Art, Beauty, Creativity and Inspiration #2: Inspiration and Creativity

A Christian Understanding

This is the second in a four-part series in which I explore the nature of art and beauty, and their place in Christian life and culture. Last week, I asked the foundational question: What is art? – and argued that good art is the product of a creative act ordered toward beauty and a good purpose, and that it can be Christian even without an explicitly religious subject. This week, I go deeper, examining how, if all good art is inspired by God, we know inspiration when it comes. I discuss where good ideas come from, how the imagination and memory shape the creative act, and why copying the masters is not mere imitation but genuine formation. I will also look at the distinction between figurative, abstract, and decorative art, and then turn to the most important question of all – what does beauty actually do to us, and why does it always point us beyond itself toward God? In the posts that follow, I will take up the harder questions: how we know what is beautiful, why tradition is our surest guide, and whether beauty is really just a luxury we can’t afford.

St Luke paints Our Lady and Our Lord, Guercino, Italian, 16th century. Note how his muse, that is, his personal angelic messenger, passes on God’s inspiration to him.

The Traditional Process of Art Creation

Because I am a painter and painting is what I know best, these discussions will focus, for the most part, on visual art – paintings, sculptures, and mosaics, for example, which are created to engage and appeal to us through their visual appearance. For such words of art, if they are good and Christian, their beauty is intrinsic to their purpose and to the reason for their creation by a good artist. For example, an icon might be painted to direct our thoughts to contemplation of a saint’s life during prayer, but if it is not beautiful, it will not fulfill this purpose effectively.

The beauty of such objects can arise from a number of different things, as we shall discuss shortly, but typically we call a work of art beautiful when we delight in its appearance because we recognize the skill used by the artist, the grace and beauty he employs in its creation, the goodness of any message it communicates to us, the goodness of its overall purpose, and how well it fulfills that purpose.

The traditional understanding of the process by which a good work of art is created is as follows: The original idea arises in the mind of the artisan or artist—that is, the one who makes art—and, deciding that he has good reason to do so, he fashions matter at his disposal in conformity to that idea.

In this sense, all art is representative, as it represents an idea or image that first occurs in the artist’s imagination or in his mind’s eye.

Where do good ideas come from? The primary source of the idea is information derived from the senses, usually something the artist has already seen and remembered, or something viewed directly. This might be a landscape that he is looking at as he paints, or another image or painting that he is copying. But the aspect of the imagination is never absent from the production of art. Even when a painting is based on reality—for example, a portrait or a landscape—the final product will be an integration of the reality before the artist and memories of similar experiences and images, presented through the artist’s imagination. The way images from memory are integrated into the painting shapes their individual style. Therefore, in traditional artist training, when the goal is to form an artist to paint in a particular tradition, say iconography, copying the works of past masters is always part of the program of study. The intention is to fill the student’s memory with images deemed artistically desirable or useful and to influence the imagination.

Figurative, Abstract, and Decorative Art

We have said that all art must represent an idea or image that existed first in the artist’s mind. Sometimes this idea is based on a prototype, a material entity that we would recognize instantly, such as a man or a landscape. We might call this figurative art. Sometimes, however, the art may be more abstract and can manifest ideas of spiritual or non-material truths through symbolism and signs.

There is a longstanding tradition of Christian ‘abstract’ art that is highly decorative and beautiful, containing a carefully worked-out symbolic language. An example of this is the geometric-patterned art on a Gothic church floor. Such geometric patterns embody mathematical symbolism that, for example, speaks to the prototypes of scripture. An octagon, for example, can symbolize Christ as the ‘eighth day’ of Creation.

Not all abstract art is so symbolic. Even non-figurative decorative art, intended to delight through its beauty and without explicit symbolic content, directs us to God simply because it is beautiful. The beauty of this decorative art arises from its resemblance, through the combination of shapes and colors, to the beauty of the cosmos.

Beautiful Christian decorative art is ‘abstract’ in the true sense of the word. It manifests the underlying order of the cosmos, which has been abstracted, that is, drawn out from the matter in which the order was observed, and represented in some other way in the design of the art.

Above: a ‘quincunx’ floor design in Santa Croce, Rome. The central circle represents Christ, while the four peripheral circles represent the four evangelists who take the Word to the four corners of the world. [This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.]

More about Beauty: Beauty is the Light of Christ, and It is a Sign of Him

Beauty is a quality that calls us to itself and then beyond to the source of all beauty, who is God. In this sense, it wounds us by creating a desire for something we cannot have. When we observe a beautiful sunset, we admire it, but part of us remains dissatisfied, wanting more. We become aware in some sense that something is missing, something that is even more noble and beautiful than the sunset.

This desire for something more is, in its purest expression, a desire for God which has been awakened in us by the beauty of the created world. Recall our picture of the gradually darkening rings of light in the mandorla in our discussion of the Transfiguration icon in a previous post, (see The Icon of the Transfiguration as the Symbol of Cultural Transformation). The rings of the mandorla encircle Christ like the concentric layers of an onion. All that is beautiful, but which is not Christ himself, sits, figuratively speaking, somewhere on one of these rings and directs our attention inwards towards Christ, who either created or inspired this beauty. A beautiful work of art, by virtue of its beauty, always directs us to Christ, the Beautiful One. Even if a work of art is not an image of Christ Himself, it directs us to Christ if it is beautiful, because Christ is the perfection of that beauty. For example, a painting might draw us to the beauty of the cosmos by depicting a landscape, and, in turn, reflecting on it, we might be moved to praise the Creator who made it.

Mosaic of the Transfiguration in the Monastery of St Catherine on Mt Sinai, 6th century.

Beauty always speaks to us of another world and another time, and simultaneously, of all time and all worlds, for it speaks of heaven and eternity. It is a perceptible sign of the invisible God.

The Station Churches of the Easter Octave (Part 1)

For the newly baptized Christians of the church of Rome, the octave of Easter was the culmination of both their baptismal preparation, and of the seven-week long series of stational visits that brought them and the Pope to most of the important churches of the city.

