Self Portraits

Albrecht Dürer (1471 - 1528)

Self-Portrait with Fur-Trimmed Robe

1500

Limewood, 67,1 x 48,9 cm

Alte Pinakothek, München

Rembrandt (Harmensz. van Rijn) (1606 - 1669)

Self-Portrait

1629

Oak, 15,6 x 12,7 cm

Alte Pinakothek, München

Rembrandt (Harmensz. van Rijn) (1606 - 1669)

Self-Portrait, 1659

oil on canvas

Overall: 84.5 x 66 cm (33 1/4 x 26 in.) framed: 122.9 x 104.1 x 8.9 cm (48 3/8 x 41 x 3 1/2 in.)

Andrew W. Mellon Collection

The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

In the TLS this week Elizabeth Lowry reviews A Face to the World: On self portraits by Laura Cumming (280pp. Harper Press. £30.)

The book is a survey of self portraits by artists from Jan Van Eyck to Tracey Emin.

"We expect self-portraits to be more true to life than other pictures, as Laura Cumming argues in A Face to the World, her thought-provoking book on artists’ images of themselves. In a self-portrait, the fusion of person with picture seems to be total. When we look at any portrait “there is always the sense of coming face to face with another person before that person reverts to an image”, but self-portraits “go further in claiming the two to be one and the same”. The artist’s appearance as author of him- or herself makes a bid for verisimilitude that goes far beyond simple realism – here we somehow expect to get the soul, too.

The results, from Jan Van Eyck’s ghostly appearances in the margins of his art to Tracey Emin’s frantic self-exposure, are rich in human interest. Self-portraiture is an opportunity for the artist to put across his or her side of the story, and as Cumming points out, it has been used at times “as a love letter, mission statement or suicide note by other means”. "

"The most immediately recognizable of these is Albrecht Dürer’s full-face self-portrait of 1500, with its fur collar and long streaming hair, “a triangle of metal-bright locks, not a single tendril out of place”. Cumming is excellent at annotating the picture’s “peculiar golden radiance”, its charisma and almost oppressive vitality. It is the defining advertisement for Dürer the man and artist, an icon rather than a representative image (as Cumming notes, the painting “was obviously never meant to stay quietly at home with the family”). And it seems to have been worshipped as an icon by future generations of German artists, appearing in numerous later prints and in Georg Vischer’s “Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery” as the face of Jesus.

Cumming argues with great brio that this most pictorialized of self-portraits in fact embodies the fusion of art and artist. The serenely detached pose, shoulders squared, the finger of Dürer’s right hand pointing meaningfully at his own chest, is baffling until we look at it closely. That triangular mass of hair, the crossbar of the beard: what are they other than the counterpart, writ large, of the A of Dürer’s own trademark initial in the top left-hand corner of the painting? The maker and his image, the product of his prodigious talent, are one. Yet Cumming, perhaps dazzled by the self-confidence of that face, stops short of drawing the obvious conclusion.

If the face is Christ-like, it is a Christ meant for a humanist age, exalting the divine in man. “Whatever he feels, whatever he senses in his fingers, ought to connect straight up to the face, but when you get there all explanations are frustrated.” Really? Look again. The finger, the face, are quite clearly saying “Ecce homo”. Dürer’s is, as Cumming rightly claims, the alpha and omega of self-portraits."

"For self-knowledge at its most unsparing, however, one must turn to Rembrandt. An indefatigable portrayer of himself, he painted more than eighty self-portraits in a career spanning nearly forty years, “a record of change and decay unparalleled in the history of art”. Although he is cavalier with the details of his own physiognomy – the colour of his eyes, the shape of his nose, never seem to be the same from one picture to the next – the whole adds up to an unrivalled sense of truth to life. Cumming’s discussion of Rembrandt’s evolving originality as a self-portraitist and the frank disclosure of personality in these images – a personality that remains, to the end, restless and unresolved – powerfully counters the argument, still sometimes put forward by art historians, that artists before the nineteenth century did not have a developed idea of self. By all accounts Rembrandt was litigious, careless, vain, irritable and charmless, and that is how he depicts himself, not just in “the porky adenoidal youth or the cackling prodigal in the tavern”, but in some of the late self-portraits where he appears “sweating and absurd in his hats, making an old curmudgeon of himself”. He is a disappointed soul, ageing, tired and without any sustaining illusions left, and the self-portraits aren’t afraid to show it. "

A Victorian Precedent

Frederick Richard Say (fl. 1825-60).

