the spectrum heart cathedral system

Grandma's health has become suddenly critical.

The nurses say she might not survive the weekend.

Please pray for her. Whatever happens, God is with her, and with us, and He is listening to our cries.

Whether grandma stays on earth a bit longer or goes home to heaven, her life is in His loving care. And I am holding on in faith.

Grandma has been in the hospital for three days.

She had severe ascites to the point where she could not eat or drink, let alone move. They drained 4.5 liters of fluid from her abdomen and 500mL from her lungs.

Her body is in shock, to say the least. She was delirious all day yesterday. She's in so much pain. She's so frail. It shatters my heart.

I am running to Mass and then running up to be with her. Please, please continue to keep her in your prayers.

God is with her. May all our hearts and prayers stay with her too. 🙏💔


 

Take profound comfort in that.



Lord, I trust You. Forgive my worrying and obsessing. I surrender everything into Your loving, wise, and prudent care. Lead me in Your grace to seek only You, and desire only You. Amen.

"If I say hard things, it is not because I do not love you. I write as I do, because I desire your salvation. He is your best friend who tells you the most truth. Truth must be spoken, however condemning it might be."
-J.C. Ryle

 

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008) dir. Aditya Chopra

When you cannot sleep from sickness, and keep having nightmares... remember that God knows every sparrow’s fall– He holds You in His hands despite all nightmares that shake you, despite all sickness that torments you. God cares for you, most deeply and truly, especially in your illness– and right now, you share, however briefly and minutely, in the Cross of Christ. There is hidden blessing in this; embrace it with prayer, give Him your pain and fear and distress. He carries it with you. It will not last forever, take heart. There is sweet mercy even now. With Christ, there is a resurrection after every cross.

I say a prayer every night in the form if an old hymn, as I find it deeply beautiful, and it goes like this:

“Before the fading of light, we pray you, O Creator of the universe, with your accustomed mercy, to be [our] protector and guardian.
May our hearts dream of you; may they perceive you in sleep. And, with the approach of light, may they always celebrate your glory.
Grant us a wholesome life; restore our ardour. May your brilliance light up the over-powering darkness of the night.
Grant this, Almighty Father, through the Lord Jesus Christ, Who reigns with you for ever with the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

I hope you find some comfort in it, too. 🙏❤

I saw this and instantly burst into tears.

I’m so tired of the world lately. I’m so tired of being alive. And now I can’t even go to church, my one refuge. I spend my days sobbing uncontrollably. All I want is God. Everything else is just miserable vanity.

But this, this is just… joy. Jesus, my Jesus, arms open, welcoming me, light and flowers and beauty, all of it feeling exactly like a homecoming– so simple, but purely so, perfectly so. I cannot put into words how this makes me feel, what weeping bliss it breaks into my heart. I want to run into His arms and stay there forever, forever, laughing with final relief and love. I’m home. It’s over. I’m home with my Lord and the hells below will never touch me again.

God knows I don’t have much time left here. I know. I’m not afraid of death. I’m afraid of not absolutely inundating every millisecond of my life with God while I remain– which I haven’t been doing as the daily war of illnesses is hell and the lack of monastic-grade worship is making it more of a hell. But I don’t give up, God help me. This is my hope. This image is exactly the goal that keeps me breathing.

Jesus, when its time to come home, I’ll come home rejoicing. Until then, let me keep my heart fixed on that thought. Keep the lights on for me.

Mother Church of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits.  Contains the tomb of St. Ignatius Loyola and many other saints.

Just take a few minutes and genuinely look at each photo here. Take in the depth of beauty, skill, and devoted love evident in the grandeur of architecture and art. Look at the natural glory of the light and space from God’s hands that perfects it all. Realize that every inch of this gorgeous church exists solely for the praise and worship and love of God– a temporal glimpse of the eternal bliss portrayed in that third photo, in the presence of our beloved Lord forever.

I could legitimately live here.

As the Lenten Season of penance and prayer begins, Catholics are called again to tread in the Way of the Cross with Christ… Despite the crown of thorns and reed scepter, bother intended as mockeries of Christ’s claims, His Divinity and majesty are evident. The persecutors of the present day, who force Christ’s Mystical Body to undergo the humiliation and suffering of the road to Calvary, will also find at last that Christ is truly King and that His divine power cannot be overthrown by earthly tyrants.