The station of the Easter vigil is of course at the cathedral of Rome, the Archbasilica of the Most Holy Savior, where the Popes also resided from the time of the Emperor Constantine until the beginning of the 14th century. The city’s main baptistery, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, still stands behind the church where Constantine first built it, one of the few surviving parts of the once very large complex of structures that surrounded the Lateran Basilica. (Like the cathedral itself, it has been rebuilt and renovated several times.) After hearing their final set lessons from the Old Testament, the twelve prophecies sung after the Exsultet, the catechumens would process with the Pope and clergy to the baptistery; there the waters of the font were blessed, and the catechumens finally received the sacrament by which they were “buried together with (Christ) into death; that as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life”. (Romans 6, 4) As a symbol of the new life into which they had just entered, they were then clothed in white garments; they would wear these at Mass each day of the Easter octave, and at Vespers, which they attended daily at the Lateran.

A view of the Lateran Baptistery from within the colonnade that surrounds the font in the center, showing the various phases of its building and restoration. The colonnade itself was made in the fifth century of ancient materials despoiled from various structures; the window shows the crest of Pope Urban VIII Barberini, (1623-44), who also restored the lantern; next to it on the left is a portrait of Carlo Card. Rezzonico, Archpriest of the Lateran Basilica from 1780-81, and nephew of Pope Clement XIII; the paintings above are modern copies of originals by Andrea Sacchi (1599-1661). Photograph courtesy of Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P.

Having begun the celebration of Easter at a church dedicated to the Savior, the six stations that follow form a hierarchical itinerary of visits to the Roman churches of the most important Saints. In other seasons, the stations are often determined by the liturgical texts, particularly the scriptural lessons, which in many cases were part of the lectionary well before the legalization of Christianity and the building of public churches. In the case of Easter and its octave, the hierarchical nature of this itinerary established the order of the stations, and many of the liturgical texts were then chosen in reference to them.

On Easter Sunday, the Mass is held at St. Mary Major, the Virgin’s most ancient Roman church, a short distance from the Lateran; the Mass is wholly occupied with the Resurrection, and contains no reference to the Queen of all the Saints. This silence is fitting, for the Gospels themselves do not tell us when the risen Christ first appeared to Her. Over the next three days, the newly-baptized were brought to the tombs of Rome’s three principal patron Saints, the Apostles Peter and Paul, and the martyr St. Lawrence; the three churches that keep their sacred relics are also grouped together in the stational observances of Septuagesima, the very beginning of that part of the temporal cycle which is formed around Easter.

The Mass of Easter Monday contains several references to St. Peter, the first being the Introit, from Exodus 13: “The Lord has brought you into a land that floweth with milk and honey, alleluia, that also the law of the Lord may be always in your mouth, alleluia, alleluia.”

In their original context, these words are spoken by Moses to the children of Israel, who have been delivered from the land of slavery and bondage. The Exodus from Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea have been understood by the Church from the earliest times as symbols of the soul’s delivery from sin and death in the sacrament of Baptism. In the New Testament, St. Peter is the first to preach and exhort the people to receive Baptism, at the very first Pentecost (Acts 2, 37-41); in early Christian art, therefore, he is often depicted as the new Moses, and shown making water run from a rock as Moses did in the desert. The “law of the Lord… always in your mouth” refers to the new Law given to the Church by Christ to replace the Mosaic Law; this is the basis of another common scene in early Christian art in which St. Peter also figures prominently, the “traditio Legis – handing down of the Law.”

The “traditio Legis” scene depicted on a sarcophagus in the Vatican Museums’ Pio-Christian collection; note the streams of water flowing from the rock between Peter and Paul.

This oblique reference to the “traditio Legis”, in which the Church receives its new Law from Christ through St. Peter, also determines the choice of the Epistle, Acts 10, 37-43. Here Peter testifies to the Resurrection before the Roman Cornelius, no ordinary gentile, but a centurion, and as such, a representative of the might of the empire which then ruled over the Holy Land. Peter speaks in the house of a Jew, Simon the tanner, but to a mixed crowd of Jews and Roman pagans, right after the vision of the clean and unclean animals in the linen sheet; by this vision, it is revealed to him not only that the Mosaic dietary laws are now laid aside, but also that no man shall be called common or unclean. Those among the newly-baptized who still felt themselves close to their Jewish roots were thus reminded by this reading that they were no longer obliged to observe the Law of Moses, while those of pagan origin were reminded that they were not second-class citizens within the Church. “There is neither Jew nor Greek … for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you be Christ’s, then are you the seed of Abraham, heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3, 28-29) The Communion antiphon of the Mass then also refers to Peter, in the words of the day’s Gospel, St. Luke 24, 13-35, “The Lord has risen, and hath appeared to Simon, alleluia.”

Easter Sunday 2026

The Resurrection, by Titian (Tiziano Vecellio), 1542-44

When the Lord had clothed Himself with humanity, and had suffered for the sake of the sufferer, and had been bound for the sake of the imprisoned, and had been judged for the sake of the condemned, and buried for the sake of the one who was buried, He rose up from the dead, and cried aloud with this voice: “Who is he that contends with me? Let him stand in opposition to me. I set the condemned man free; I gave the dead man life; I raised up the one who had been entombed. Who is my opponent? I, He says, am the Christ. I am the one who destroyed death, and triumphed over the enemy, and trampled Hades under foot, and bound the strong one, and carried off man to the heights of heaven; I, He says, am the Christ.

Therefore, come, all families of men, you who have been befouled with sins, and receive forgiveness for your sins. I am your forgiveness, I am the passover of your salvation, I am the lamb which was sacrificed for you, I am your ransom, I am your light, I am your Savior, I am your resurrection, I am your king. I am leading you up to the heights of heaven, I will show you the eternal Father, I will raise you up by My right hand.”

This is the One who made the heavens and the earth, and who in the beginning created man, who was proclaimed through the law and prophets, who became a man through the Virgin, who was hanged upon a tree, who was buried in the earth, who was resurrected from the dead, and who ascended to the heights of heaven, who sits at the right hand of the Father, who has authority to judge and to save everything, through whom the Father created everything from the beginning of the world to the end of the age.