Henry Pelham Fiennes Pelham-Clinton, 5th Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne 1848

Oil on canvas, 1848

56 in. x 43 7/8 in. (1422 mm x 1114 mm)

The National Portrait Gallery, London

Henry Edward Manning
by W. & D. Downey
albumen carte-de-visite, mid 1860s
3 5/8 in. x 2 1/8 in. (92 mm x 55 mm) image size
The National Portrait Gallery, London















Henry Pelham Pelham-Clinton, 5th Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne KG, PC (22 May 1811–18 October 1864), styled Earl of Lincoln before 1851, was a British politician. He held various high offices of state including Secretary of State for War

Manning was ordained into the Church of England in 1832, but resigned his post in 1850. He entered the Roman Catholic Church the following year and became Archbishop of Westminster, and titular head of English Catholicism, in 1865. He was made a cardinal in 1875.

In answer to a letter of Manning's announcing his conversion, the Duke of Newcastle wrote to him as follows :

"Clumber, 11th April 1851.

My Dear Friend

Preparation for the last blow of sorrow does not, as I have long since learnt, diminish the severity of it when it really comes, and though your last most amiable letter to me left me no hope your announcement that you no longer belong to the Anglican Church has filled me with grief such as no similar event has ever occasioned to me before.

You say that your chief trial now is the loss of friends dear to you, and the sorrow you give them. Of the latter I cannot, and (from my heart and conscience I say it) I would not if I could, relieve you, but in me at least you will find no loss of friendship.

I mourn over what I must think the great error of a pure and noble mind seeking the true light, but I cannot cease to love and admire the man who makes the sacrifices which I know you have, in obedience to what he believes to be right. I shall ever cherish the recollections of the past I shall think of what is now the present with sorrow too deep to be mixed with bitterness or sectarian heat, and for the future I pray God that you may not be changed as others have, and that you may carry into the Church which has received you that spirit of pure, Christian, universal love and charity, which has made you one of the brightest ornaments of that which has lost you.

Certain I am, there are many attached friends who will still cling to their love and respect for you I dare not contemplate the day when a difference of faith may dissipate those feelings which you now bear towards them.

Alas ! I fear you little know what thorns your secession from amongst us will strew in the paths of those who have hitherto laboured with you, or the impulse you will give to that spirit of Puritan hatred which is fast reviving in the land but all this I must not expect you to care for now I have always feared your aspirations for " Christian Unity" were too Utopian, but at any rate I cannot doubt that the conversion of two such men as yourself and James Hope must make more hopeless than ever so blessed an event.

May God ever bless you, my dear friend ; and may we, though now pursuing different paths, meet in that day when the truth shall be revealed to us all. Believe me, ever affectionately and truly yours,

NEWCASTLE.

Forgive me if I address my letter as heretofore. Believe me I do not do so inconsiderately, much less unkindly. "

Some have criticised the response of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the new of the Vatican announcement of the special arrangements for members of the Anglican Church to be received into a form of association with the Catholic Church. However  the Archbishop of Canterbury`s response can only be described as truly noble, statesmanlike, civilised and quintissentially Christian.

Holy Patrons of Europe

Jan van Eyck 1395-1441

Le stigmate di San Francesco. The stigmata of St Francis, 1432

Oil on board 28 x 33 cm

Galleria Sabauda, Torino

Michelangelo Merisi called Caravaggio ca.1571-1610

San Giovanni Battista/ St. John the Baptist in the desert , 1606

Oil on canvas, 94 x 135 cm

Galleria Corsini, Roma

Chiesa news . reports on a new exhibition in Rome entitled Power and grace. The holy patrons of Europe.

Two of the paintings from the exhibition are above.