His divinity transmuted everything He touched, awakening deeper truths within it all. Those thorns are a true crown, for through humility and suffering Christ became King over all the earth, whereas a crown of gold would have been hollow and superficial. That reed is a true scepter, a sign of power through the most weak and broken thing, the ability of God to reign both through what the world deems useless, and to rule over the world and its empty power with those same humble means.

Behold, the Man– the true Man and the true God, His revelations a divine paradox, understandable only by the pure and simple of heart! May we walk His holy road with Him this Lent, seeking to imitate His divine example of blessed poverty of spirit and body, in order to ultimately share in His boundless riches in heaven!

We are His Mystical Body even today, and we must embrace His Cross in our lives all the more ardently in these terrifying times, for it is only through uniting our sufferings to Christ’s Passion that we, through Him, can rise triumphant despite it all.

Running this through Google Translate gave me some unexpectedly poignant results…

“I am yours, take Me back.”

“I Will; Uphold Me.”

“I Am. Receive Me.”

Just… what truths. Take Christ back into your heart. Obey His requests and defend His Word. Christ is born, both in history and in our hearts, then and now and always– He Is, so embrace Him!

We are worth more than many sparrows to the Lamb of God.

We are His, and He has come to bring us back to Him.

The Nativity by Gari Melchers

This is the mysterious glory of the Incarnation– that God Himself became man, became a tiny infant, in our shoddy gritty shadowed world, in time and space and temporality.

Jesus existed as the Light of the World right there in those dusty streets.

He still does.

And just… look at Saint Joseph. Mary is resting, exhausted from the effort of birthing divinity, as any of our souls would and will also be… but now, there is the Child; here is the Child, Light shining out of darkness, and His foster father is just looking at Him. Wordlessly, he gazes on in awe and wonder, perhaps even with some fear over what this means, what this will bring, in this world– but above all, he looks at Jesus Christ with tender love. He probably doesn’t understand much of what’s happening but that doesn’t matter here. He trusts in God, and he trusts in this Infant before him, fragile and small and infinitely brilliant, impossible to comprehend but there, alive, breathing and loving and his child.

I really, really love this painting.

The Cathedral of the Annunciation, Moscow, Russia

I suddenly find this so fitting, the golden-white warmth and beauty standing strong amidst the frozen black trees, the frigid grey sky. Yes, I adore winter, but I adore it’s beauty, the glory of God’s creative dream manifest in it, whether or not I’m freezing as a result. It’s beauty is constant, despite all inhospitable conditions.

And that’s what I see here– the Annunciation, the proclamation of perfect beauty in the very midst of a tumultuous world, despite all pain and hardship and sorrow and fear that marred man’s heart, and would continue to do so. Rejoice nevertheless! Christ has come, and His glorious Presence turns even the coldest snows, bitterest winds, and harshest ice into things of gorgeous gratitude. Christ transmutes it all– unfailing light and warmth in the dead of winter– and it all began with the Annunciation.

A church, burned and destroyed by ISIS during the group’s occupation of the predominantly Christian town of Bakhdida, Iraq.

The town was under ISIS rule between 2014-2016 when it was liberated by the Iraqi Security Forces.

Try as they may to destroy the buildings, those who oppose Christ can never destroy the true Church, for it is founded upon unshakable truth and grace.

Even now, these ruins speak in tragic triumph to the soul of their message. Although no mass is celebrated there now, the simple sight of the altar and icons is enough to move a heart to resolute rejoicing, to worship and gratitude, to an act of loving recognition of God despite destruction’s futile efforts to silence it.

Ecce Homo, Titian
 

I love how His Face looks so bruised, like the red He is holding… and yet there is this profoundly sad gentleness in His eyes, and that divine yet softly ineffable glow around His thorn-wrapped Head.

Behold, The Man. I adore every portrayal of Our Lord Jesus like this.

