Catholic Family Vignettes

Vara, a new found friend, has forwarded a few incredibly beautiful image files from Russia. Here are just a few:

Karl Bryullov - Sisters of the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Rome


Pavel Ryzhenko-'He Chose Faith'!-a powerful portrayal of St George


Dmitri Petrov - The Prayer Of An Expectant Mother



I have a few other lovely images, which I will post later. Thank you so much, Vara, for your generosity in sending these! Read more!

I'm not sure how many of you have examined the banner image that introduces this blog. It is a Pre-Raphaelite work by John Everett Millais titled Christ in the House of His Parents. This particular painting is very dear to me. The rich imagery and symbolic realism invite the viewer to a deeper contemplation of the events unfolding.

I am certainly no critic, nor am I particular well-versed in explaining "typology." Here is an excerpt from an excellent essay by Professor George P. Landow, Brown University, which provides an outstanding explanation of the various aspects of this painting as it pre-figures our Lord's Passion and Resurrection:

Millais's Christ in the House of His Parents (1850) and Hunt's The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple (1854-60) exemplify the early Pre-Raphaelite use of typology as a basis for symbolic realism. Millais, who was inspired by a High Anglican sermon in Oxford to paint his picture, provides an instance of Tractarian use of such symbolism, for his representation of an imagined event from the life of Jesus serves as an image of Christ as priest and sacrifice. The painter has represented the boy Christ immediately after He has wounded Himself trying to remove a nail from a board with pincers, and this event, like the cornerstone in Tintoretto's Annunciation, turns the coarse details of genre painting into spiritual fact. Jesus, whom Mary comforts, holds up His hand so that both Joseph and the spectator can see His wound. The blood on His wounded palm and that which has dropped upon His foot presents a prefigurative image of both the Crucifixion and the resurrected Christ presenting Himself to the eye of faith in the form of the Man of Sorrows. (Compare, for instance, Albrecht Dürer's Man of Sorrows with Hands Raised [c. 1500], an engraving upon which Hunt may have drawn in designing The Shadow of Death. According to him, he and his friends studies such earlier engravings in the British Museum Print Room, and so he and Millais would have encountered various versions of this subject.) Many of the details in Christ in the House of His Parents also prefigure the passion and death of Christ and thus reinforce the meaning of the picture's central image. The pincers and nail toward which Anne extends her hand are emblems of the Crucifixion, and the carpenter's tools and ladder on the wall behind Jesus also remind us of this event. Similarly, John's coming to Christ with a bowl of water probably serves as loose types of Christ's baptism and also of the vinegar and gall offered to Him when He was dying on the Cross. It is even possible that it could allude to the water and blood which poured forth from Christ's side when pierced by a spear — but here the possibility seems rather distant indeed. The partially woven basket on the painting's extreme left suggests both that the total scheme of Christ's atonement is not yet complete and that these reeds prefigure those mockingly thrust on Christ as King of the Jews. The bird perched on the ladder symbolizes the Holy Ghost, the sheep outside all human beings, and the workbench the communion table.