As regards the painting of Jan van Eyck this is a larger copy of a panel [Oil on vellum on panel 5 x 5 3/4 inches (12.7 x 14.6 cm)] executed by van Eyck in Spain in 1428-29 and which is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia

Van Eyck's representation of this event follows the original Franciscan text quite literally

As regards the painting by Caravaggio, there is a version now in Kansas City. In that version the figure is set before a dense curtain of plants; in that in Rome, there is only the trunk of a cypress tree, on the left. Caravaggio knew how to make apparently uninteresting religious themes into arresting paintings.

"The architect of the present exhibition is a young priest from a tiny village of Illegio, in the Alps in Carnia. His name is Alessio Geretti.

The exhibition on the Holy Patrons of Europe is his latest creation, and follows other exhibitions that he designed on themes like Revelation, Genesis, the Apocrypha, stunning in the quality of the works of art displayed and in the richness of the message transmitted.

In this case, revisiting the holy patrons of the nations of Europe as depicted by its greatest artists does not mean only offering a "vision" of what Europe has been over two thousand years of history profoundly marked by the Christian faith.

It is also a message issued to a contemporary Europe that has forgotten its roots and is indifferent to religion. Fr. Alessio Geretti says:

"In the Europe of pluralism and democracy, holiness is the most convincing form that a religion can take. The lives of the saints persuade without constraining. I truly believe that in this age – which, as Paul VI said, does not so much need teachers as witnesses – the saints are still the face of a Church that has the ability to speak to the heart of the people and to bring the dominant culture into crisis, unmasking all of its inhumanity."

But the message of the exhibition is also addressed to the Church. "A Church" – Fr. Geretti further writes in the exquisite catalog published by Skira – "whose postconciliar renewal has been characterized by a poorly concealed iconoclasm, which has emptied churches, catechesis, preaching, and a few calendar dates of those references to the saints and of those sacred images which for centuries had nourished the Christian people's experience of faith." "

Tanner and his religious vision

Henry Ossawa Tanner

1859-1937

The Two Disciples at the Tomb, c. 1906

Oil on canvas

129.5 x 105.7 cm (51 x 41 7/8 in.)

Robert A. Waller Fund, 1906.300

The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago

Henry Ossawa Tanner 1859-1937

Mary

c. 1909-1910

Oil on canvas

Overall: 31 1/2 x 25 in.; 80.01 x 63.5 cm

The Weatherspoon Art Museum, UNC Greensboro

Henry Ossawa Tanner,

1859-1937

The Resurrection of Lazarus, 1896.

Oil on canvas. 95 x 121,5 cm

Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Tanner regarded his faith as central to his racial identity. His Christian faith appears to have been strong throughout his life.

Tanner was born on the eve of The American Civil War and before Emancipation,

He suffered racial discrimination. After the Civil War,the doctrine of "separate but equal" prevailed.

At the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts he was the butt of shameless cruelty from fellow students. At 21, he was the first black person to enrol.

The American printmaker Joseph Pennell (1860-1926), a student at the Academy when Tanner arrived, wrote about Tanner in a subsequent memoir:

"Then he [Tanner] began to assert himself and, to cut a long story short, one night his easel was carried out into the middle of Broad Street and, though not painfully crucified, he was firmly tied to it and left there. " Joseph Pennell, The Adventures of an Illustrator: Mostly in Following His Authors in America and Europe (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1925), p. 54

.

Despite his pioneering stance as a black art student, racism continued to plague Tanner who, in his autobiography The Story of an Artist’s Life, wrote:

"I was extremely timid and to be made to feel that I was not wanted, although in a place where I had every right to be, even months afterwards caused me sometimes weeks of pain. Every time any one of these disagreeable incidents came into my mind, my heart sank, and I was anew tortured by the thought of what I had endured, almost as much as the incident itself."

Tanner left America to live in France in the early 1890s.

He found the French environment more accepting, writing from Paris :

"There is a breadth, a generosity, an obsolete cosmopolitanism about her recognition of the fine arts, which bars no nationality, no race, no school, or variation of artistic method. All she asks is that the art shall be true, in other words that it shall set forth life."