Mouth of Hell. Speculum humanae salvationis. Bruges. Ca.1460 Chicago, Newberry Library

Hell is so disturbingly carnal. Demons are always naked and wrathful and salacious and hungry. Hell itself is portrayed with a literal mouth, gulping down the damned, as heaps of animalistic devils ravenously chew and bite and devour fallen souls. It’s blood and spit and sweat and screams. There’s too much flesh, too much physicality. Hell is something far too tangible.

Inferno, Canto 24. The Divine Comedy. Gustave Doré ~ 1885 

What scares me the most about depictions of hell is how many people are in it. All of them, wracked with blind fear and awful despair… oh how we must strive to lead souls away from such a fate!

The Fall of the Rebel Angels (detail). Matthias Berckmans ~ 1643 Kerk Sint-Gummarus [Lier] 

The textures in this are terrifyingly fascinating. That’s something I’ve noticed in art– that holy angels are textured by their beautifully billowing garments, while fallen angels are textured by contorted coils of flesh. Just looking at the writhing bodies here, the pain and rage of hell is nearly tangible.

Des douze Perilz d'enfer, Robert Blondel. Bourges ~ ca.1480 BnF • via Bibliothèque Infernale on FB

There is a harrowing power in the condensed message this painting. It’s something I love about medieval art like this– space itself is relative, so that the image becomes more symbolic than literal.

Here, we see Adam and Eve cast out from Eden, but they are entering what appears to be a castle gate– the doors to the “gilded prison” of the world. Furthermore, this is juxtaposed against the fall of the rebel angels, also cast out of God’s presence and into the world, their stolen kingdom and castle… a horrifying sight, marked by the angel’s flaming sword, as if in solemn warning to the first couple that disobeying God is never a small matter.

I also like that the blue of the angel’s wings reflects the distant glory of both heaven and the faraway scenery– something beautiful that we yearn for and must strive to eventually reach. Heaven is the faraway kingdom, and we only can reach it by means of God’s gracious help, for no fallen thing can ever crawl back up, nor can anyone cast out of Eden ever reenter. But, through Christ, we can be reborn, restored, and re-initiated into heaven’s pure light, and that is our greatest hope.

Knight, Death and Devil. Aleksandrov ~ 2012 • via Bibliothèque Infernale on FB

Ahead of every Christian soldier looms the fact of his terrible death, and behind him creeps the fact of his terrible past. Yet he must pay no heed to their whispers, their mockeries, and their attacks, for they only seek to drag him from the straight and narrow path. The Christian soldier must put on the full armor of God and march ever onwards in steadfast faith, knowing that in Christ neither death nor the devil hold any power over him.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me…

Tower of Babel. Aleksander Mikhalchyk. Ukraine 

At first glance, this great tower does seem wondrous– but keep looking, and its utter hollowness becomes obvious. This is nothing but a monument to man’s pride and selfish ambition, striving to reach the glory of heaven but never able to either achieve or imitate its beauty. It’s just rock and rubble in the end. Without God, even the most magnificent work of human hands is worthless dust.

Isaac Blessing Jacob, 1670, Bartolome Esteban Murillo

I’m studying Genesis 27 right now, and I dearly love how intimately this historic moment is presented here… how commonplace it feels, with the holy scene indoors juxtaposed against the unaware outside world. I also really love that Rebekah is there, too! I never imagined the scene that way, but it’s a notable and sweet addition.

The use of color and shadow in this is sublime as well. It’s a joy to the eyes, as much as its content is to the heart.

Descent from the Cross, 1311, Duccio di Buoninsegna

 

There is such tenderness in everyone’s postures, actions, and expressions here– but my heart is just breaking at Mary.

I can’t even find words to describe her, here. It’s beyond words. I could meditate on this moment of ineffably mournful yet triumphant love between her and her Son for a very long time.

I really, really love this painting.

A mosaic of The Last Supper from the Benedictine Sisters’ Clyde Monastery Chapel in Missouri.

Our Lord Jesus Christ (Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ), James Tissot

This image of Jesus is overwhelming; it moves me to weeping. It is so beautiful, yet so powerful. I am stunned with love of Him Who loves me.

Behold, our Lord, His Hands pressed to His Heart, His Face solemn and serious– hear His unspoken words, this physical declaration of His ultimate Incarnated Love! Understand the importance, the gravity, the ultimate end and goal of the Truth communicated here: God is Love, and Jesus is God, and Jesus is Love, and that infinite eternal Love is there, here, tangible, tender and true and powerful within that Heart, beating for us beneath His Hands!