This is the alpha and the omega. This is the beginning and the end – an indescribable beginning and an incomprehensible end. This is the Christ. This is the king. This is Jesus. This is the leader. This is the Lord. This is the one who rose up from the dead. This is the one who sits at the right hand of the Father. He bears the Father and is borne by the Father, to whom be the glory and the power forever. Amen. (The conclusion of the Paschal Homily of St Melito of Sardis, the oldest surviving homily on Easter, ca. 165 A.D.)

TO all our readers, to your friends and families, we wish you an Easter filled with every joy and blessing in the Risen Lord - He is truly risen!

The Vigil of the Resurrection

And in the evening of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulcher, alleluia. (The Magnificat antiphon of Vespers at the end of the Easter vigil, also sung with the Nunc dimittis at Compline, as it is in this recording.)

Aña Véspere autem sábbati * quae lucescit in prima sábbati, venit María Magdaléne, et áltera María, vidére sepulcrum, allelúja.

A truly splendid polyphonic setting by the Slovene composer Jacob Handl (1550-91), also known as Jacobus Gallus.

Holy Saturday 2026

When Joseph saw that the sun had hidden its rays, and the veil of the temple was rent at the death of the Savior, he went to Pilate and besought him: “Give me this stranger, who from infancy has been as a stranger, a sojourner in the world. Give me this stranger, whom His own race has hated and delivered unto death as a stranger. Give me this stranger, whose death I am astonished to behold. Give me this stranger, who knew how received the poor and the strangers. Give me this stranger, whom the Hebrews from envy estranged from the world. Give me this stranger, that I may hide him in a tomb, who as a stranger hath no place to lay His head. Give me this stranger, whose Mother seeing Him put to death cried out, ‘O my Son and my God, though I am sorely wounded within me and my heart is rent, seeing Thee as one dead, I do yet take courage in Thy Resurrection and magnify Thee.’ And entreating Pilate with these words, the noble Joseph receives the body of the Savior, which with fear he wrapped in a shroud with myrrh, and laid in a tomb, even Him Who bestows upon all eternal life and great mercy.” (A Byzantine hymn for Holy Saturday.)

An embroidered cloth icon of the Burial of Christ, known as an “ἐπιτάφιος (epitafios)” in Greek, an adjective meaning “above the tomb”; in Church Slavonic, it is called “плащаница (plashchanitsa) – the shroud.” At Vespers of Good Friday, this is laid on the altar, and at the end of the ceremony, brought down into the nave and set on a special table, which becomes the focal point of much of the liturgy until Easter night, when it is brought back to the altar, and covered with a white cloth, remaining there until the Easter season is over. Around the inner border are written the tropars of the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing woman. (1682, from the Benaki Museum in Athens. Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Τὸν ἥλιον κρύψαντα τὰς ἰδίας ἀκτίνας, καὶ τὸ καταπέτασμα τοῦ ναοῦ διαρραγέν, τῷ τοῦ Σωτῆρος θανάτῳ, ὁ Ἰωσὴφ θεασάμενος, προσῆλθε τῷ Πιλάτῳ καὶ καθικετεύει λέγων· δός μοι τοῦτον τὸν ξένον, τὸν ἐκ βρέφους ὡς ξένον ξενωθέντα ἐν κόσμῳ· δός μοι τοῦτον τὸν ξένον, ὃν ὁμόφυλοι μισοῦντες θανατοῦσιν ὡς ξένον· δός μοι τοῦτον τὸν ξένον, ὃν ξενίζομαι βλέπειν τοῦ θανάτου τὸ ξένον· δός μοι τοῦτον τὸν ξένον, ὅστις οἶδεν ξενίζειν τοὺς πτωχούς τε καὶ ξένους· δός μοι τοῦτον τὸν ξένον, ὃν Ἑβραῖοι τῷ φθόνῳ ἀπεξένωσαν κόσμῳ· δός μοι τοῦτον τὸν ξένον, ἵνα κρύψω ἐν τάφῳ, ὃς ὡς ξένος οὐκ ἔχει τὴν κεφαλὴν ποῦ κλῖναι· δός μοι τοῦτον τὸν ξένον, ὃν ἡ Μήτηρ καθορῶσα νεκρωθέντα ἐβόα· Ὦ Υἱὲ καὶ Θεέ μου, εἰ καὶ τὰ σπλάγχνα τιτρώσκομαι, καὶ καρδίαν σπαράττομαι, νεκρόν σε καθορῶσα, ἀλλὰ τῇ σῇ ἀναστάσει θαρροῦσα μεγαλύνω. Καὶ τούτοις τοίνυν τοῖς λόγοις δυσωπῶν τὸν Πιλᾶτον ὁ εὐσχήμων λαμβάνει τοῦ Σωτῆρος τὸ σῶμα, ὃ καὶ φόβῳ ἐν σινδόνι ἐνειλήσας καὶ σμύρνῃ, κατέθετο ἐν τάφῳ τὸν παρέχοντα πᾶσι ζωὴν αἰώνιον καὶ τὸ μέγα ἔλεος.

Sung by the monks of the Vatopedia monastery on Mt Athos

This extraordinary hymn is based on a homily on the burial of Christ traditionally attributed to the Church Father St Epiphanius of Salamis (ca. 310/20 - 403), but now recognized to be from at least 150 years later. In the classic style of later Byzantine rhetoric, the homily itself has eight more sentences which begin with the words “Give me this stranger”, for a total of fifteen. Most of the modern liturgical books that I consult, both Greek and Slavonic, do not include it at all. Among the Slavs, however, it is often sung in a different and much shorter recension, after Vespers of Good Friday and Matins of Holy Saturday, as people come up to the epitaphios table to venerate the shroud. The setting by the Ukrainian composer Dmitry Bortniansky (1751-1825) is deservedly the most famous.

