Join an Online Discussion with Iconographer Jonathan Pageau, Jan 30th.

The Scala Foundation is inviting you to their next online interactive discussion, featuring the iconographer Jonathan Pageau on January 30, from 12-1 PM ET; You can RSVP by following this link; the event is free of charge. Jonathan is one of today’s leading iconographers and a widely-sought after public speaker who excels at plumbing Scripture and tradition to explore the rich symbolism of Christianity, including that of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. I certainly plan on attending!

Images of the Virgin Mary abound in nearly every Christian culture. To understand Her role in salvation, scholars often refer to Scriptural images such as the burning bush in Exodus. Why are there so many symbols that reflect on the meaning of Mary’s life? How is it that one woman has been so influential in the individual identity of so many people, the formation of the church, and the memory of nations? What does it mean to say that reality is veiled through symbols? How does Marian imagery reveal universal archetypes—that is, models of a life of faith?   

Scala’s Executive Director Margarita Mooney Clayton will serve as the host of this interactive conversation. As a sociologist and contextual theologian, Mooney Clayton has written on and taught about Marian devotion among Italian, Haitian and Mexican immigrants to the United States as well as African-Americans. This online event will be structured as a seminar—a guided discussion in which the audience may interact with the hostess and guest speaker. Mr Pageau will further explore the symbolic meanings of Scripture at his keynote address at Scala’s conference on Art, the Sacred and the Common Good on the campus of Princeton Theological Seminary, April 21-22.

If you RSVP here, Scala Foundation will send the link for participation to anyone who registers. And if you haven’t done so already, register to join Margarita and me in-person or via livestream for Scala’s annual conference from April 21-22, 2023, featuring artists such as Mr Pageau and my old teacher Aidan Hart!

Pictorial Allegories of the Love of God Inspired by the Song of Songs - Part 3

How do you paint the love of God? Love is not something we will ever see directly, and this creates difficulties for artists who work in a purely visual medium. The answer for many who wish to represent the greatest virtue has been to look for inspiration in the allegorical account of God’s love in the Song of Songs.

This is the third of three reflections on the Song of Songs, an intense love poem as illustrated by different artists. Part 1 - The beloved is in the garden, the beloved is the garden was a reflection on the implications of the symbolism of the garden, a place of fertility and beauty. Part 2 - The beloved is the lover, and the lover is the beloved was a Christian response, inspired by the Song of Songs, to Marxism, social justice, critical theory, and radical feminism.

Part 3 - A garden enclosed, a fountain sealed - Mary the great lover and most beloved of God

One traditional pictorial representation of God’s love as described in the Song of Songs focuses on the interpretation of the book as an allegory of the Father’s love for Mary, the Mother of God. Mary is understood to be the personification of the ‘garden enclosed’ and the ‘fountain sealed’, from verse 4, 12: “She is a garden enclosed, my sister, my promised bride; a garden enclosed, a sealed fountain.”

In Latin this is Hortus conclusus – garden enclosed - and Fons signatus – sealed fountain - and there are genres of paintings that have these Latin names. The Mother of God is likened by the Church Fathers to a garden because of Her fertility as a perfect mother, and the source of the cultivation of the new Tree of Life originally in the Garden of Eden, as described in the book of Genesis.

The Fall, which took place in Eden, resulted from Adam and Eve succumbing to temptation and eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. St Ephraim the Syrian, the Christian commentator from the 4th century AD, declared a Doctor of the Church in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV, believed that Adam and Eve were subsequently expelled from Eden in order to prevent them from eating of the Tree of Life. If they had eaten the fruit of the Tree of Life, he says, it would have resulted in their living forever in the misery of their fallen state. With Christ’s establishment of His Church, Christians in communion with the Church are now able to eat the fruit of the Tree of Life, the fruit of which is Christ himself present in the Eucharist. By this, we are permitted to live forever, partaking of the divine nature.

Mary is not only the garden enclosed, she is also the Fons conclusus, a fountain of life sealed by her perpetual virginity. The image of ‘living’, that is flowing, water is often connected to the Spirit that brings life out the dry ground of our hearts, and leads us to eternal life. So the Virgin is a garden, watered by the living water of the Holy Spirit, from which springs the Tree of Life, Christ. The garden is enclosed and the fountain sealed because she remains perpetually a virgin. The Mother is both the beloved and lover of the Father, passive and responsive. As such she is most beloved and the great lover of God, both active and passive. She is the greatest lover in the human race, aside from Christ himself.