He is our Lord! What is there for us besides Him? He is our joy, our hope, our peace– He is our Everything, and He wants to be our everything; He desires so strongly to give us all He is that He even became a man like us, to live with us and love us in an intimately human way, in a way so staggeringly close that, I wonder, if we truly grasp the hugeness of it. God became a man so He could live and die for love of us. His death, cruel and tragic, merciless and bloody, He suffered at will so that we could be pardoned and live. His death was and is the righteous sentence for our sins and God Himself, our Judge, became also our sole source of pardon before Him, because He loves us and wants us to live– truly live, free from sin, full of hope, and able therefore to love Him with hearts broken in reciprocal love.

I honestly could speak His praises forever from the surge of ardent love I feel in beholding this image of Jesus. He is my love and my life, and that’s what hits so hard about His Hands and Face here– He knows this, and He knows how crucial, how vital, how monumental the Truth He is not only indicating, but Incarnating, is… and He so tells us, in this gesture of unfathomably passionate love hidden beneath humility, that we must never take this Truth lightly.

Annunciation, 1897, Carlos Schwabe.

I love how Mary is almost completely covered by light and flowers here– it highlights her selflessness, her focus on God alone. Surrounded by emblems of holiness, purity, and fruitfulness, a water jug at her feet, Mary becomes the bringer of Living Water and Divine Light to the whole world, the sweet fragrance of heaven itself clinging to her clothes.

The Annunciation
Cornelis van Poelenburgh—1635
 

The composition of this is stunning– with the clockwise embrace of clouds and angels leading to Gabriel’s outstretched hand, but ending right at the door, leaving Mary framed by a complimentary curve of earthly shadow. It’s the only thing separating them.

But that door feels like Christ– it feels like Mary’s ‘Fiat’ that brought Him into her world, down from heaven and into the flesh. She became His door to earth, and through her, He became our door to heaven. But no one else could open it– not even Gabriel, nor any other celestial power. He only revealed this potential passage, through God’s ultimate question, and gave her the choice as to what to do. And she said yes– yes, I will open the floodgates of heaven! Yes, I will open the door for Him! And thus, the divine was wed to the human, and Jesus Christ became man, in the womb of the humbly blessed Virgin Mary.

Alfred Agache (1843 - 1915)

L'Annonciation, 1891

Mary, Gate of Heaven and Star of the Sea, surrounded by their infinite blue, the vine above her reaching upward to the unseen realms where the True Vine she was about to conceive also hailed from.

And Gabriel, humble and honored, dressed in surprisingly earthly tones, knows he is not the focus here. He signifies the bringing of heaven to earth, foreshadowing the Son of God being wrapped in flesh, indistinguishable from any other earthly man in mere appearance. But these two figures, messenger and Mother, know the Truth about to be manifested– that the human girl dressed in heaven’s hues was to conceive God’s Son Himself as a little boy, and so unite both their realms and realities… the grandest end, in the humblest beginning, in this small exchange between two souls before the endless sea and sky.

Annunciation (detail)
by Michael Wening

The Christ Child was conceived in Mary’s Immaculate Heart even before He came into her womb.

So it must be with us, spiritually– we, too, must echo our Blessed Mother’s “yes” to His birth in our lives, letting the Divine Infant be conceived in our hearts, letting Him become the Lord of our lives, bringing Him to all we meet with humble yet exultant joy.

Annunciation
Mikhail Nesterov,

I love the dignity Mary shows here. Her “Fiat” is given with total willful grace, total surrender in love. There is no hesitation, doubt, fear, or confusion in her here– only humble pious finality, her agreement being the unbreakable foundation of Jesus’s coming Gospel on earth. The fruit tree blooming above her prophesies this, the divine Fruit of her womb coming, too, from above.

Lastly, I also love how Gabriel’s wings are that same gorgeous blue, the hue of heaven that so embraces our Blessed Mother.

Anunciación de Jaime Serra (Zaragoza, ZARAGOZA).

