no mistaking the influence that my exercise had.  The design, in particular, the site plan is quite different from the ordinary work in this architect's online portfolio.  The entire church campus in his design is built around the idea of the courtyard and garden. (I have attached my design exercise) And where the diocese and the earthly church did not compensate me, Christ has made sure that I was paid monetarily and spiritually.  I put this church design in my portfolio for graduate school, and I was awarded a fellowship with full scholarship and teaching stipend to Notre Dame.  I will begin at the end of July with a one month watercolor and hand drafting crash course.  Last summer, this course was taught by David Mayernik, who in emailing back and forth last fall suggested that I should apply to ND.

I hope you are doing well as the semester wraps up.  I just wanted to share with you how rewarding last summer has and continues to be.

Best Regards,

Geoff Yovanovic'

How Do We Develop the Cultural Sensibilities of Children?

I am regularly asked by parents how they can teach an appreciation of good traditional art to their children. One father recently went further than that and asked me if there was anything I could do to unculturate them in such a way that their sensibilities are in tune with a catholic culture in its broadest sense. These are the  ideas that I offered to him. 1. All traditional training in art involves drawing by copying from nature and then copying the works of Old Masters. Ideally children would do both but precisely what they try to draw depends on how old they are. Very young children could colour in line drawings based upon traditional forms - I illustrated a couple of books with this in mind, for example see Sacred Heart of Jesus Coloring Book. The more sophisticated might be able to try some tonal work on a copy of a baroque painting. A great start for anybody would be gothic or Romanesque illuminated manuscripts. These are line drawings with limited modelling.  They are great fun to draw and my experience is that Catholics relate to these Western icons more readily than to Eastern iconographic forms. If you to get hold of examples type 'psalter' into the Google Images search engine. You don't need to feel bound to sacred imagery. The psalters of this period contained pictures of the everyday life at the time. All the examples shown here are from the Westminster Psalter.

Drawing from nature, even for the most simple subject is more difficult. When the child is prepared to give it a go start with simple but interesting forms that don't require the child to summarise. So drawing a tree is very difficult, because it presents the problem of how to deal with thousands of leaves, but drawing a single daffodil is a bit easier; and a smooth ball or a cup easier still.

2. Pray the Liturgy of the Hours in the family. This is perhaps the single most important item. Where possible the father, as head of the family, should lead the prayer and it should be sung. Wherever possible the psalms should be sung and the prayer should be oriented towards sacred image or images. Interestingly, I made some suggestions to this person who asked my about how he might sing compline with his children. I sang some very simple tones which he recorded on his laptop so that he could learn them (they were from the selection I developed myself with instructional videos, here). Then I showed him how to point any psalm so that any of these tones could be applied to them. He told me later that his children loved to sing the psalms and were competing for turns to sing on their own.

3. As soon as possible learn to chant. Even if it is the simplest form of chant, and introduction to the eight modes will benefit the child more than conventional music, I believe. The intervals and harmonious relationship that are traced out in music impress upon the soul the essential patterns that comprise the beauty of the cosmos and which ultimately point, to use the phrase of Cardinal Ratzinger in the Spirit of the Liturgy, to the 'mind of the Creator'. Conventional music contains only two of the modes and so if the child is only exposed to the major and minor keys, no matter how beautiful the music, they will have a limited educational benefit.

What is Culture?

When I teach my class at Thomas More College I use a definition I heard in a talk from Fr Rob Johannson of the Diocese of Kalimazoo in Michigan about the Evangelisation of the Culture. He described it as that activity of man that reflects and in turn nurtures the core beliefs, values and priorities of the society. It is derived from the Latin word for field because traditionally it was always seen as something that has to be nurtured in order to preserve those core values, and hence preserve the society. When we ponder on this, we can see that all activity of man constitutes the culture. It is not just high art, it is the most mundane activities - how we pick up a knife and fork when eating, how do we design our road signs...even how do we drive. And here's another critical point: given that free will is involved, how we do these things can potentially be destructive to society, as well as constructive. I have never held the view, for example, that we must return to an agrarian society. Industrialisation, as high-tech as you like, can be a beautiful thing if it is the product of a truly Christian society. The reason that we tend to assume that it is intrinsically desctructive is that the industrialisation of the West has taken place in post Enlightenment society and so reflects that worldview - the result is ugliness and suffering. But it need not be so. The goal, I believe, is to transform what we have for the better, not to wipe the slate clean an try to go back in time. It is interesting to note, that modern agriculture bears the characteristics of factory more than the idyllic agrarian scene that we associate with the ancient and carefully preserved farmland of Europe that was given it's characteristic look long before the modern age.

