The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

O Lord, look unto my aid; let them be confounded and ashamed, who seek after my soul to take it away. O Lord, look unto my aid. (The Offertory of the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost.)

Offertorium, Ps. 39 Dómine, in auxilium meum réspice: confundantur et revereantur, qui quaerunt ánimam meam, ut áuferant eam. Dómine, in auxilium meum réspice.

This Offertory is also sung on Friday of the second week of Lent; when I went to search for it on YouTube, this very beautiful polyphonic version written for that season also came up. No information is given about who composed it; if any one knows, please be so kind as to leave a message in the combox.

Today is also the feast of the Stigmata of St Francis. The painter Giotto worked for the Franciscan Order on many occasions, most famously, in the upper basilica of St Francis in Assisi, where he and his assistants painted a cycle of 28 panels of the founder’s life. This altarpiece of the stigmatization was originally commissioned for the church of St Francis in Pisa; the predella panels show three episodes of the Saint’s: the dream by which Pope Innocent III is persuaded to allow the Franciscan order to continue; the approbation of the Rule, and St Francis preaching to the birds.

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.