Come, let us bless Joseph of eternal memory, who came by night to Pilate and begged for the life of all: “Give me this stranger, Who has no place to lay His head. Give me this stranger Whom an evil disciple betrayed to death. Give me this stranger Whom His mother saw hanging upon the cross, and with a mother’s sorrow cried, weeping: Woe is me, O my child, light of my eyes and beloved of my bosom! For what Simeon foretold in the temple now has come to pass: A sword has pierced my heart, but change my grief to gladness by Your Resurrection!” We worship Your Passion, O Christ! We worship Your Passion, O Christ! We worship Your Passion, O Christ and Your holy Resurrection!

Good Friday 2026

O Lord, I have heard Thy report and was afraid: I have considered Thy works and trembled. V. In the midst of two living beings Thou shalt be made known: when the years shall draw nigh Thou shalt be known: when the time shall come, Thou shalt be manifested. V. When my soul shall be in trouble, Thou wilt remember mercy, even in Thy wrath. V. God will come from Libanus, and the Holy One from the shady and thickly covered mountain. V. His majesty covered the heavens: and the earth is full of His praise. (The first Tract of the Mass of the Presanctified on Good Friday.)

Christ on the Cross between the two Thieves, by Peter Paul Rubens, 1619

Dómine, audívi audítum tuum, et timui: considerávi ópera tua, et expávi. V. In medio duórum animalium innotescéris: dum appropinquáverint anni, cognoscéris: dum advénerit tempus, ostendéris. V. In eo, dum conturbáta fúerit ánima mea, in ira, misericordiae memor eris. V. Deus a Líbano veniet, et Sanctus de monte umbróso et condenso. V. Opéruit caelos majestas ejus, et laudis ejus plena est terra.

The Paschal Lamb: Fish or Bait?

In the New Testament, Jesus Christ is compared to several animals: He is the Lamb of God (John 1, 29), the Lion of Judah (Rev. 5, 5), a mother hen (Mt 23, 37), and so forth. Although it is understandable to focus on Our Lord’s relation to the Passover Lamb during the Triduum and Easter, Christians over the centuries have also understood the Pascal Mystery in piscatorial terms – that is, in terms of fish and fishing.

The Mysterious ICHTHUS

In the early Church, the greatest artistic symbol of Christ was a drawing of a fish (or sometimes a dolphin, one of man’s best friends in the sea). Specifically, the first generations of Christians saw the fish as a symbol of Jesus present in the sacraments of the Eucharist and Baptism. Already in the Book of Tobias, early Christians saw a foreshadowing of the Messiah. Like Christ in the Eucharist, the fish that Raphael caught is food for the pilgrim, a repellent of demons, and enlightenment for the blind. In the New Testament, Jesus multiplies fishes along with loaves of bread, miracles that anticipates the miracle of bread and wine turning into Christ’s Body and Blood. And after the Resurrection, the Risen Lord provides fish and bread, the fish symbolizing His humanity and bread His divinity. It is Christ’s humanity that enabled Him to be raked across the coals, so to speak, during His passion and death; or as the Church Fathers more eloquently put it, the Messiah is the Fish taken from living water and immolated on the altar of the Cross by the fire of His love, who feeds His own with His own substance. [1] And Jesus Christ is also fully divine, or as He describes Himself, “the Living Bread descended from Heaven” (John 6, 51). “He who was able, as a man, to be grilled like a fish,” proclaims Pope Gregory the Great, “restores us with bread as God.” An epitaph written in the second century on the tomb of a Christian named Abercius uses similar imagery for Holy Communion. Describing his travels from one end of Christendom to the other, he writes:

Faith everywhere led me forward, and everywhere provided as my food a fish of exceeding great size, and perfect, which a holy Virgin drew with her hands from a Fount and this it [Faith] ever gives to its friends to eat, it having wine of great virtue, and giving it mingled with bread. [2]

No wonder that the early Church interpreted the Greek word for fish, ichthus, as an acrostic for Iesous Christos Theou Uios Soter: Jesus (I), Christ (Ch), God’s (Th) Son (U), Savior (S). Christians used drawings of a fish as a secret code during the Roman persecutions, enabling them to recognize Christian safe places and centers of worship (they are all over the catacombs). In fact, it is said that after the Cross the fish is the second most popular symbol of Christianity. 

Jesus as Bait

Jesus Christ is our Ichthus or Fish, but He is also the bait. According to St. Rufinus of Aquileia (d. 411), when the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us, it was as if God were fishing for the Devil. Christ’s divinity was the sharp hook, cleverly concealed by His humanity, the bait. Christ offered His flesh as a bait, Rufinus explains, so that “His divinity underneath might catch [the Devil] and hold him fast with its hook, through the shedding of His immaculate Blood.” And sure enough, the Devil took the bait, conspiring in all sorts of ways to have Jesus of Nazareth persecuted and rejoicing when He was crucified. But the Devil did not know that this holy man was also the Second Person of the Trinity, and that only the Precious Blood of this God-man could pay the price of our redemption. As Rufinus puts it:

If a fish seizes a baited hook, not only does it not take the bait off the hook, but it is drawn out of the water to be itself food for others. So too, he who had the power of death seized the Body of Jesus in death, not being aware of the hook of divinity enclosed within it; and having swallowed it, he was caught immediately, and the bars of Hell was burst asunder, and he was drawn forth, as it were, from the abyss to become food for others.[3]

It may sound strange to think of the Devil as food for others, but this is not the rich nourishment that Our Lord the Ichthus provides in Word and Eucharist. Rather, the Devil is a nasty river dragon whose flesh becomes a kind of fodder for beasts and carrion. Rufinus cites Ezechiel 29:3-5 in support of his interpretation, when God is speaking to Egypt and calling it a “great dragon”:

I will put a bridle in thy jaws… and I will draw thee out of the midst of thy rivers… And I will cast thee forth into the desert…I have given thee for meat to the beasts of the earth, and to the fowls of the air.