Here is a passage that I read in the Office of Readings on May 1st, the Feast of St Joseph the Worker. It is from the pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world of the Second Vatican Council and has the subtitle 'The worldwide activity of man'. This describes the idea of all activities of man giving glory to God, just as the cosmos - the rest of His creation - does through its beauty and grace. Furthermore, that the cosmos is made better by this activity. It stresses the need for a connection between the faith and the wider culture. This goes back to liturgical reform, so that our participation in the liturgy, which I feel must include the liturgy of the hours, engages the whole person and then the Divine Beauty is impressed upon our souls and inclines us to order all our activities to it.

Here is the passage:

"Man, created in God’s image, has been commissioned to master the earth and all it contains, and so rule the world in justice and holiness. He is to acknowledge God as the creator of all, and to see himself and the whole universe in relation to God, in order that all things may be subject to man, and God’s name be an object of wonder and praise over all the earth.

  This commission extends to even the most ordinary activities of everyday life. Where men and women, in the course of gaining a livelihood for themselves and their families, offer appropriate service to society, they can be confident that their personal efforts promote the work of the Creator, confer benefit on their fellowmen, and help to realise God’s plan in history.

  So far from thinking that the achievements gained by man’s abilities and strength are in opposition to God’s power, or that man with his intelligence is in some sense a rival to his Creator, Christians are, on the contrary, convinced that the triumphs of the human race are a sign of God’s greatness and the effect of his wonderful providence.

  The more the power of men increases, the wider is the scope of their responsibilities, as individuals and as communities.

  It is clear, then, that the Christian message does not deflect men from the building up of the world, or encourage them to neglect the good of their fellowmen, but rather places on them a stricter obligation to work for these objectives."

Below is an 18th century factory building in England - hardly your dark satanic mill!

Should an artist copy from photographs?

Does the means invalidate the end? Shortly after moving the US I was contacted by someone I knew when I was studying if Florence. When I was in Florence Martinho Correia had been teaching the academic method at one of the ateliers in Florence. He contacted me because he had just converted to Catholicism and was keen to tell me about it. It was good to hear from him, especially with such good news! More recently Martinho told me about a two-week course he was offering, now back in his home town Calgary in Canada called Painting People from Photos. You can see the details here.

This raises the question as to whether or not an artist should paint from photographs? Many of those who were trained to paint from nature in ateliers would say categorically, no! to a highly trained artist working from photographs feels like cheating; and there is the sense too that the proper way to represent something is to percieve it directly (even though practically no icon is painted through direct apprehension of the saint).

I always used to think this until I reluctantly had to admit that if I had to make a living as a portrait painter I would probably have to paint from photographs some of the time. The advantage of photographs is that you don't require the sitter to be available as much and so you can produce a cheaper portrait. Also it is one solution to the problem of trying to painting subjects that won't sit still, such as children or animals - although perhaps if I had the skill of Sargent this wouldn't be a problem. I wonder also if part of the reason for my objecting to this comes from an instinctive reaction against modernity and the idea of a machine do what used to done by hand? On reflection, however, the only way to judge this is by the quality of the end result. If the final painting created by copying a photograph is indistinguishable from (or even superior to) that painted directly from a sitter, then all well and good.