In an another note, he wrote:

"In Paris … no one regards me curiously. I am simply 'M. Tanner, an American artist.' Nobody knows nor cares what was the complexion of my forbears. I live and work there on terms of absolute social equality. Questions of race or color are not considered—a man's professional skill and social qualities are fairly and ungrudgingly recognized. No one who had not carefully observed the art world of Paris could have any clear idea of its broad and deep race admixture. When I began to study under [Jean-Joseph Benjamin-] Constant I found in the studios men of all nations and races under the sun—Muscovites and Tartars; Arabs and Japanese; Hindoos and Mongolians; Africans and South Sea Islanders—all working earnestly and harmoniously with students of the Caucasian race. It is so now, in greater degree and on even broader lines." Tanner quoted in William R. Lester, "Henry O. Tanner, Exile for Art's Sake," Alexander's Magazine 7, no. 2 (15 December 1908), p. 73.

Despite his residence in France, he continued to maintain his American nationality.

His Christian themes are compelling in their universal humanity.

It was in the European art world and in Biblical subject matter that Tanner found what he called "a perfect race democracy."

Henry Ossawa Tanner and The First Visit of Nicodemus

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916)

Henry Ossawa Tanner, ca. 1897

Oil on canvas; 24 1/8 x 20 1/4 in. (61.3 x 51.4)

The Hyde Collection Art Museum, Glens Falls, New York

Henry Ossawa Tanner 1859-1937

Study for Christ and Nicodemus on a Rooftop

ca. 1898-1899

Oil on wood panel

9 1/2 x 13 in. (24.0 x 33.0 cm.)

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859 - 1937)

Nicodemus

1899

Oil on canvas

33 11/16 x 39½ in. (85.6 x 100.3 cm)

Joseph E. Temple Fund

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia

Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937)

Nicodemus Coming to Christ 1927

signed 'H.O. Tanner' (lower right)

oil on canvas laid down on board

61¼ x 71 in. (155.6 x 180.3 cm.)

Private Collection

"My effort has been to not only put the Biblical incident in the original setting . . . but at the same time give the human touch ‘which makes the whole world kin’ and which ever remains the same.” Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1924, quoted in Hartigan, Sharing Traditions: Five Black Artists in Nineteenth-century America, 1985

Tanner was an African American artist who earned international acclaim for his religious paintings.

His father was a prominent minister and later an Episcopalian bishop and his mother a former slave who escaped the South through the Underground Railroad.

At age eleven, Tanner decided to become an artist, and nine years later the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts accepted him, the only African American out of two hundred students.

At the suggestion of his teacher Thomas Eakins, Tanner tried his hand at photography but had little success. He remained two years as a student under Eakins. Some stonger than usual bond must have been established between them, for twenty years later, Eakins would paint, and keep, a portrait of Tanner (see above)

Like many American artists in the nineteenth century, Tanner went to Europe, intending to study in Rome. After fourteen days in Paris, however, he decided to stay in France and enrolled in the Académie Julian.

Sales of his paintings of Bible stories financed his trips to Palestine, Egypt, and Morocco. Tanner kept close ties with his native country and was proud of his contributions as a black American, but chose to live in France, where he felt that his race mattered less to other artists and critics.

In 1996, The White House acquired his painting Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City. This was the first painting by an African-American artist to be a part of the White House permanent collection.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin. He is only mentioned in St John`s Gospel. He appears three times in the Gospel: the first is when he visits Jesus one night to listen to his teachings (John 3:1-21); the second is when he states the law concerning the arrest of Jesus during the Feast of Tabernacles and with Joseph of Arimithea dissents from the condemnation of Christ without his having been heard (John 7:45-51); and the last follows the Crucifixion, when he assists Joseph of Arimathea in preparing the corpse of Jesus for burial and for the Entombment(John 19:39-42).

The above works by Tanner illustrate the visit in the dead of night by Nicodemus to Jesus. The meeting takes place before the Baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist.

At the meeting Nicodemus called Jesus "Rabbi".