It always stuns me when God the Father is portayed with Jesus’s face– because that’s literally the only visible face the Father has for us. Yes, we can recognize God’s Presence in all of Creation, and we can acknowledge Christ’s Presence in the hearts of those who receive Him, but to see the Face of God? In the Old Testament, that very visage would strike you dead– innocently but inevitably, as no mortal mind could even comprehend His Face, let alone lay eyes on something so transcendent, so holy, so Real.

And then the Annunciation happened, and immediately, God began knitting together a Face for Himself in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Jesus is how we can look at God. The Father is seen in the Son, both literally and figuratively. Jesus Christ IS the “Face” of our Creator, in such a directly intimate way it moves one to tears– for only through Christ’s eyes can God meet our gaze with the most incomprehensibly tender love.

crawlingtowardchrist:

Always remember why we are Christian. God’s sacrifice is so unimaginable, incredible, and more than any one of us could ever do. Today is the day that Our Lord showed how much He loved us, and how much pain He would go through to save us!


 

This is the heartwrenching, gorgeous, terrible and beautiful paradox of Easter– that this awful truth of Christ’s bloody yet loving sacrifice of Himself has purchased for us eternal life and salvation through Him, through that same love.

Christ Crucified is not an image of death. This image, this vision of unimaginable pain, is also a declaration of unfathomable love. Christ chose this suffering in order to deliver us from damnation. This is how dearly He loves us!

This same Jesus who submitted to death has conquered death, victorious in His humble obedience, and has so opened the gates of heaven for us to enter through His holy example. Let us rejoice in this greatest of hopes, and now let us allow Him to wipe away our tears, for He Who Died has now been raised from the dead and lives forever!

“And may the God of peace, who brought again from the dead the great pastor of the sheep, our Lord Jesus Christ, in the blood of the everlasting testament, Fit you in all goodness, that you may do his will; doing in you that which is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom is glory for ever and ever. Amen.” - Hebrews 13:20-21

(The Risen by Severin Benz) +

He is truly risen!!

I love the use of color and shape here– the hard square browns of the rocky tomb elicit thoughts of the Cross, especially with the blood-red shroud draped across it at such a sharp intersecting angle. Yet from that same point, Christ’s crucified foot rises above it now, with beautifully billowing waves of purest white, the robes of our Living God wrapped about Him like the very clouds of heaven. Around Him, the blues of evening twilight brighten into the golds of dawn, night into day, darkness into light, even as He transmutes death into life. His Wounds still visible, His Cross now held as the banner of triumph, Jesus has been resurrected, and now points us to the heavenly Kingdom, Himself the Way, Himself the Victory.

Alleluia!!

“Make me a channel of your peace!” -St.Francis of Assisi 

This is arguably my favorite image of any Saint and Our Lord. The tenderness and devotion of the Love between Christ and Christian, made even more powerful by the Cross and Blood, and driven home by the shared Stigmata, strikes straight to my heart.

I could meditate on this image for years.
 

Reblogging this for everyone else with a cross of chronic illness, its constant reminder of mortality, and the feelings of helplessness and despair that may bring. Never give up. Keep faith, keep hope, keep joy, all of it in God. Fix your heart so firmly on Christ that nothing can shake you, for His Love will hold you secure. Although our bodies are dying, and inevitably so, Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life, and through Him– in Him, with Him, for Him– we have the promise of life eternal.

Never give up. The end is not the end.

Gerard van Honthorst, The mocking of Christ, ca. 1616-7

I think about this painting a lot. I can’t get over the striking contrast between the contorted faces of the shadowed men, loudly jeering and laughing, and the utterly innocent surrender of Jesus Christ, completely unresisting, His Face soft yet profoundly sad in the light, even with a rope around His neck, even with the red thrust rudely into His Hand, even with His Head pierced and bleeding. There’s a genuinely visible divinity about Jesus here, hidden to worldly eyes, right in the midst of suffering and mockery. It’s very moving.

Saint Joseph, look, I’m tired tonight,

But somehow I think that you care;

For being a father and one who works

Are things that both of us do share.

It tires a man, yet the heart is high,

For, Patron Saint, it’s all worth while.

Its rich reward is a loving wife,

And joyous light in a child’s smile.