There are some who think that the means is important, even if you can't tell the difference in the end. I do not hold to this (provided that the means doesn't lead the artist into sin). There is a similar discussion in regard to icon painting: many tell me that the artist must work from a dark to light (starting with a dark base colour and building the highlights on top) because it mirrors the theological point that the light overcomes the darkness. Aidan Hart firmly lays this to rest in his recently published book. He describes how modern X-ray analysis has shown that many ancient icons weren't painted in this way. Hart himself has put aside the light-from-dark method (along with its accompanying theology) for another on the grounds that he can paint icons of equal quality faster so sell more. This is an important consideration for a working artist.So back to photographs. The question that remains is this: can an artist produce equal results to those produced by observing directly from nature? The lens of a camera processes the image differently from that in the eye (its a bit like the difference between a wide angle lens and magnifying glass) and so a photograph looks different to a painting from nature. The stylistic elements of the baroque are developed so that when the eye sees the two-dimensional painting, the information as presented to and utilised by the mind, is the same as if it were looking at the three-dimensional object. Therefore, it is conceivable that an artist who understands these differences could adapt a photograph so that it contains those painterly qualities.

If we look at Martinho's examples below, he is most definitely not just copying the photograph. The background for example is totally different and has been skillfully applied so that light and dark contrasts vary according to the local tonal value of the subject. He would not know how to do this if were not highly knowledgable about traditional portraiture.

It is concievable that a new form could develop out of this, in which some photographic elements are retained, and some are changed. Even this is not a bad thing necessarily. Photography is a legitimate art form, so why not this hybrid?

All the examples shown are by Martinho.

Liturgy, Anthropology, Economics and Work

It seems at first an unlikely connection but it is made directly in a book called the Wellspring of Worship, by Jean Corbon. I read it because I heard Scott Hahn recommend it recently. It was Hahn's excellent book the Lamb's Supper which first made clear to me how the Book of Revelation relates the heavenly and earthly liturgy to each other and first opened the door to a sense of the cosmic dimension of the liturgy upon which so much of the Way of Beauty program rests. Corbon was a Dominican in Beirut who was an Eastern (Melkite I think) Catholic. He is also the person who wrote the section on prayer in the Catechism. Corbon wrote the following: 'Work and culture are the place where men and the world meet in the glory of God. This encounter fails or is obscured to the degree that men "lack God's glory" (Rom 3:23)... If the experience is to be filled with glory, men must first become once again the dwelling places of this glory and be clothed in it; that is why, existentially, everything begins with the liturgy of the heart and the divinisation of the human person.' Elsewhere he states that an absense of communion through Eucharistic liturgy 'that is at the root of injustices in the workplace, with its alienating structures and disorders in the economy.' (pp 225, 229)

Is the answer to economic problems and injustice in the workplace really the liturgy? This might seem a stretch. However, when one thinks of the nature of economics and the human person (anthropology) the connection seems less obscure. I first heard of the connection between anthropology and economics made when I attended a great series of economics lectures last summer run by the Acton Institute called Acton University in Grand Rapids, Michigan (there is still time to sign up for this year's if you're interested).

In the excellent introductory lectures the speakers described how economics is a reflection of network of social interractions. And the nature of these interractions derives from our understanding of the human person, which in turn comes from Catholic social teaching.

In our use of the terms here, a human person is distinct from an 'individual' (although in common language the two are often used interchangebly). A human person is always in relation with others, starting from birth. No one by choice disengages from society altogether (not even a hermit) and is happy. Indeed, we know who we are by the way we relate to others. If for example you ask people to talk about themselves they will talk about the relationships they have in order to describe who they are: where they work, the community where they grew up, the nature of their immediate family and so on.

This understanding of the human person has a profound effect on how we view what society is. A relationship of the sort we are now envisioning, when properly ordered (and of course it can be disordered) is always between two subjects ie two people freely cooperating as moral agents (freedom is as important a component here as morality). This is termed covenantal and is based upon mutual self-sacrifice (love) on behalf of the other. This freedom to respond as a person is one of the essential elements of society. Society therefore is the vector sum of the relationships within it. It is not a collective of self-contained individuals and their actions.