The so-called Fish Hook Theory can also be found in other Church Fathers, such as St. Gregory Nazianzen:

[I]t was not in the nature of the opposing power to come in contact with the undiluted presence of God, and to undergo His unclouded manifestation. Therefore, in order to secure that the ransom on our behalf might be easily accepted by him who required it, the Deity was hidden under the veil of our nature, that so, as with ravenous fish, the hook of the Deity might be gulped down along with the bait of flesh, and thus, life being introduced into the house of death, and light shining in darkness, that which is diametrically opposed to light and life might vanish; for it is not in the nature of darkness to remain when light is present, or of death to exist when life is active.[4]

St. Maximus the Confessor makes a clever connection between this atonement model and Psalm 21,7:

“I am a worm and not a man.” (Ps. 21:7, LXX) He truly became, and was thus called, a worm because He assumed the flesh without being conceived by human seed. For, just as the worm is not born through copulation or sexual procreation, so too our Lord was not born in the flesh through sexual procreation. Moreover, the Lord mounted His flesh on the fish-hook of His divinity as bait for the devil’s deceit, so that, as the insatiable serpent, the devil would take His flesh into his mouth (since its nature is easily overcome) and quiver convulsively on the hook of the Lord’s divinity, and, by virtue of the sacred flesh of the Logos, completely vomit the Lord’s human nature once he swallowed it. As a result, just as the devil formerly baited man with the hope of divinity, and swallowed him, so too the devil himself would be baited precisely with humanity’s fleshly garb; and afterward he would vomit man, who had been deceived by the expectation of becoming divine, the devil himself having been deceived by the expectation of becoming human. The transcendence of God’s power would then manifest itself through the weakness of our inferior human nature, which would vanquish the strength of its conqueror. As well, it would be shown that it is God Who, by using the flesh as bait, conquers the devil, rather than the devil conquering man by promising him a divine nature.[5]

And finally, St. John Damascene:

Since our Lord Jesus Christ was without sin (for He committed no sin, He Who took away the sin of the world, nor was there any deceit found in His mouth). He was not subject to death, since death came into the world through sin. (Rom. 5:12) He dies, therefore, because He took on Himself death on our behalf, and He makes Himself an offering to the Father for our sakes. For we had sinned against Him, and it was meet that He should receive the ransom for us, and that we should thus be delivered from the condemnation. God forbid that the blood of the Lord should have been offered to the tyrant. Wherefore death approaches, and swallowing up the body as a bait is transfixed on the hook of divinity, and after tasting of a sinless and life-giving body, perishes, and brings up again all whom of old he swallowed up. For just as darkness disappears on the introduction of light, so is death repulsed before the assault of life, and brings life to all, but death to the destroyer.[6]

No wonder that in places such as Costa Rica, Holy Saturday is a time for bromas or practical jokes, like stealing your neighbors’ furniture and rearranging it in the town plaza. The association of Holy Saturday with practical jokes makes sense, since it was during the Paschal Mystery that the biggest joke of all was played on the Enemy.

Notes

[1] St. Paulinus of Nola, Epistle 13; St. Augustine, Confessions 13.23.34; St. Ambrose, the hymn Ad coenam Agni providi.

[2] See H. Leclerq, “Inscription of Abercius,” Catholic Encyclopedia, (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1914).

[3] Commentary on the Apostles’ Creed 16, trans. W.H. Fremantle, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 3, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1892).

[4] Great Catechism 24.

[5] Ad Thalassium 64: On the Prophet Jonah and the Economy of Salvation.

[6] An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 3.27.

Holy Thursday 2026

Looking upon our thoughts and offenses, we sacrifice to Thee, o Lord, no bloody victims, but with humble prayers we offer Thee the Body of the eternal Priest. Remember therefore, o Lord, what He underwent for us Who bore our sins, and do Thou put on us the stole of justice, that none may take his place at Thy supper without the wedding garment, and the banquet of the New Covenant may flourish with the joys of heaven. Far from it be the guile whereby the evil disciple was deceived. May all have true faith, certain hope, and pure charity, that our conscience may not be condemned by these spiritual sacraments, but rather, cleaned of all vices through the sweetness of Thy peace and charity, we may call out to Thee from this earth: Our Father... (The introduction to the Lord’s Prayer at the Mozarabic Mass of Holy Thursday.)

A fresco of the Last Supper painted ca. 1245-55 in a chapel of the cathedral of St Mary in La Seu d’Urgell, Catalonia, Spain. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Ángel M. Felicísimo, CC BY 2.0.

Ad Orationem Dominicam Cogitatiónes et delicta nostra cernentes, non cruentas tibi, Dómine, víctimas immolámus, et simplícibus votis tibi sempiterni Sacerdótis corpus offérimus. Memoráre ítaque, Dómine, quid pro nobis pertúlerit, qui peccáta nostra portávit. Indue ergo nos justitiae stola, ut in coena tua sine veste nuptiáli nullus accumbat, gaudiisque caeléstibus novi testamenti convivium flóreat. Procul absit dolus, quo deceptus est malus ille discípulus. Sit ómnibus fides vera, spes certa et cáritas pura, ut spiritálibus sacramentis non damnétur conscientia, sed per pacis caritatisque tuae dulcédinem ab ómnibus emundáti vitiis, ad te proclamémus e terris: Pater noster...

The Station Churches of Holy Week (Part 2)

The icon of the Virgin Mary, known as the “Salus Populi Romani”, in the reredos of the Borghese chapel of the basilica of St Mary Major. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Fallaner, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The station of Spy Wednesday is held at St. Mary Major, also the station church of the four Ember Wednesdays; as in the Embertides, and the Wednesday of the fourth week of Lent, there are two readings before the Gospel. The first of these is Isaiah 63, 1-7, preceded by a part of verse 62, 11. [1]

Thus sayeth the Lord God: Tell the daughter of Sion: Behold thy Savior cometh: behold his reward is with him. Who is this that comes from Edom, with dyed garments from Bosra, this beautiful one in his robe, walking in the greatness of his strength? I, that speak justice, and am a defender to save. Why then is your apparel red, and your garments like theirs that tread in the winepress? I have trodden the winepress alone, and of the gentiles there is not a man with me: I have trampled on them in my indignation, and have trodden them down in my wrath, and their blood is sprinkled upon my garments, and I have stained all my apparel. etc.

