COMMUNITY CHAPTER SERMON - Fr. Raymond
below.
Preview | Saint John the Baptist: From Birth to Beheading | National Gallery, London
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COMMENT:
12th Week Ord Time
Wednesday 24th
On the Solemnity of the Birthday of St. John the Baptist, it is the 56th anniversary of Ordination of Priesthood. The 1959 souvenir cards long gone. The motto words of Psalm 26(27):4, remain at heart.
There is one thing I ask of the Lord
for this I long,
to live in the house of the Lord,
all the days of my life,
in the savour of the sweetness of the Lord,
to behold his temple. [Ps. 26:4, Grail 1963]
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http://www.athanasius.com/psalms/psalms1.html#27 |
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The most interesting subject for the Birthday of St. John of the Baptist in the Leonardo Charcoal Cartoon for the Virgin and Child with St. Anne and the Infant St. John (Burlington House, London).
COLORPLATE 33
Painted 1499-1501
BURLINGTON HOUSE CARTOON (VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. ANNE), detail
Charcoal heightened with white on brown paper
National Gallery, London
The face of the Virgin in the Burlington House Cartoon accords with the type Leonardo had established seventeen years before in the Virgin of the Madonna of the Rocks in the Louvre (colour plate 18), yet it betrays the deep changes these long years had wrought in his art and that the other Madonna of the Rocks, the London version, first began to reveal. Something of that sweet harmony and well-being have survived, but now the face is that of a mature woman and is suffused with feelings and compassion that arc the direct result of an emotional and human concern with the actions of the children. Realistic behaviour has replaced elusive ethereality. The Virgin's head is voluminous and its structure more systematically defined than in Leonardo's earlier work. Moreover, the slight incline of the head is no longer a convention, as it was in the Madonna of the Rocks, but the result of a conscious movement. However, she still has the force of an idealized and universal presence.
The contrast between St. Anne's strange face and the pleasantly candid one of the Virgin could not be more striking. The older woman's narrow, deep set eyes, her deliberately compressed lips, and her curious mannered smile give the face an animation and a seer-like wisdom befitting one who attempts to communicate to a contented Virgin the dreadful knowledge of her son's future sacrifice. Leonardo's persistent search into the realm of the inner mind has given him access to emotions and psychological states that have now a mystical substance, which acts to expand upon and enrich the mere human condition.
Professor Wasserman
Leonardo
COMMUNITY CHAPTER SERMON - Fr. Raymond
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Fr. Raymond ....
To: Donald ....
Sent: Tuesday, 23 June 2015, 10:47
Subject: ST JOHN BAPTIST
From: Fr. Raymond ....
To: Donald ....
Sent: Tuesday, 23 June 2015, 10:47
Subject: ST JOHN BAPTIST
ST JOHN THE BAPTIST
When we call St John the Baptist the Precursor of the Lord we immediately think of the way he prepared the way for the Lord’s coming. We think of: The example of his ascetic life; and we think of his fearless preaching; a preaching that was to cost him his life. But there is another way, and perhaps a much more important way in which he prepared for the Lord’s coming. This was not so much by what he did, or by what he said, great as these things were, but it was also by the very fact of just who he was, and by what he represented in God’s great plan for the accomplishment of the world’s salvation; God’s great plan for the preparation of his people; to enable them recognise and accept the Messiah when he came.
Jesus hints at this when he says of John: “Of men born of women there has risen none greater than John the Baptist”. In these words Jesus proclaims to all the world that the Person of John was the climax of all that the Old Testament was meant to be. John was its ultimate and perfect fulfilment. Sanctified in the womb, he stands in the Old Testament in something the same kind of way as Mary, sanctified at her conception, does in the New. As Mary is the ultimate fulfilment of the New Testament children of God, so John is the ultimate fulfilment of the Old Testament children of God. God’s plans were never frustrated by man’s infidelities in the Old Testament. The Old Testament was not a failure. John the Baptist brought it to its perfect fulfilment. - “look! There is the Lamb of God!” He cried. At that moment the thousands of years of Old Testament History were shown to be fulfilled.
This link between the Old Testament and the New is seen dramatically proved and portrayed for us in the strikingly parallel stories of the Annunciation and the Birth, the Passion and the Death, of John and of Jesus, side by side in the Gospel stories.
So when Jesus tells us that there has risen no man greater than John he is not saying necessarily that John is greater than Abraham or Moses, let alone his Blessed Mother. He is rather saying that John’s greatness is not so much a personal one as one of his role and office in the history of salvation. Jesus then goes on to speak of you and me, the children of the New Testament. We are all greater than John, he says, and this in so far as it is a greater destiny to know just who and what the Messiah is and to be a part of his kingdom than it is to be the greatest of the prophets who could only look forward to some dim distant future coming.
This greatness of John, then, as the personification of the ultimate fulfilment of the Old Testament means that the whole of the Old Testament is one great preparation for the coming of Christ. All its wonderful stories, all its great characters are meant to illustrate, in one way or another the person and mission of Christ. If we stick to the New Testament only then we cannot fathom the full depth of the mystery of Christ; We will miss so much of the meaning to be drawn from the beautiful and powerful imagery of the Old Testament as it gradually infolds for us the heights and the depths of the riches of Christ.
Therefore when St Jerome gave us his famous saying that “ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ” he was not referring to the Gospels only but also to the whole of the Old Testament as well, right from the Book of Genesis through to the Baptist himself who straddles both Testament like a great Colossus.
Sancta Maria Abbey: http://www.nunraw.com.uk (Website)
Blogspot :http://www.nunraw.blogspot.co.uk, Doneword :http://www.donewill.blogspot.co.uk |domdonald.org.uk, Emails: nunrawdonald@yahoo.com, nunrawdonald@gmail.com
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