She is therefore a lover whose pure love for God is a type for perfect Christian feminism, and a perfect human love that is a model for all of us in every relationship, a model that can be the basis of justice in the family and society. Christian feminism neither diminishes the active, vigorously personal, and distinctly feminine role of women in any loving interaction, nor does it blur the distinction between the natures of men and women.

Radical feminism refuses to consider divine love as a type for all love. As a result, its influence is the opposite of what it intends. It proposes patterns of behavior that rupture their relationships with others and degrade their capacity to love and be loved. The result is greater misery and bitterness towards others.

In common with the left in general, it is common for radical feminists to accuse those who disagree with their ideas as ‘haters’. I have some sympathy for them in this, because I suspect that they genuinely feel hated, although they falsely blame those around them for this. The fact is they feel hated because they do not feel loved. And they do not feel loved because they do not accept the love of God. This is as a result of their own choices, not God’s, and it has nothing to do with those whom they blame for how they feel.

We are all sinners, and this tendency to blame others for the unhappiness we feel when we rupture the relationship with God goes with the human condition, of course. However, if we at least acknowledge at some level our need for God, and are inclined to recognize, however imperfectly, that we are the cause of our own unhappiness, then through the infinite mercy of God we can be happy.

All of us, therefore, can benefit from considering the perfection of Mary as a lover in the hope of perfecting the pattern of our love of others.

This painting of the Garden Enclosed shown above was made in the 15th century by a German artist named Stephan Lochner, a work in the late Gothic style known as “International Gothic.” Mary is portrayed as the garden, set in a garden. Angels adore their queen and her son the King. The detailed and beautifully rendered blue mantle spreads out, and connects the figure visually with the gorgeous detail in the portrayal of the flora. The embossed details in the gilding extend the garden upwards and lend a sense of the heavenly dimension. Mary wears a crown as Queen of Heaven

Other common portrayals of Mary connect her to a garden so as to reinforce the point that she is the New Eve, the exemplar of cooperation with grace in the work of redemption. For example, images of the Annunciation, which is the prequel, so to speak, of the Garden Enclosed, will often show a garden, typically in spring, newly bursting into life. The common thread is that both show Her as a sign of fertility and superabundance that opens the door to the incarnation of the Eighth Day of creation, Christ, and which is the new age that ushers in eternal life for all of us.

Sometimes it is subtle. For example, in this late 15th-century painting of the Annunciation by the Italian artist Sandro Botticelli, known as the Costello Annunciation, we see through the window a garden with a tree, presumably the Tree of Life, centrally and prominently placed.

Another example is the Tree of Jesse, the father of David; the line of Christ’s ancestry is shown, with Mary as the stem bearing the fruit of the Tree of Life, who is Christ. It is inspired by the passage from the prophet Isaiah, 11, 1: ‘And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots.’

A Rosary Walk For Our Times: A Brilliant Sculpture by Thomas Marsh

Thomas Marsh, the sculptor, has sent me photos and an explanation of a recently completed commission in Virginia, a rosary walk.

Marsh is an excellent Catholic sculptor who, in my opinion, is rare amongst contemporary sculptors in his understanding of the need for a balance between naturalism and idealism in Christian art. Marsh draws on the classical Greek ideal and integrates it with a heightened naturalism obtained by direct observation of people. This creates the blend of the general and the particular which connects the image with a unique person who can exemplify universal principles through their appearance.

This particular commission encourages prayer that engages the whole person, and because of its layout is, fortuitously, perfect for these times, as Marsh explains:

The work is located on the grounds of St. Isidore the Farmer Catholic Church, between the towns of Orange and Gordonsville, Virginia, on Highway 15. There are still some architectural details to add (in progress) such as a bas-relief Corpus for the white cross, and bas-relief medallions around the base of the statue, medallions whose subjects are the symbols of the four Evangelists. We had planned to dedicate this publicly for the region on Mothers’ Day, but obviously those plans have been postponed. I will let you know at the earliest possible time when that new dedication date will be.

For some brief explication, walking and praying one full circuit of the ellipse is a decade of the Rosary. One walks the ten to twelve steps between the large medallions while praying one Hail Mary. It is a work which refers significantly to the Book of Revelation, as well as to (then) Cardinal Ratzinger’s book of the year 2000, The Spirit of the Liturgy. In that book, he treats in depth the “Exitus-Reditus” concept, which is a very important facet of this prayer walk.