Whereas one set of types and symbols prefigures this imagined event's significance as a type of the passion and death of Jesus, another makes the specifically High Church interpretation of them in terms of an ordained priesthood. (Alastair Grieve suggests Tractarian readings of this painting in "The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Anglican High Church," Burlington Magazine 111 (1969): 294-95; see also G. B. Tennyson's, "Tractarian Aesthetics," Victorian Newsletter 55 (1979): 8-10.). The Tractarian notion of "reserve," which is based on the belief that sacred truths must be protected from profanation by the uninitiated, finds one of its embodiments in this party's emphasis upon devices separating laity and priesthood." Tractarian reserve, which colors High Church sermons, devotional poetry, and church design, here takes the visual form of a composition that separates the sacred interior inhabited by the Holy Family from that exterior space containing the sheep. Drawing upon older Northern Renaissance compositional schemes which derive from depicting the Virgin and child against a Cloth of Honour, Millais sets this event from the childhood of Jesus against a central panel surrounded by two openings into the distance. He then sets his image of the wounded Jesus close to the picture plane against the picture's central panel. Like Hunt's The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, Millais's painting partially surrounds the young Jesus by a group of symbolic figures, and although Mary stands closest to her son in both pictures, she takes on a different meaning in each. In Christ in the House of His Parents, Mary joins her son as an object of veneration, for her sorrow at the young boy's wound prefigures greater sorrow in the same way that the wound serves as a type of the Crucifixion. In fact, Mary, who does not even embrace her son, appears to adopt a prayerful, reverent attitude as if she understands the full significance of this apparently everyday event -- as she does in similar matters in James Collinson's "The Child Jesus. A Record Typical of the Five Sorrowful Mysteries" (1849-50), an almost exactly contemporaneous poem written by another member of the Brotherhood. [Follow for a detailed discussion.] If Mary's attitude or pose is thus taken as one of sorrowful prayer, it may also be understood to prefigure her conduct at the foot of the Cross. In contrast, Hunt's portrayal of Mary and her son makes it clear that, however well-intentioned a mother she is, she takes her place with those in the temple who do not understand her son's message or significance.

Whereas Christ in the House of His Parents makes Tractarian emphases upon separation of priest and laity and upon the high spiritual status of Mary, Hunt's The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, which obviously does not support Mariolatry, presents an Evangelical rendering of scriptural events. First of all, like the Evangelical preacher who emphasizes the importance of meditating upon the Bible's literal meaning or narrative, Hunt devotes much more personal energy and pictorial emphasis than does Millais to elaborate archeological reconstructions of dress, custom, architecture, and facial type. Moreover, because Hunt accepts that the literal significance of a biblical event includes the mental experiences of those who participate in it, he includes an entire gallery of psychological portraits, and these also serve to prefigure the ways in which men continue to resist Christ's message. In William Holman Hunt and His Works: A Memoir of the Artist's Life, With Description of His Pictures (London, 1860), which the painter's friend F. G. Stephens wrote at the request of Gambart, the art dealer, several pages are devoted to explaining Hunt's elaborately detailed psychological portraits (63-70). As I have argued elsewhere, one can assume that Stephens followed Hunt's explicit interpretations of his own work.

Whereas Millais relies upon an assemblage of types within Christ's life to prefigure the Saviour's death and passion, Hunt uses a similar gathering of images to present a more original interpretation of the person and message of Christ. In presenting that moment when Christ suddenly recognizes who He is — and that He has come to fulfill type and prophecy — he presents a specifically Evangelical interpretation of older pictorial themes. Like most Evangelicals, Hunt markedly deemphasizes the role and importance of Mary, and so The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, which presents what is essentially Christ's "conversion," provides an image of God's appearance in history. In other words, in a characteristically daring manner Hunt reinterprets the traditional theme of the dispute with the doctors and thus produces an Evangelical analogue to the Annunciation to Mary. Furthermore, Hunt's painting not only in this way reshapes and reapplies an older pictorial convention, but it also emphasizes another Evangelical doctrine, the importance of preaching the Gospel, for Christ is shown in the midst of reinterpreting the Law when His parents arrive.

Like Northern Renaissance images of the Annunciation or Adoration which use types to transform these earthly scenes into emblems of the Eternal Mass in Heaven, Hunt employs a wide range of types to turn this historical moment into a privileged instant during which the temporal and eternal coincide [See Lotte Philip, The Ghent Altarpiece and the Art of Jan van Eyck (Princeton, 1971), 56-7, 61-4; and Shirley Neilsen Blum, Early Netherlandish Triptychs: A Study in Patronage (Berkeley, 1969). Landow, William Holman Hunt, 101-2, 129, 131, explains this Victorian's attempt to find equivalents to older applications of this form of symbolism.]. As one who placed little emphasis upon the sacraments, Holman Hunt was unable to devote himself, like Millais, to types which could create images of the Mass in this traditional manner, and so he dedicated much of his efforts in religious painting to finding modern equivalents for older themes. None the less, he still employs typology, much as had Van Eyck and Memling, to surround a central image with scriptural symbols that serve to place it in a privileged, sacred time and space. For example, in The Finding, which combines Evangelical emphases upon preaching and conversion, Hunt includes types that comment upon the central encounter. Thus, the cornerstone originally rejected by the builders appears in the courtyard at the right side of the painting, and one is meant to perceive that the completion of the old dispensation which takes place in physical form outside the temple is also taking place in spiritual form within. Similarly, just as someone tries to drive out a dove, which represents the Holy Ghost, the Rabbis are trying to drive out Christ's new spiritualization of the Law. The blind beggar outside the door advances the picture's meaning in two ways: first, he serves as an emblem of the blind ignorance within and, second, he is a type of the blind given sight by Christ. The lamb brought to slaughter over the objections of its mother offers another double significance: it parallels the relation of Christ and Mary and it shows Christ, the true sacrifice, coming to complete and abrogate the Levitical law. Even the cross on Christ's belt, which had been an ornamental design since ancient times, becomes endowed with new significance in this context.