Covenantal relationships are founded on properly ordered love. When they occur God is present because God is Love. This Love always bears fruit and is creative: in a family for example the fruit of marriage is children. In his encyclical Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict used the term 'superabundant' to describe this creativity because it means something created out of nothing. Even in what we might view as less important relationships the same principles apply. In business, for example, a transacation properly ordered for the good of the other is creative too. It creates wealth. Although we don't normally associated love with business transactions, the Pope describes how this mutual interest in the other, which is what love is, is the source of the creative component in business.

Contractual relationships, in contrast to covenantal relationships, are founded on the alignment of self-interest. this is not to say they are worthless. In this fallen world, only a fool would attempt to run a business without contracts: but in practice the actual transactions will usually involve a mixture of the contractual and the covenantal activity. Even if bolstered by signed contracts, very few have absolutely no interest in the good of the other when doing business with them, even if it is only to try to consider how to make a product more valuable to a customer by suiting his needs better. Also, there must be a basic trust and mutual respect otherwise, for all the legal protection in the world, no business would be done. What the Pope tells us is that it is the covenantal aspect that is the wealth creating superabundant part. Presumably, therefore, if one wishes to maximise the creation of wealth this is the aspect upon which we should focus. I have written about this more here.

As with all things that exist in human nature, the essence of personhood exists in perfection in God in whose image and likeness we are made. However, there is only one God and unlike us He is complete unto Himself and does not rely on any external relationships in order to exist. Revelation helps us here: through it we know that there is one God and three persons in the Trinity, in perfectly realized relationship. As with the human person each person of the Trinity is by nature relational.

A Christian concept of the human person and his relationship with God, it seems to me (this liturgical aspect of the anthropology I am about to describe was not discussed at Acton) explains Courbon's quote which connects liturgy and economics: our joy as human beings rests in the nature of our participation in the liturgy. We are liturgical beings, first and foremost - we are made for the liturgy. Through the liturgy we enter into a truly personal relationship with God: we approach the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit. Put another way, when we participate in the liturgy we enter the mystery of the Trinity through the Church, the mystical body of Christ. When we do so, by grace, we can relate first, personally, to the Son as man; and second to the Father through the Son as God. The Son is one person, but two natures.

The point that Courbon makes very strongly in his book is the fact that through our participation in the liturgy and this personal relationship with Christ as man, we are divinized. To quote St Athanasius of Alexandria in the 3rd century: 'God became man that man might become gods.' We are not fully partaking of the divine nature in this life, but by degrees and to the extent that we actively participate in the liturgy, we are partially divinized in this life. Our ordered participation in any human relationships rests on the foundation of our relationship with God; and our relationship with God rests on our and the Church's participation in the liturgy. It is a lack in our participation that causes difficulties in our personal lives and our participatio in society. Any problem of modern society that we care to mention is at root a problem relating to our personal relationships, for personal relationships are the building block of society. Similarly all that is good in day to day mundane living can be so because of personal relationships ordered liturgically. Therefore, it is to the degree that we are divine, shining with that same light that was seen at the Transifiguration, that we can act as agents for a good society, a good culture, a good economy. Accordingly, this all depends upon our ordered and active participation in the liturgy.

As Pope Benedict points out in his book, The Spirit of the Liturgy, the schism between the culture of faith and the broader culture occurred in the 19th century. All of the preceeding discussion points to the conclusion that this occured due to problems with the liturgy at this time that remain with us to this day. The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council addressed this directly and the Reform of the Reform movement, which looks directly to Pope Benedict as its figurehead is aimed at a proper implementation of what this council called for in Sacrosanctum Concilium. In his analysis of the problems in the liturgy of the Church that caused this schism, presented in paper at a conference in 2002 which was attended by the then Cardinal Ratzinger, Stratford Caldecott points to a misunderstanding of the anthropology due to the influence of the Enlightenment. He describes how the traditional and scriptural view of man as body, soul and spirit had been usurped by a dualistic picture of man as body and soul only. I have written about this here.