While we cannot yet return to Mass, this prayer walk can offer us a structured, physical religious experience. And the views from the walk are magnificently pastoral, here in the Piedmont region of Virginia. Father Terry Staples, pastor of St. Isidore, invited me to do this project in 2014. The statue was finally unveiled on February 16 of this year. (Of current note: even when the walk is "full," it accommodates ten people, all 15' apart. So it works within the guidelines! We pray those guidelines will soon be a thing of the past.)

As landscape architectural details get added over time (such as rose bushes, simple benches, hedges, etc.) I will keep providing you with images. A top priority will be to get you some photos of the prayer walk and statue in the coming weeks with the Corpus and Evangelist medallions, and the now lush green grass!
God bless you and yours during our Marian month,

I look forward to seeing more photographs as this site matures.

Those who are interested in seeing more work by Thomas Marsh should follow the link here: thomasmarshsculptor.net

Why Our Lady Should Always Be Painted With Her Son

I recently read an account of the importance of Mary’s title “Theotokos” in a book called Steward of the Mysteries, by Bishop Nicholas Samra of the Melkite Church. He pointed out that in Eastern iconography, as a rule, Mary is portrayed with her Son. Her importance is in relation to Him. Just as She gave flesh to Christ, we are called to give flesh to the mystical body of Christ, the Church, when we go out into the world.

The title “Theotokos”, the use of which was dogmatically ratified by the Council of Ephesus in 431, is very often translated as “God-bearer” or “Mother of God.” She was both, but this word means something distinct, I have been told - one who “bore and gave birth to God.” Any saint might be referred to as a God-bearer too, “theophoros”, as each of us is called to bear God in a spiritual, moral and virtuous sense, and by this, our flesh is informed and transformed by Christ. Mary is a “theophoros” too, but only she is Theotokos. She bore God in a physical sense, and gave birth to Him; Her flesh formed Christ’s.

As we reflect on this, one might think that some images do not conform to this tradition. Many of these are wonderful paintings. One of my favorites is Sassoferrato’s Virgin at Prayer.

I have reflected on this and am inclined to think that as far as possible, we should follow the East and consider a painting of Our Lady without some indication of her relationship to her Son to be unworthy of veneration. Two conditions were cited by Theodore the Studite as necessary for an image to be considered a Holy Image worthy of veneration, and appropriate for the liturgy. The first is that it should bear the essential characteristics of the person, and the second is that it should bear the name. This painting, at first sight, has neither. Essential to Mary is her relationship to Christ as Theotokos and this, therefore, ought to be portrayed. However, all is not lost for Sassoferrato.

First of all, there are, at first sight, some exceptions to this rule even in Eastern iconography: the portrayals of Her prior to the birth of Christ, such as the festal icons of the Annunciation and Her Presentation in the Temple.

However, these narrative icons place Our Lady in relation to Our Lord by setting her in the context of salvation history. Also in the Eastern Church, these will be set in the second tier of images on an iconostasis; the Saints are in the lowest tier, the festal scenes in the second, and then as we get higher, eschatological themes. All images in the church ought to be placed so as to highlight the relation of the person or scene to the center of our Faith - the person of Christ, whether by being in relation to an icon of Him, or to the altar. When these icons are removed from their liturgical context, say, for our icon corner or for a procession, this visual setting should be in our memories, so that it supports through a visual language what we know intellectually regarding the truths portrayed in the image itself.

A third icon is a depiction with Her hands in supplication, such as the Theotokos Agiosortissa. However, this icon, as we can see, is not self-sufficient, but needs to be placed in relation to another, which is of Christ, so that She is addressing Her Son.

It is an essential aspect of personhood that we are in relation to others, and it is through our relationships that we understand ourselves. We understand ourselves most profoundly through our relationship with Christ, as St John Paul II said: “Christ reveals man to himself.” This being so, it follows that Christ also reveals all others to each of us; that is to say, the Saints, and for that matter, everyone around us, are understood best in their relationship to Christ, to the degree that it is apparent to us. This is why in regard to sacred images, each Saint ought in some way to be in obvious relationship to the central icon or icons of Christ.

In regard to Mary in particular, I think that in this age of dualism, in which the popular philosophies of the day swing between the extremes of spiritualism and materialism, a clear indication of both the divinity and the humanity of Christ is necessary. It is through Our Lady, the Theotokos and ever-Virgin Mary, that we emphasize His humanity without diminishing His divinity. Therefore, I advocate a hardening of this rule for art today as an antidote.