The Fathers of the Church understood this passage as a prophecy of the Passion of Christ, starting in the West with Tertullian.

The prophetic Spirit contemplates the Lord as if He were already on His way to His passion, clad in His fleshly nature; and as He was to suffer therein, He represents the bleeding condition of His flesh under the metaphor of garments dyed in red, as if reddened in the treading and crushing process of the wine-press, from which the laborers descend reddened with the wine-juice, like men stained in blood. (adv. Marcionem 4, 40 ad fin.)

This connection of these words with the Lord’s Passion is repeated in very similar terms by St. Cyprian (Ep. ad Caecilium 62), who always referred to Tertullian as “the Master”, despite his lapse into the Montanist heresy; and likewise, by Saints Cyril of Jerusalem (Catechesis 13, 27) and Gregory of Nazianzus (Oration 45, 25.)

The necessary premise of the Passion is, of course, the Incarnation, for Christ could not suffer without a human body. Indeed, ancient heretics who denied the Incarnation often did so in rejection of the idea that God Himself can suffer, which they held to be incompatible with the perfect and incorruptible nature of the divine. St. Ambrose was elected bishop of Milan in the year 374, after the see had been held by one such heretic, the Arian Auxentius, for twenty years. We therefore find him referring this same prophecy to the whole economy of salvation, culminating in the Ascension of Christ’s body into heaven, thus, in the treatise on the Mysteries (7, 36):

The angels, too, were in doubt when Christ arose; the powers of heaven were in doubt when they saw that flesh was ascending into heaven. Then they said: “Who is this King of glory?” And while some said “Lift up your gates, O princes, and be lifted up, you everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in.” In Isaiah, too, we find that the powers of heaven doubted and said: “Who is this that comes up from Edom, the redness of His garments is from Bosor, He who is glorious in white apparel?”

In the next generation, St. Eucherius of Lyon (ca. 380-450) is even more explicit: “The garment of the Son of God is sometimes understood to be His flesh, which is assumed by the divinity; of which garment of the flesh Isaiah prophesying says, “Who is this etc.” (Formulas of Spiritual Understanding, chapter 1) Therefore, like the Mass of Ember Wednesday, this Mass begins with a prophecy of the Incarnation as the church of Rome visits its principal sanctuary of the Mother of God, in whose sacred womb began the salvation of man.

The Risen Christ and the Mystical Winepress, by Marco dal Pino, often called Marco da Siena, 1525-1588 ca. Both of the figures of Christ in this painting show very markedly the influence of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment.

This is also the day on which the church reads the Passion according to St Luke, who has a special association with the Virgin Mary. Most of what the New Testament tell us about Her was recorded in his writings, including almost all of the words actually spoken by the Her; this fact lies behind the tradition that St. Luke painted a picture of the Virgin, which is figuratively true even if it were not literally so. It is his account of the Passion that tells of the meeting between Christ and a group of women on the way to Mount Calvary, (chapter 23, 27-30); although he does not say that Mary was among them, art and piety have long accepted that it was so. The special devotion of the Servite Order to the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin has both a proper rosary (as the Franciscans have a rosary of the Seven Joys) and a special form of the Via Crucis, called by them the Via Matris; in both, the fourth sorrow is the encounter between Christ and His Mother as He bears the Cross.

The Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary, by Albrecht Durer, ca. 1496. The lower middle panel show the Virgin fainting as Her Son passes by Her on the street on the way to Mount Calvary.

For the ceremonies of Holy Thursday, the station was of course kept at the cathedral of Rome. On this day, in addition to celebrating the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, the Pope would preside over the reconciliation of the public penitents, and bless the holy oils, both rituals proper to the office of a bishop. Likewise, the washing of the feet (known as the Mandatum from the first antiphon sung during the rite) is done on this day, a ritual not exclusive to bishops, but traditionally performed by religious superiors upon their subjects, as Christ Himself did. The gospel sung at both the Mass and the Mandatum is taken from St. John (chapter 13, 1-15), since the three Synoptic accounts of the Lord’s Supper have been read earlier in the week. In a later period, the church came to be dedicated also to him along with St. John the Baptist, and it is he whose account of the Passion will also be read on the following day, on which the Church refrains from the celebration of Mass in mourning for the death of the Savior.

Finally, the station of Good Friday is kept at the basilica of the Holy Cross ‘in Jerusalem.’ This denomination comes from the tradition that when St. Helena, Constantine’s mother, built the church to house the relics of the True Cross discovered by herself in the Holy Land, the ground first was covered with earth brought from the city of the Lord’s Passion. As the Bl. Ildefonse Schuster writes in his book on the liturgical traditions of Rome, The Sacramentary, the choice of station fulfills the words of Christ Himself, “it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.”

A reliquary with pieces of the True Cross from the relic chapel of Holy Cross in Jerusalem.

Holy Saturday will be included in an article to be published next week on the stations of the Easter Octave.

[1] As noted by my colleague, the indefatigable Matthew Hazell, the Consilium removed this reading completely from the post-Conciliar lectionary, since, as they said, “it smacks of anger and revenge.” (Apparently, they were too tired to read it all the way to the end, “I will remember the tender mercies of the Lord, the praise of the Lord for all the things that the Lord our God hath bestowed upon us.”) Because we can only restore the liturgy to the vigor which it had in the days of the Holy Fathers by abolishing their teachings...

The Reconciliation of the Public Penitents on Holy Thursday at Sarum

At the end of February, I published an article about the use of the Penitential Psalms in Lent, in which I mentioned that they were generally said at the beginning of the season, at the ceremony by which the public penitents were symbolically expelled from the church, and again on Holy Thursday, when they were brought back in. These ceremonies were particularly elaborate in the Use of Sarum, but similar rites were observed in a great many other places. Here then is the promised description of the rite of the reconciliation of the public penitents, taken from WG Henderson’s 1882 edition of the Sarum Processional.