Where does this leave us in regard to the economy? There are many today who point to problems, especially cultural problems in modern society which they feel have economic causes. So the sense of alienation of the person from society through variously too much work, the lack of it, or the wrong sort; the lack of genuine community in work that supports the family, and a culture bereft of grace and beauty with art that doesn't look like art at all, music that doesn't sound like music, ugly mass-produced goods and ugly houses, factories, civic buildings and churches. Many who have this view blame in varying degrees causes such as capitalism, the unfettered free market, mass production, industrialisation to name four.

I share this concern about the culture and the nature of work today, not as an economist about which I know very little, but just as someone who is part of society and works. But like Corbon I feel that the problem to be solved is liturgical and with all of these things the first question to ask is of myself: how am I participating in the liturgy? To me industrialisation and capitalism are not inherently bad, in fact quite the opposite. I think they are very good. However, because they developed in this post-Enlightenment age, the forms we now see them in lack something very important. That is a foundation of personal relations that are resplendant, at least to greater level, in the Glory of God. Only once we seek this union with God through an ordered and active participation in the liturgy can we  see a change. Any proposed solutions to these problems that are simply economic in nature, in the sense that they take no account of man as a liturgical being and his participation in the liturgy, will I think end in failure. It may solve the immediate problem, but will create others elsewhere. It is like the huge bump on the head of Tom the cat in the Tom and Jerry cartoons. Jerry aims to cure it by hammering the bump flat. He succeeds, but as the first bump diminishes with each hammer blow, a second appears and grows elsewhere by equal degrees.

My belief is that if we adopt a model of economics that is rooted in a liturgical view of the anthropology, then we can transform the industry and the economy into power houses for culture of beauty. It will never be perfect, but it can be a lot better. We do not need to go back in time to a medeival pre-industrial society.

What would an economy based upon a liturgical view of the anthropology look like? I have no idea. I am not an economist. My guess is that we don't have to specify it. To the degree that the liturgical transformation of man occurs it will happen organically as each personal relationship becomes more ordered and shines with the glory of God. If there is a role for the government here it is not so much and active one where it tries to direct human economic activity, but rather passive - to protect personal freedom so that each unique person can relate to others in the way that is natural to them. Through God's grace the creativity of man is boundless. The government, an institution, is less likely to be inspired in its actions, its seems to me, than some, at least, individuals; given that there are so many individuals and just one government. Therefore, the more the government takes an active role, rather than passive, the effect is likely to be that in promoting the one course of action that it favours, it will stifle the almost limitless variety of individual actions that do not correspond to it. This reduces the chance of a solution being found in any situation from high to virtually negligible.

To quote Corbon at greater length: "Work and culture are the place where men and the world meet in the glory of God. This encounter fails, or is obscured to the extent that men 'lack God's glory' (Rom 3:23). If the universe is to be recognised  and experienced as filled with his glory (see Is 6:3), men must first become once again the dwelling places of this glory and be clothed in it; that is why, existentially, everything begins with the liturgy of the heart and the divinization of the human person. We deal in abstractions when we say that a man is a microcosm, and we delude ourselves when we hope that man can divinize his world - as long as it has not become clear that God's glory is the source of his divinization."  (p225)

"For this light that transfigures both work and the created thing that work shapes is the light of communion.Like the eucharistic liturgy, the Eucharist as lived out in daily life is crowned by communion. At bottom, it is the absence of this communion that is at the root of injustices in the workplace, with its alienating structures, and of disorders in the economy. The liturgy does not do away with the need for our inventiveness in dealing with these problems. However, it does something even better: since it is not a structure but the Breath of Spirit, it is prophetic; it discerns, it challenges; it spurs creativity and is translated into actions. It cries out for justice and is the agent of peace." (p229)

Unfortunately, I am unable to make Acton University this summer as I am returning to England for the month. I will be sorry to miss it. I would recommend anyone interested in these issues of the economy, the human person and Catholic social teaching; and meeting many like minded people, to attend.

However, any who can make it to New Hampshire over the summer and are interested by these issues might consider coming along to our weekend retreats which are a combination of lectures about the cosmic liturgy and practice in accordance with the ideas above. See here  for more details about the Way of Beauty Summer Retreats.

The pictures are from various medieval manuscripts and psalters. The painting below is The Fight between Festival and Lent by Breugel

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