Typology, which has the intrinsic capacity to bridge pictorial realism and complex iconography, also serves to endow the scene represented with imaginative grandeur. Both Millais and Hunt produce realistically conceived representations of events from Christ's youth. Although only Hunt's subject receives the sanction of scripture, both use types to make the events they depict seem central moments in human history. Furthermore, both Christ in the House of His Parents and The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple use typological images to set their major actions in several temporal contexts. Millais's painting of the young Christ thus participates in several times: in that of the tormenting and Crucifixion of Jesus, His resurrection, and His presence in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Hunt's painting, which, unlike that of his friend, employs traditional Old Testament types, similarly participates in several times, since the images of lamb, cornerstone, and blind man set these events unfolding before our eyes within the context of Christ's later ministry and death as well as within that provided by the Church's later preaching of the Gospel. Furthermore, Hunt, who often tends to conceive himself as an artistic Messiah, also probably intends his image of Christ's discovery of His nature to apply to the self-recognitions of all those who would bring new truths to unwilling listeners. Read more!

Have you ever wondered what happened to the lovely high altar in your old parish church? Or perhaps the statuary has been replaced by something a bit more modern and "up to date"...where are the old statues? Do you remember the old school and the convent beside it? After they were torn down, what became of all the furnishings and religious art?

It is quite possible, many of these items have found a home in the Jubilee Museum at Holy Family Church.

In an effort to preserve the rich heritage of tradition and beauty that is the Holy Roman Catholic Church, Fr. Kevin Lutz established the Jubilee Museum in Columbus, Ohio. Here is a brief statement taken from the above website:

“The Jubilee Museum at Holy Family was established in 1998 by Fr. Kevin Lutz, current pastor at Holy Family Church. Housed in the former Holy Family High School, its rooms contain many fine examples of Catholic religious artifacts, which include paintings, statues, vestments, altars, as well as items found in the home for personal devotion.
The inventory was acquired from churches and schools that have closed or from private individuals. For his efforts in preserving Catholic Church art and traditions, Fr. Lutz was recognized by Pope John Paul II, and appointed to the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Catholic Church in May of 2000.
Some of the money generated by the museum helps to support the works of charity in the parish. “

A seminarian from the Diocese of Columbus who has been working closely with Fr. Lutz, has produced a slideshow that provides an excellent example of just how much we have lost, in the destruction of historic churches, chapels, schools, orphanages and convents:


If you happen to be in Columbus, call Father and set up an appointment to tour the Jubilee Museum. It is a lovely reminder of what once was and what can yet be...thank you Father, for preserving the past! Read more!

"...what we think, how we fill our mind, determines the state of our being." What a powerful reality! This quote is taken from an excellent essay by Gary Potter, "Art, Religion and the Value of Uselessness".Here it is in it's entirety:

Art, Religion and the Value of Uselessness

Everybody has heard that “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” That bit of wisdom (it really is wise) is usually presented as an “old Chinese saying.” The Chinese themselves attribute it to Lao Tzu, venerated as the founder of Taoism (though not as a religion). His exact dates are not known, but he was an older, sixth-century B.C. contemporary of Confucius.