An illustration from a Sarum Processional of the Ash Wednesday procession; the captions reads “The station on the day of ashes, when the bishop expels the penitents.” The ash-colored banner is seen up top. Reproduced from Henderson’s edition.

After None of Holy Thursday, the bishop or his substitute goes to the west door of the church, wearing a red silk cope, and accompanied by two deacons, led by the same “ash-colored” banner used in the procession of Ash Wednesday. The penitents await them in the narthex. If the bishop himself performs the ritual, the archdeacon, also in silk cope, stands near the penitents and delivers a rather lengthy address to the bishop, of which I give here only the beginning.

“The time is present, venerable bishop, prayed for by the afflicted, meet for the penitent, desired by those in tribulation. Your sons are present, father, whom their true Mother the Church bore unto God with joy; but again, She mourns with new grief every day that at the devil’s suasion, they became corrupt, and wretched, and exiled. For these, all who have happily remained in Her bosom do humbly pray, and who have remained strong in their faith under the protection of divine clemency. Spare them today, father, and with all the force of thy goodness, let that fountain of David be open to us (Zach. 13, 1), and flow forth unto the cleansing of the woman with the issue of blood, reproving none, rejecting none, excluding none. For although no season lacketh the riches of divine mercy, still, now is the forgiveness of sins more abundant through indulgence, and more copious the acceptance of those reborn through grace. …”

The bishop then intones three times the first word of an antiphon, “Venite, Venite, Venite! – Come! Come! Come!”, beckoning to the penitents with his hand as he does, as if to invite them into the church. One of the two deacons, standing near the penitents, says “Let us kneel”; the other, standing near the bishop, says “Rise.” This is all done a second time, then the bishop repeats “Venite” a third time, at which the choir finishes the antiphon “(Come) ye sons, hear ye me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord.” The whole of Psalm 33 from which it is taken is sung, with the antiphon repeated after each verse. In the meanwhile, priests conduct the penitents by hand to the archdeacon, who brings them to the bishop, who then brings them into the church.

An illustration from a 1595 edition of the Roman Pontifical, showing the reception of the public penitents on Holy Thursday. (Courtesy of the Pitts Theological Library, Candler School of Theology at Emory University.)

When all have entered the church, and the clergy have processed into the choir, they kneel, and say the seven Penitential Psalms; these are accompanied as usual by the antiphon Ne reminiscaris, Kyrie eleison, the Lord’s prayer, and a series of versicles, followed by three prayers. Here is the third one.

“O Lord, Holy Father, almighty and eternal God, who deigned to heal our wounds, we Thy lowly servants and priests humbly beseech and ask of Thee, that Thou may deign to incline the ears of Thy compassion to our prayers, and be moved by confession at (this) penance; and forgive all crimes, and remit every sin; and grant these Thy servants, o Lord, forgiveness in accord with their humble prayers, rejoicing in place of grief, life in place of death; so that those who have come to so great a hope of the height of heaven, trusting in Thy mercy, may merit to come to the goods of Thy peaceable promise and the gifts of heaven.”

He then turns to the penitents, and makes the sign of the Cross over them, saying: “We absolve you by the authority of the blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, to whom was given by the Lord power to bind and loose; and in so far as any accusation falleth to you, and forgiveness thereof to us, may God almighty be unto you life and salvation, and the merciful forgiver of all your sins.” He gives the usual blessing “May almighty God bless you…”, and the Mass of the Lord’s Supper begins.

Durandus on the Mass of Spy Wednesday

The following excerpts are taken from book VI, chapter 70 of William Durandus’ commentary on the liturgy, the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum. Greatly as we reverence his work, our friend is, like many medieval authors, an incorrigible digresser; furthermore, some of the features of the Mass of Spy Wednesday, one of the most beautiful of the entire year, were arranged a bit differently in the missal he knew. I have therefore reordered and paraphrased the text in various places, to make the train of his thought clearer, and to correspond to the Missal of St Pius V. The reader may also find useful this article from two years ago which explains the text of this Mass in detail, especially in regard to the reading from Isaiah 62 and 63 as a prophecy of the Incarnation.

Wednesday is the day on which the Lord was sold by Judas, because He willed not only to suffer for us, but also to be sold, so that He might deliver us from the selling by which our first parent sold us to the devil through the eating of the forbidden fruit, whence Isaiah says (52, 3), “You were sold for free, and you shall be redeemed without money.” Likewise, many sell themselves to the devil for momentary pleasure, just as Adam sold himself for the eating of the forbidden fruit. Therefore, the Sun of justice was sold for our salvation on Wednesday, the day on which the visible sun was formed for the light of the world. (Gen. 1, 14-19)

The Betrayal of Judas, as depicted by Giotto in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy, 1304-06.

Now the Lord prayed kneeling, as is said in today’s Gospel (the Passion according to St Luke, 22, 1 – 23, 53). Therefore, in the introit, the Church invites that “in the name of Jesus every knee be bent, of those in heaven”, because He repaired their ruin, “of those on earth”, because He delivered them, “and of those below the earth”, because He led them from the pit in which there was no water, as Zachariah says (9, 11). It is sung in the third tone because of the three things which are invited to bend the knee.

There follows, “and let every tongue confess that our Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.” This is taken from the Apostle (Phil. 2, 11) …

Introitus In nómine Jesu omne genu flectátur, caelestium, terrestrium et infernórum: quia Dóminus factus est oboediens usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis: ideo Dóminus Jesus Christus in gloria est Dei Patris. Psalmus Dómine, exaudi oratiónem meam: et clamor meus ad te veniat. In nómine Jesu…

Introit (Phil. 2, 10; 8 and 11) In the name of Jesus let every knee bend, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth: because the Lord hath become obedient unto death, but the death of the Cross. Therefore, the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father. Psalm 101, 2 O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to thee. In the name of Jesus…

It can also be said that two things are necessary for us, namely, prayer and patience, according to that which the Lord says, “Pray for those who persecute and slander you.” (Matt. 5, 44) We are invited to these two things in the introit: to prayer, when it says, “in the name of Jesus let every knee be bent”; and to patience, by the Savior’s example, regarding whom it is added, “Christ has become for us obedient unto death,” etc. For one is not obedient in tribulation if he does not willingly tolerate it.