O, Father, Worker, bear with me,

Help me, Joseph, to do my best,

To love, protect my family

Till work shall cease and Heaven is rest.

[My beloved grandpa died two years ago this April. We found this little prayer card as we were cleaning his work desk three days ago. I daresay Saint Joseph did answer this sweet petition for him. He is indeed now at rest, and today I specially remember him with love as I share this with you. Happy Father’s Day to all. 💛]

tomicscomics: It’s too soon for him to realize it’s too soon.
 

I actually love this because yes, those wood & nails DID hurt Jesus eventually, but! He still followed His dad’s advice, in a profound way– Jesus was ‘bullied’ worse than ever when He was crucified, His feelings being not just hurt but His Heart entirely broken… and yet, Jesus chose the Cross. He chose it when He was hated by the whole world. Jesus chose the wood & nails when others may have fought back or cursed in vengeance. Jesus bore all the hurt Himself, so no one else would have to, and He did it out of mercy, forgiveness, and love.

Carpentry ironically proved to actually be the literal answer for everything, in that Cross. Father knows best– pun intended!

Richly detailed stained glass like this really pulls at my heart, as the stunning colors and intricate artwork serves to glorify the portrayed truth in such a special way.

The luxuriant hues of the women’s garments speak symbolically– Mary’s blue speaking of the Divinity in her womb, the white attesting to her virgin purity; Elizabeth’s red humbly attesting her mortal age yet the gold of God’s light lifting it to miraculous fruitfulness! Even their halos speak: Mary, green as the new Eve, the true Garden, crowned with the gold of God’s power alive in her… Elizabeth in violet, inspired by the Holy Spirit to praise the Son hidden before her, this same color even highlighting her right foot, turned towards His Mother, turning her aged life to a new eternal life in following this new and beautiful Way.

The angels quoting the Gospel on their banners are truly gorgeous, their faces peaceful yet joyful, their very presences unseen by the women in time yet proclaimed by us in recognizing wonder. They elicit feelings of mysterious bliss, a trembling awareness of the incomprehensible God at work in this seemingly mundane exchange, a conversation that the eyes of the world can neither revere nor respect, but which the Children of God see and know and love for its eternally profound significance.

Religious art is a magnificent gift to God’s people, a gift given by Him and for Him, for His glory and love and gratitude. May all artists in His Church use their talents wholeheartedly for this holy purpose!

This is, in my opinion, one of the most disturbing portrayals of this event. It immediately strikes you how YOUNG Salome is. This girl, practically a child, danced for her stepfather and his lustful guests, then had her own mother use her to request the coldblooded death of a prophet, even John the Baptist, the harbinger of Christ Himself. And this child likely was completely ignorant of the great evils she was both the key player in and enabler of. Had she no conscience, no sense of moral propriety, no questions of motive? But this painting answers that, to me. Look at her face, at her blankly passive eyes, a child doing what mommy and daddy want and simply pleased with that, yet fatally incomprehensive of the greater immoral underpinnings of her obedient actions.

That backdrop of utter detachment and empty motive makes John's doom all the more awful. The greatest Prophet's mouth is open just beneath Salome's ears, but death is not what silenced him. Those who could hear him would hear him even in death. No, John's words were smothered only by hers, her simple fatal and terrible demand-- for regardless of the truth, regardless of the bigger picture, she neither knew nor cared nor concerned herself with it... and so, here, on that wretched silver platter, he is just a severed head.

Saint Jerome Writing, 1605, Caravaggio

I feel such a deep love for Saint Jerome, honestly. Just these images of him… an old man, alone in dark silence, devoted to studying the Word of God. I live with my beloved grandparents so I know the wrinkled forehead, the bald pate, the worn and fragile skin, the white and fraying hair. I also know the strength that illumines even a fading body through faith. I see that sliver of a blessed halo above that downturned face in holy focus and I genuinely love this Saint, this old man who adores the Lord, and I cannot wait to meet him in heaven, and I pray to imitate him more while I grow older on this earth until then.

Dear Saint Jerome, pray for us!