Jesus's "miraculous signs" (mentioned by St John in Chapter 2 of the Gospel) convinced Nicodemus that Jesus is "...from God". In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again." Nicodemus, confused and sceptical, asks, "How can a man be born when he is old? Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!" Jesus then talks of what it means to be born again and the path to heaven. "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the Kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit." (5-6) Jesus speaks of himself as the Son of Man and how belief in Him is the path to eternal life. This is summed up in one of the most famous passages from the Bible, John 3:16:

"For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life."

Christian tradition asserts that Nicodemus was martyred sometime in the first century.

Nicodemus is venerated as a Saint by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches

In art Nicodemus is usually shown at the Crucifixion beside Mary, or at the descent from the Cross. The theme of Nicodemus`s first visit to Jesus is, rather surprisingly, rather rare.

Tanner's works combined a preference for religious painting with a marked taste for a restricted palette associated to night settings.

After 1894, Biblical themes which would preoccupy him for the rest of his life.

The study for Christ and Nicodemus on a Rooftop made Henry Ossawa Tanner`s reputation.

In 1899, his old art school The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts purchased the finished work above.

The subject of Christ and Nicodemus was particularly important to the artist as it appealed to both his religious and racial concerns.

According to Dewey F. Mosby:

"The subject touches on the artist's favored theme of rebirth, although here he reverses his age-instructing-youth motif. According to the book of John, Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, came to Jesus by night to ask him questions. Jesus said to him, 'except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.' The artist's father considered Nicodemus's visit to be one of three notable incidents of the second stage of Jesus's public ministry. The image of the rabbi coming to Jesus by night provided a biblical precedent for the worship habits of African-American slaves, as well as for post-emancipation practices. Slaves were not allowed either to have formal church services or to read the Bible, and their clandestine religious activities were perforce conducted at night." (Across Continents and Cultures: The Art and Life of Henry Ossawa Tanner, p. 48)

According to Mosby, the story of Nicodemus visiting Christ at night spoke to African American worship habits that Tanner remembered from his youth. After Emancipation, freed slaves continued to meet at night, as they had done when their masters had forbidden them to read the Bible

In 1927 he again returned to the theme and produced Nicodemus Coming to Christ which is in a private collection. The composition is different. Nicodemus is sitting on the ground before Christ. The conversation is not on the basis of equality but of master and teacher. Nicodemus is sitting on the ground. A seated Jesus is teaching. The night is darker. One feels that the meeting is being conducted in terms of hushed secrecy.

Nicodemus Coming to Christ (1927) was commissioned by the Richard Humphreys Foundation in 1924, though it was not completed until 1927. The delay was due to various personal tragedies that had occurred in Tanner's life during the period, including the death of his wife.

The commission was particularly important to Tanner as the finished painting was to hang in the Carnegie Library at the Cheyney Training School for Teachers, an African-American educational institution supported by the Foundation. He even agreed to reduce his usual price of $5000 to $3000 in order to paint a work for the school

The importance of this passage in Scripture was explained by Pope John Paul II in his homily in Lesotho on Wednesday, 14 September 1988, the Feast of The Triumph of the Cross:

"2. In the Gospel of this feast we are witnesses of an unusual conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. The conversation takes place at night because Nicodemus, a prominent Jew, went to talk with Christ under the cover of darkness. Christ leads this man, a teacher, to the very heart of the mystery revealed by God. It is the mystery of the Son of God who descended from heaven and, as the Son of Man, accomplished the messianic mission among the people of Israel.

This mission was directed towards “the lifting up” of Christ on the Cross. Jesus says to Nicodemus: “The Son of Man must be lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert” (John. 3, 14). Nicodemus knows the Scriptures well; he knows the inspired message of the Old Testament. He can recall the event that took place during the journey of the chosen people in the desert. At the command of Yahweh, “Moses fashioned a bronze serpent which he put on a standard” (Numbers. 21, 9).

This bronze serpent would restore to health and save the lives of the Israelites who had been bitten by the serpents. They were serpents with a poisonous venom; after being bitten by them many Israelites died. But the serpent made of bronze and placed on a high standard would become a means of salvation: whoever looked at it would live.