I mention him because he had a disciple, Chuang Tzu, who became illustrious in his own right, somewhat like Plato relative to Socrates in the history of Western philosophy. Chuang Tzu is best remembered for what he had to say about uselessness. He was always talking about it.

One day when speaking on the subject, he said, “If you have no appreciation for what has no use, you cannot begin to talk about what can be used.”

Somebody on the scene asked him to elucidate. He explained (I am abbreviating): “Look at where you stand. You are surrounded by the entire, vast Earth, but all that is useful to you for standing is the few inches under your feet. All the rest is useless. But imagine if all the rest fell away. How long could you stand where you are before you fell into the abyss?”

Now, there is an old American saying we never attribute to anyone: “Time is money>.” The meaning of this saying is as clear as that of Lao Tzu’s about taking a first step: If you value money, and especially if you value it more than anything else, any time spent doing something besides making more of it is time wasted. The “something,” whatever it may be, is useless to making money. I shall liken it here to the ground not needed for standing in Chuang Tzu’s explanation of his saying.

When businessmen and others are hailed by modern society for being especially “successful,” which is to say successful at making money, it amounts to recognition of their “wasting” as little time as possible. In fact, the real giants of money-making are often known never to take time “off” except for what may be necessary, according to experts, to keep making more. For instance, they will spend time running on a treadmill because medical doctors say physical exercise is needed for the sake of their health. Similarly they may spend some time watching television. That will be by way of the “relaxation” psychologists say is necessary for mental or emotional stability.

If only because it is so seldom recommended by anyone seen by modern society as having the authority to make recommendations, something the “successful” (and those wishing to be like them) are liable to regard as a total waste (or totally useless ground) would be time spent with art — reading poetry, reading novels, listening to serious music, looking at paintings. Even if it is acknowledged in a formal way that art probably has some kind of importance, time spent with it would not even count as “relaxation” since art that really is worth anyone’s time requires effort. (There is nothing easy, for instance, in taking in all that Shakespeare can convey in any one of his plays as compared, say, to an installment of Grey’s Anatomy.)

It is not merely the notably “successful” who will spend little or no time with art. My own bank account would be a lot bigger than it is if I had a thousand dollars for every occasion in the past ten years that I heard some ordinary person say, “I’d like to read more, but I just don’t have the time.” (“Visit a museum,” “attend a concert” or “see a play” can be substituted for “read more.”) By ordinary person I mean anyone who is successful only in the sense that he and his wife manage well enough to meet their financial obligations to be counted among the working middle class at some level. And it’s true, if the commute that now daily faces most such persons is added to the hours they spend at their workplace, they won’t have much time for anything else, not even on the weekend. When it arrives, the kids have to be taken to soccer practice or swimming lessons, and of course it’s the only opportunity to get to the mall. Folks have to get to the mall. It wouldn’t make much sense, as far as they’re concerned, to spend most of the week at a job to earn money and then not have the things money will buy, though having the things necessarily will entail more time spent at the job in order to pay for all they will wind up wanting. (If folks understood that the true measure of abundance is not what one possesses but what one can enjoy, they could save some time by visiting the mall less often.)

In any event, it is too bad for everyone, and for remaining Christians in particular, that more time isn’t saved to “waste” on art.

In terms of everyone, imagine if all the useless world of art suddenly fell away, leaving nothing on which society could stand except the bit of ground where money is made. Many standing on that bit might never have much appreciation for the world of art, but what if it weren’t there? Would anyone fall into an abyss? In fact, many do. We have all heard of some businessman judged to be especially “successful” who drops dead at age 53 without having lived. He was going to do that, he thought, as soon as he retired. (No, time spent with great art cannot exactly be equated with living, but it will certainly make a life richer.)

As for why it is desirable for Christians in particular to spend more time with art than many of them do, it is on account of their final end. After all, our eternity ultimately is determined by how we spend our time.

In what ways may we spend it? Obviously it can all be spent on making money, but if the eternity we want is one we spend with God, which is to say in Heaven, among the things we do certainly will be whatever will draw us closer to Him while we are still on earth. Such things, beginning with prayer and meditation, will tend to be quite useless to the making of money.