“Our Lord sometimes makes you feel the weight of the cross. The weight seems unbearable but you carry it because in His love and mercy, the Lord helps you and gives you strength.”
-Saint Padre Pio

This is so true– and the sculpture illustrates it so beautifully! Look at our Lord, how He leads us with gentle but unshakable reassurance! To imagine myself in Padre Pio’s place… it actually makes my heart ache with love. What joy there is to carry the Cross with Christ! ❤🙏

 

I never tire of meditating on the mystery of Christ’s Agony in the Garden. It’s heartwrenching and unfathomably deep. Christ, the Son of God, was in agony over what He was about to suffer for the salvation of mankind– He was going to do it, He wasn’t running away, but He asked His Father for mercy nevertheless. “If this cup can pass from me…” and He wept and sweated blood and pleaded with His friends to keep Him company and He suffered.

It’s… too much for my heart sometimes. “Not my will but Thine,” and He meant that sincerely, but it didn’t abate the pain, and that means a great deal to remember. Seeing my Savior like this, crumpled in sobs and desperate prayer, awaiting His own gory death… the Creator of the World Himself, trembling, helpless, fragile, and small in the shadows of the darkly knotted trees… it’s truly a divine mystery. And it’s just as beautiful as it is sorrowful.

Detail from Christ Crowned With Thorns, Dieric Bouts, 1470.

I am sure our Savior wept, silently perhaps, but still with His entire aching Heart, during the tortures of His Passion. He incarnated partly to share our weaknesses and pains, to be able to fully understand and assist us in our own torments… and He incarnated entirely to die. His saving death gives us life– but so, too, do His Tears, in a less literal way. Jesus wept because He felt every pain we have ever felt. He knows our afflictions. He knows how much it hurts. And so His Holy Tears flow with His Precious Blood, as He bears the Crown of Pain itself, the King over even those things that hurt us. He is Lord over all, and there is not a single thorn in our lives that He has not felt first. He is with us in every ache, crying with us, and loving us entirely.

Won’t you comfort Him in His sorrow, He Who wept to comfort you?

Simon Marmion - Man of Sorrows (c. 1460). Detail.

Presented so starkly, it becomes an honest shock to remember that nails were hammered through His Holy Hands. Nails! Big metal nails, sharp and solid, punched through flesh and sinew and bone and into raw wood… and then, after hours of world-changing agony, they were pulled out again– what an awful yet holy task!– leaving garish wounds, big bloodied holes, in their place.

Have you ever bled so? This sight, of red running down His arms in fat sticky drops, have you ever suffered similarly? True, nothing you have endured can compare to this, these sacred traumas, but can you empathize? Can you feel a twinge of shared suffering? Does your heart wince, imagining His great anguish, your own scars a mysterious reminder of His?

And His Pierced Side… oh, no human soul can fathom!

Look upon Him and tremble with grieving love! Weep with sorrow; reach out to comfort Him Who was crucified without consolation for your sake! We all suffer our splinters and sores, and we know how bitter injuries can be, so give this solace to your Savior, that you will endure your future pains with humble remembrance of His!

“Be not faithless, but believing.” (John 20:27) Reach out and feel His Hands, even here, even now. Behold thy Lord and thy God!

The Flagellation
This rare 18th century Spanish colonial figure represents The Flagellation of Jesus Christ. Hand carved and polychrome painted wood with inset glass eyes.
Unknown Artist.
 

Look at His back!!

His shoulders, His knees, from being crushed to the ground in agony, His shoulders, from the edges of the scourge…!

The blood He shed for us is unfathomable and it breaks my heart in half.

My Lord, what are you thinking, in such shocking pain, in such awful sorrow? What has moved your holy Face to such pensive distress?

O that I, too, should share Your grief-stricken meditation, in holding the terrible sight of Your wounds in my heart!

Every time I remember that Jesus kept His Wounds it just floors me. Our Savior is a Crucified Savior and that is so important to knowing Him, to understanding why He was born, and what He does for us now in Heaven.

I just see this, those horrible holes, dripping with dark blood, aching in agony, and I realize there is no bitterness or despair or complaint in it at all– it is Love, only Love, that suffered and died to save us from the pain of sin, to deliver us from damnation: a doom so unbearable that God Himself endured unbearable pain in order to destroy the very root of it.