3. Jesus continues: “The Son of Man must be lifted up... so that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him” (John. 3, 14-15). The human family had received at the very beginning of earthly history a deadly bite from the “ancient serpent”. He had injected a satanic venom – the venom of original sin – into the souls of the first man and woman. And from that time onward, man’s history on earth has been burdened by sin. A tendency towards sin has generated many evils in the lives of individual persons and the communities to which they belong, in families, in entire peoples and nations.

“The Son of Man must be lifted up”, says Jesus to Nicodemus. And he says this with a view to his crucifixion: The Son of Man must be lifted up on the Cross. Whoever believes in him, whoever sees in this Cross and in the Crucified One the Redeemer of the world, whoever looks with faith on the redemptive death of Jesus on the Cross, finds in him the power of eternal life. By this power, sin is overcome. People receive forgiveness of their sins at the price of the Sacrifice of Christ. They find again the life of God which had been lost by sin.

4. This is the meaning of the Cross of Christ. This is its power. “God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be saved” (John. 3, 17).

The feast that we celebrate today speaks of a marvellous and ceaseless action of God in human history, in the history of every man, woman and child. The Cross of Christ on Golgotha has become for all time the centre of this saving work of God. Christ is the Saviour of the world, because in him and through him the love with which God so loved the world is continuously revealed: “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son” (John. 3, 16).

– The Father gave him so that this Son, who is one in substance with him, would become man by being conceived of the Virgin Mary.

– The Father gave him so that as the Son of Man he would proclaim the Gospel, the Good News of salvation.

– The Father gave him so that this Son, by responding with his own infinite love to the love of the Father, might offer himself on the Cross.

5. From a human point of view, Christ’s offering of himself on the Cross was a sign of contradiction, an unthinkable disgrace. It was, in fact, the most profound humiliation possible.

In today’s liturgy, the Apostle Paul speaks to us in words that capture the mystery of the Cross of Christ: “His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as men are; and being as all men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a Cross. But God raised him high” (Phil. 2, 6-9).

Through his self-emptying on Golgotha, in the disgrace of the Cross and the crucifixion (at least in the human way of understanding these events) Christ receives the highest exaltation. In God’s eyes, the Cross is the greatest triumph. The way of human judgement is very different from God’s. God’s judgement far surpasses ours. What seems to us to be failure is, in God’s eyes, the victory of sacrificial love.

It is precisely this Cross of human disgrace that bears within itself the source of the exaltation of Christ in God.

“God raised him high and gave him the name which is above all other names so that all beings in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld, should bend the knee at the name of Jesus and that every tongue should acclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Ibid. 2, 9-11).

To the eyes of the Apostles this was revealed through the Resurrection of Christ. At that moment they understood that Christ is the Lord, that he has been given all power in heaven and on earth. At that moment their eyes and their hearts were opened, so that the lips of Thomas could profess: “My Lord and My God”! (Io. 20, 28). And once they had come to believe, through the power of the Spirit of Truth, they were ready to go forth into the whole world to teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Cfr. Matth. 28, 19). "

Archbishop Nichols on The Visit of the Relics of St Therese of Lisieux

In the Mass to bid farewell to her relics as they returned to Lisieux, The Archbishop of Westminster, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, gave the following homily.

One aspect of the life of St Therese which perhaps has not been focused on before was his consideration of her terminal illness and her example of suffering during her last illness

Her life taught that Life is a gift and not the possession of an individual to dispose of as he or she wishes.

This is perhaps even more relevant with the continuing debate on assisted suicide still causing controversy in the United Kingdom

He also faced head on the question of Catholics and their veneration of relics. Hopefully that question is now settled and closed.

“Over the past 28 days, thousands upon thousands of people have thronged to pray in the presence of these precious relics of St Therese. Today, as we prepare to return these relics to Lisieux, we thank God for the graces and blessings we have received. This has been a time of such wonderful expressions of faith and love in which we have been strengthened and filled with joyful encouragement.