Two lessons are read, because on this day the Lord was betrayed for two peoples and by two peoples; and in some churches, they kneel at both of them, because He is adored by both people … and because the first Man incurred two deaths, namely of the flesh and of the soul, and Christ has delivered us from both.

In the first reading (Isa. 62, 11; 63, 1-7), “Say to the daughter of Zion: Behold, thy savior cometh,” … The Angels said (for the incarnation remained hidden from some of them), “Who is this who cometh from Edom?”, that is, from the earth, “with stained garments”, that is, with the members of the body, which are the garments of divinity, “stained purple with blood from Bosra.”

Bosra is a city in Moab, whose name means “strong” or “fortified”, … but its name is transferred to Jerusalem, which once the Lord strengthened by His help, but the inhabitants having become Moabites… they tainted the garments of the king with the purple of blood. He answered, “I who speak justice, and fight forth unto salvation.” And they said, “Why then is thy garment red?”, as if to say, Why have you been bloodied by the pressing of the Cross, if you speak justice? But he answers, “I have trodden the wine press alone”, that is, for all, so that all may be delivered, “and from the nations there is no other man with me.”

The Risen Christ and the Mystical Winepress, by Marco dal Pino, often called Marco da Siena, 1525-1588 ca. Both of the figures of Christ in this painting show very markedly the influence of Michelangelo’sLast Judgment.

And just as the Savior laid down His soul for the redemption of our souls, so also He subjected his body (to death) for the redemption of our bodies; for which reason the first lesson treats of His body, reddened by his own blood, where it says, “Who is this who comes from Edom?”, etc. And because solely from His mercy the Lord suffered for us, therefore the prophet in the person of the Church concludes that reading by saying, “I will remember the mercies of the Lord, the praise of the Lord for all things which the Lord hath rendered unto us.”

After the reading is sung the gradual, “Turn not thy face”, in which He himself prays that through the passion He may come to glory. But because He prayed for a long time in agony, as is said in the Gospel (22, 43), therefore the Offertory and the Communio are taken from the Psalm (101) which is entitled “the prayer of the poor man while he was in anguish”…

Graduale Ne avertas faciem tuam a púero tuo, quoniam tríbulor: velóciter exaudi me. V. Salvum me fac, Deus, quoniam intravérunt aquae usque ad ánimam meam: infixus sum in limo profundi, et non est substantia.

Gradual, Ps 68, 18; 2-3 Turn not thy face away from thy servant: for I am in trouble, swiftly hear me. V. Save me, o God, for the waters have come in even unto my soul. I am stuck fast in the mire of the deep, and there is no sure standing.

The epistle is also from Isaiah (53, 1-12), “O Lord, who hath believed”, in which He is described in the same fashion in which He is represented by the evangelist in the passion…

After the epistle there follows the tract, and in an unusual way (i.e. without a gradual preceding it), because the Church mourns and weeps more deeply than usual… the tract signifies weeping, and therefore on Good Friday only tracts are said. The gradual signifies penance, and because the Lord was not crucified on this day, but only sold, therefore a gradual is also said (i.e. after the first reading).

This tract is sung according to an Old Latin text which reads uses the word “frixorium – a frier”, where St Jerome’s version has “cremium – brushwood.” Below, Durandus interprets the image of bones in a frier to signify the refinement of man’s interior strengths.

Tractus Dómine, exaudi oratiónem meam, et clamor meus ad te veniat. ℣. Ne avertas faciem tuam a me: in quacumque die tríbulor, inclína ad me aurem tuam. ℣. In quacumque die invocávero te, velóciter exaudi me. ℣. Quia defecérunt sicut fumus dies mei, et ossa mea sicut in frixorio confrixa sunt. ℣. Percussus sum sicut faenum, et aruit cor meum, quia oblítus sum manducáre panem meum. ℣. Tu exsurgens, Dómine, miseréberis Sion, quia venit tempus miserendi eius.

Ps. 101, 2-5; 14 O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to thee. ℣. Turn not away thy face from me: in the day when I am troubled, incline thine ear to me. ℣. In whatsoever day I call upon thee, hear me speedily. ℣. For my days are vanished like smoke, and my bones have been fried as in a frier. ℣. I am smitten as grass, and my heart is withered, because I forgot to eat my bread. ℣. Thou shalt arise, o Lord, and have mercy on Sion: for the time hath come to have mercy on it.

Since we have sinned according to the five senses of the body, the tract has five verses, because of the five wounds of Christ, or because He shed His blood five times: first, in the circumcision; second, at the prayer (in the garden); third, at the scourging; fourth, in the crucifixion; fifth, when He was pierced by the spear. In the same tract, the human race asks for help and confesses the failing which it incurred from the sin of the first parent, saying, “because my days have failed like smoke.” For the life of man is but a day, and the night thereof is death, but this life is cut short and fails because of the pride of the first parent, which is symbolized by the smoke. There follow the words, “My bones were fried in a fryer.” Bones are the interior strengths… and the frier is threefold, namely, the recalling of sins, compassion for one’s neighbor, and meditation on the future judgment; in these the good man is fried. The tract closes, like the lesson, with the mercy of the Lord; whence the last verse is, “Thou arising, o Lord, shall have mercy.”

The Communion is “I was mixing my drink with weeping,” which is to say, the drink of the passion, when His sweat became like drops of blood running down onto the earth. (Luke 22, 44; this is also taken from an Old Latin text of the Psalms.)

Communio, Ps 101 Potum meum cum fletu temperábam, quia élevans allisisti me: et ego sicut foenum arui: tu autem, Dómine, in aeternum pérmanes: tu exsurgens miseréberis Sion, quia venit tempus miseréndi eius. (I tempered my drink with weeping, for thou hast lifted me up and cast me down, and I am withered like grass. But thou, O Lord, remainest forever; thou shalt arise, and have mercy on Sion, for the time is come to have mercy on it.