Now, anybody who does not pray, which is to talk to God, simply is not a Christian. Anybody who wants to be a better Christian will meditate, which is to listen to Him. What is being contended here is that besides prayer and meditation, to spend time with art is a way to draw closer to God. Why?

It is because of what art is, and what it will do. It is the application of skill (at drawing or with words, for instance) and intellectual ability to the production of something which will be, one way or another, beautiful or (in the case of literary production especially) will communicate wisdom as well as possibly be beautiful. Beauty and wisdom are not negligible qualities in a world increasingly filled with ugliness and given to nonsense. They are good ends in themselves. An hour spent beholding the one or acquiring the other justifies itself. However, when the art is of a high order, especially in literature, music and the plastic arts, but also even in the design of the utilitarian (for example, buildings used to house us and furnishings within them) it will invite us into contemplation. We may begin by contemplating the thing itself (Of what material is this? How did the artist accomplish this effect?), but we are also likely to move on to contemplating its meaning (What does this signify? What is the significance to me?). Such contemplation, even if it is not “religious,” is extremely useful to us as Christians and in terms of our final end.

That is because what we think, how we fill our mind, determines the state of our being. Everything we do, all our activities, not simply the job or work we do to make a living, but what we read (Dan Brown or Fyodor Dostoyevsky?), the tv programs and films we watch and pictures at which we look (reruns of Seinfeld or The Queen? kitsch or Caravaggio?), the music to which we listen (MTV or The Goldberg Variations?), what we talk about with friends (in real conversation or mere gossip?), even the friends we choose — all of it goes to make us the persons we become. Think trashy thoughts and you won’t have to live in a trailer park to become trash. Think all the time about money and the stuff you can buy if you have more and you may be “religious” in the sense of attending Mass every Sunday, but you will still be a materialist. In other words, a half-hour a day spent in prayer and meditation, if we take that much time for them, won’t do us as much good as it ought — won’t keep us turned toward God — if most of the rest of our time is spent forming an entirely different sort of consciousness. That is what St. Paul was getting at when he said, “Pray without ceasing.”

Another way of putting this: spirit follows mind. In more poetic terms: Where the mind is the heart will follow. “The important thing” — I am quoting the great French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery — “is to strive toward a good that is not immediately visible. That good is not the concern of the mind, but of the spirit.”

Is there anything about art, apart from its inviting us into contemplation, that enables it to lead us toward God? Though it is conventional to do so, I am always nervous about using the word create in relation to art since, properly speaking, only God creates anything, but we might consider that in addition to whatever else may be said of it, men may be distinguished from all other of God’s creatures by the fact we make art. This making, involving as it does will and intelligence as men uniquely exercise them, must surely reflect our creation by Him in His image. That is, a sunset is wondrous, but so is a great painting of one since it will distill, so to speak, the essence of all sunsets; and such a painting could not be made except by a man, and he could not make it except that he is “painted” by and like God. If that is so, if art manifests our likeness to God, may it not be seen as a portal to the divine?

To sum up: If what we chiefly keep in mind is money and what is necessary to make it, the making will become our heart’s desire. Our interior, spiritual resources will be bent toward that end. It is better, if we want to get to Heaven, to keep our mind turned toward God. We do that most immediately in prayer and meditation, but no one can pray and meditate all the time. Even in the most ideal circumstances, like in a monastery, it is humanly impossible. However, when we are not praying or meditating, or working, we can spend more time with art than with much that takes less effort and than many persons do. The virtue of doing so is that through what we see, or hear in music or read on a page before us, our mind will be led to the invisible, and that will predispose us to communion with the Highest Invisible Good, God. Because it will, we see that there is nothing “useless” about art at all, no more than there is to all the world beyond the bit of ground on which we stand.

A final word: Nothing said here should be construed as contempt for money, or for persons who make more of it than a poor writer ever will. However, it is possible, without condescension, to feel sorrow, and fear, for persons who lack a sense of the importance of what has here been called “useless.” They need to get some balance in their lives, lest they fall into an abyss. Read more!