Jesus keeps His Wounds to remind us that it is finished, that His Death is our Life, and His Blood is our Healing. What trembling joy and holy fear a heart must feel upon beholding them!

Christ in the Desert [1872]; Ivan Kramskoi [1837 - 1887]

This is forever one of my favorite paintings.

Look at that horizontal line of clouds, so low and dim; look at that bleak and rocky ground, so harsh and grey… Look at our Lord’s face. Look at his hands. Look at the way his robe is pulled tightly, as if against the cold desert night. I swear I can feel the silence, the vastness, the time… this artwork speaks volumes without a word. It is heartachingly beautiful.

Daniel Gerhartz

Every time I see these paintings, the sheer tender beauty of the light and color makes my heart ache in awe. The jewel tones are so precise, so stunningly vibrant amidst backgrounds of warm neutrals that they feel like rainbows gleaming in a dun sky. The brushstroke technique adds to this– everything is soft around the edges, watery like looking through tears, blurred like a dream right before waking. It feels specially transcendent because of this, as if its glorious subject matter is too magnificent to portray in any solid human manner or method… and indeed, isn’t it so? The radiance of Christian religion glows with divinity in every blessed item and action so devoted to it; it is perfectly fitting that any work of art striving to capture the precious essence of that worship would ultimately turn out like this– hazy with holiness, giving us a trembling but true glimpse of heaven’s splendor beyond the veil.

Polyptych of the Resurrection Virgin Annunciate, 1522, Titian

“Behold, the handmaid of the Lord.”

The great love, purity, and humility of our Lady is somehow so visible here, in the touching and sincere simplicity of her pose– the bowed head, the downturned eye, the hand to her heart. And yet her arms are open. She does not hide herself, nor turn inwards, but offers herself totally to God. So it is that the virginal red of her humanity is embraced by the blue of Divinity, with the pure white triangle of the Trinity fixed like a seal upon her heart… and the Mother of God shines as the morning star out of the darkness of the world.

“Be it done to me according to thy word.”

God loves us all. He doesn’t see political parties. He sees the heart. And even the most hardened sinner, even the most lost soul, has a chance to be redeemed and saved through His Divine Love and Mercy, if only they would believe in His Truth, and humbly submit to His teaching!

So remember this before you are tempted into judging politicians as people. They are sinners, just like us. And they are still precious to God, just like us. We are all at His mercy, and indebted to His Love. So let us honor Him by treating each other with merciful love, too.

Vote for policy, not personality– and above all, vote according to Christ.

HOPE IN GOD 

Death can shatter many hopes; it cannot break the Ties which unite an Immortal Soul to the Souls which it loves immortally.

The Temptation by the Devil , 1865

Gustave Doré, 1832-1883

 

I really love this, actually. There’s a symbolic visual truth to it that really strikes me.

Here we have Satan, fallen angel, self-proclaimed illegitimate prince of the earth, brazenly and bitterly trying to get Jesus to worship him– Jesus, the King of all worlds, the Creator of life itself, the very source and summit of incorruptible light– and yet, the devil is at Christ’s feet. He’s on his knees, furiously imploring perhaps, goading and sneering... But Jesus doesn’t even look at him. He knows that the devil has no right to sell His own planet back to Him.

And honestly, it’s apparent. The devil gestures to his “kingdom,” but all we see is a tiny huddle of man-made architecture swallowed up in miles of untouched green. And so is the truth. Amidst the wilderness of God’s natural art, all of man’s achievements– all the devil claims to control– will ultimately be reduced to the rubble and dust it came from, and time will proclaim God’s endless sovereignty. The devil has nothing to sell. And truly, Jesus knows it– as surely as He knows the birds flying free, which He protects to the last tiny chick, and as surely as He knows the sun, blazing gloriously behind Satan’s ignorant claw, testifying to the eternal light that will defeat him with every sunrise. Jesus owns the hills, the sky, the clouds, the dirt, the dawn, and the devil himself. But there is one last, heavy, hidden truth.

His Holy Face shining with the promise of true kingly glory, Jesus looks away from the devil’s spoils… and wreathed in the red that will one day purchase the one thing He wishes to claim irrevocably as His own special possession, he looks to us. And His eyes say, you are worth the cost.