This outpouring of faith has baffled many people. Some secular commentators have not been able to make sense of it all. I have found their incomprehension quite intriguing. Other reports have simply described what was there to be seen: so many people finding encouragement, perseverance and hope through the example and prayers of this most remarkable of young women. But surely they can see, unless they refuse to do so, her testimony to the spiritual dimension of human living, a dimension which takes us beyond that which can be measured and lifts human reasonableness to new levels, and flowers in heroism, sacrifice and perseverance.

For many, these days have been a time of conversion; for some they have been a time of appreciating again the value of relics as an ancient expression of our faith in God’s transforming presence in the midst of our human failures. The sense of uneasiness felt even by some Catholics can itself be a grace, prompting us to trust more readily in the closeness of God to each of us.

The real meaning of relics is, of course, that they are but a sign, a token of the holy life of this much-loved saint. They are God’s way of opening our hearts to his unwavering love. We do well to draw all the encouragement we can from this time of grace.

Today we ponder on what happens next. Where do we go from here? What do we learn from Therese of our mission today? How do we in our turn, speak of the Gospel to this society of ours?

We must remember that St Therese is the patron saint of the missions. What an irony that she who never left the cloister of her convent became the patron of every mission, of every ‘sending out’! Of course we know of her dream of being a missionary, expressed in the words: ‘I would like to travel the earth preaching your name…I would be a missionary right up to the end of time.’ And we have recalled her wish that she could spend eternity doing good on earth. How true that is and how grateful we are!

There is a profound sense of purpose running through the whole of the life of St Therese. She said that her single desire was ‘to love Jesus and to make him loved.’ This was her mission statement.

Can it be ours too? Can we, today, truly love Jesus and make him loved?

Clearly, love is the key. Of course, in our mission efforts we need to be clear and reasoned in all we say and do. We need to understand carefully the circumstances of our day and be well versed in contemporary affairs. Yet Therese teaches us the ancient Christian message: without love all our efforts are little more than a ‘gong booming or a symbol clashing.’(1 Cor 13.1)

She had her own way of expressing this: ‘Finally I understood that love comprises all vocations, that love was everything, that it embraced all times and all places….in a word that it is Eternal.’ Then she cried out, ‘My vocation is love…Yes, I have found my place in the Church….in the heart of the Church, my Mother, I will be love.’

As often as we listen to these words, well-known and inspiring as they are, we need to remember that they were written in October 1896, nine months before she died. They were written, then, at a time of anguished pain and suffering. They are not the words of a young romantic, day-dreaming of an ideal future. They are born of abandonment to God, in darkness and desolation. They are, therefore, powerful testimony to the grace of God at work in our weakness, and not to the power of a self-centred romantic imagination. They are words to shape our mission today.

These words speak directly to us today when, as a society, we struggle to understand and respond to the experience of terminal illness and approaching death. In the shortened perspectives of many, such moments are pointless and actually rob life of all its meaning. Therefore some seek the right to exercise the only solution that is within their own power: that of killing themselves and having others free to assist them to do so.

St Therese lived through those same moments. She too experienced suicidal thoughts of ending the pain and the overpowering sense of futility. She warned the sister who cared for her that when she had patients who were ‘a prey to violent pains’ she must not ‘leave them any medicines that are poisonous.’ She added, ‘I assure you it needs only a second when one suffers intensely to lose one’s reason. Then one would easily poison oneself.’

So Therese too lived the tension that many experience today, the tension between her individual, autonomous choice, on the one hand, and, on the other, the bonds which bound her to her community, to her family, to those who cared for her, to life. She argues, as we do today, that reason, in the context of our relationships, must acknowledge life as a gift and not an individual possession and, at the same time, embrace death when it comes.

This is so because the full expression of such reasoning is love seasoned by truth: the bonds of love which truly tie the dying person to those who care; the love which recognises the true impact on others of every personal action; the love of life itself, as the ultimate gift, and as stretching beyond the immediate horizons to the eternity of God’s presence.

Here we see that St Therese, indeed, proclaims the Gospel for our times.

For we live in a time of fragile and disposable relationships whereas she fashioned bonds with her sisters and with the Lord that grew stronger through every trial.