If we wish to redeem The Virgin at Prayer, we could add her name to the frame, and we could place it in relation to an authentic painting of Christ in such as way that we perceive that it is connected to him spatially, which symbolizes for us the personal relationship.

One might wonder, incidentally, if the famous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe runs against this tradition too. If so, one might perhaps reconsider asserting this guideline so strongly; after all, the creator of this image is divine!

I would say that in fact, we need not worry in this case; it conforms to the rule, because She is portrayed pregnant. We know this because the ribbon around her waist is a traditional Aztec sign of pregnancy, and because the mandorla around her is a Christian sign of the presence of Christ, in this case within Her. The only way to undermine this argument, I suggest, is to maintain that a baby in the womb is not yet a person, and we know where that leads...So, next time you go on the March for Life, carry an icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe!

Review of The Anti-Mary Exposed: Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity, by Dr Carrie Gress

Anyone seeking to understand just how powerful and detrimental to modern society the feminist movement has been, and the reasons. for this should read this book. You can get it from the publisher’s website here: https://www.tanbooks.com/index.php/the-anti-mary-exposed.html

“Toxic” is the right word for the forces that have wreaked such havoc. If this book comes to their notice - and I hope it does - it is likely to elicit a response containing all the characteristic viciousness that those who typically object to such a thesis can muster.

We should be clear. This is not a call for the subjugation of women. Rather it seeks a place for women in a society that asserts authentic femininity, and which expresses itself in harmony with, not in opposition to, authentic masculinity. Only the Christian understanding of the human person can conceive of this fully. The first society to which we belong is family, and it is from this all other aspects of authentic society are it developed. The destruction of family relationships not only destroys the family, but detrimentally affects every person who is denied full participation in it - women, men, and children.

I spoke to Carrie on Episode 16 of my podcast recently, and we discussed her book. She told me that the Anti-Mary of the title is not envisaged as an individual who actually exists; rather, it is a personification of the radical feminist philosophy that is so powerful an influence on society today. It hates the true femininity which genuinely “empowers” women. That femininity is embodied, in contrast, in a real person, Mary, the Great Mother of God. The grace of God can overcome all things, of course, and there is always hope for the innocents who are affected by this, for every single one of us is given a way to happiness through Christ from where we are at this moment in time. But this does not excuse what has happened.

I reproduce the publisher’s description here:

In the late ’60s, a small group of elite American women convinced an overwhelming majority of the country that destroying the most fundamental of relationships—that of mother and child—was necessary for women to have productive and happy lives.

From the spoiling of this relationship followed the decay of the entire family, and almost overnight, our once pro-life culture became pro-lifestyle, embracing everything that felt good. Sixty million abortions later, women aren’t showing signs of health, happiness, and fulfillment. Increased numbers of divorce, depression, anxiety, sexually transmitted disease, and drug abuse all point to the reality that women aren’t happier, just more medicated.

Huge cultural shifts led to a rethinking of womanhood, but could there be more behind it than just culture, politics, and rhetoric?

Building off the scriptural foundations of the anti-Christ, Carrie Gress makes an in-depth investigation into the idea of an anti-Mary—as a spirit, not an individual—that has plagued the West since the ’60s. Misleading generations of women, this anti-Marian spirit has led to the toxic femininity that has destroyed the lives of countless men, women, and children.

Also in The Anti-Mary Exposed:

• How radical feminism is connected to the errors of Russia, spoken of by Our Lady of Fatima.
• The involvement and influence of the goddess movement and the occult. 
• The influence of “female” demons, such as Lilith and Jezebel.
• The repulsive underbelly of radical feminism’s chief architects.
• A look at the matriarchy, a cabal of elite women committed to abortion, who control the thinking of most women through media, politics, Hollywood, fashion, and universities.

The antidote to the anti-Mary is, of course, Mary, the Mother of God, known widely as the most powerful woman in the world and the source of the belief that women ought to be treated with dignity. She is a beacon of all the virtues and qualities—purity, humility, kindness, beauty—that oppose this sinister force that has cast its spell upon so many women. Mary’s influence is unparalleled by any woman in history. She is the perfect model of Christian femininity, who desires to be a spiritual mother to us all, leading us to her Son, and to the fulfillment of our heart’s deepest desires.

For those who are interested, you can watch the podcast here:

And here is the wonderful painting by Tiepolo, from which the detail on the cover is taken. This is my favorite Immaculate Conception and I analyze its content and style here. It conveys simultaneously gentleness and strength, grace and power so brilliantly!