We live in a time in which affectivity and love itself seem to be commercialised and relationships subject to calculations of benefit and loss, and used accordingly. She reminds us that no cost is too high for God’s love to meet, and that in love for us God has abandoned every calculation of worth and reward.

We live in a time when each individual must impose himself or herself on every relationship, fashioning it in his or her own likeness. She, on the other hand, teaches us that we find ourselves by living in and through our relationships, and that we find ourselves fully only by abandoning ourselves into the loving embrace of Christ.

In our desire for individual autonomy, we push relationships out of the heart of our living. But she shows us clearly that neither life nor death, certainly not death, has any enduring meaning beyond our belonging to each other and to the Lord.

The practice of love in every relationship is the heart of our mission, a mission carried out in every action, at every moment. And our mission is here. ‘Make love real where you live’. That is her invitation.

Hidden in this invitation, and making it come to life, is a single question, addressed to every one of us who wish to share in her mission. The question is this: Do you really want to be close to God? Do you really want to live close to the Lord? Only when we answer with an unequivocal ‘Yes!’ will our mission be fruitful. As messengers of Christ, it is not effectiveness we seek; it is fruitfulness. And to bear that fruit we must abide in him, remain part of him, be with him one vine.

Now, as we continue with this Mass, we prepare for the moment in which these precious relics will leave. Again, we open our hearts to the Lord that he may guide our every moment, and fill the reservoir of emptiness within each of us. Then we will be able to accept our mission, our task, in this land today. If we are renewed in this sense of purpose, then these wonderful days of this pilgrimage will bear fruit indeed.”

The Roermond Passion

Unknown Artist

Eighteen Scenes from the Life of Christ, known as The Roermond Passion

c. 1435

Oil on canvas on panel

103 x 167,5 cm

The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Note that in the Lamentation scene, there is a small Augustinian nun is sitting in the foreground. Beside her is a crest which indicates who she was.

Experts at The Rijksmuseum have determined that the arms beside the Augustinian chorister belong to the Van Mirlaer van Milendonck family. Bela van Milendonck, who became a nun in around 1425, commissioned the work in memory of her mother, Bela Scheiffart van Merode. She was the widow of Johan van Mirlaer, lord of Milendonck. which indicates who she was.

Grain fields

Jacob van Ruisdael (Dutch, 1628/29–1682)

Wheat Fields

ca. 1670

Oil on canvas

39 3/8 x 51 1/4 in. (100 x 130.2 cm)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jacob van Ruisdael (Dutch, 1628/29–1682)

Grainfields

mid- or late 1660s

Oil on canvas

18 1/2 x 22 1/2 in. (47 x 57.2 cm)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jacob van Ruisdael (Dutch, 1628/29–1682)

Landscape with Church and Village

1665-70

Oil on canvas, 59,1 x 73,2 cm

Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Jacob van Ruisdael (Dutch, 1628/29–1682)

Road through Corn Fields near the Zuider Zee

1660-62

Oil on canvas, 45 x 55 cm

Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Jacob van Ruisdael (Dutch, 1628/29–1682)

View of Haarlem

c. 1670

Oil on canvas

43 x 38 cm

The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

During his lifetime, van Ruisdael`s works were little appreciated, and he seems to have lived in poverty.

In 1681 the sect of the Mennonites, with whom he was connected, petitioned the council of Haarlem for his admission into the almshouse of the town, and there the artist died on the 14th of March 1682.

He is now ranked with Rembrandt and Vermeer as one of the great masters of seventeenth-century Dutch painting,

Goethe praised him as a poet among painters.

Landscape and seascape was his forte. He was a major innovator in the field of 17th-century Netherlandish landscape painting. He achieved an impressive control of light effects, composition and accentuation of bold, compact forms in a rich scala of vivid ochre, brown and green colours

His landscapes and seascapes are not based on reality. They are more poetic, imposing and dramatic than reality.

The above are not examples of his masterpieces. They can be viewed on the normal art sites.

He had certain things which he loved to paint: trees, water, rivers.

He also liked grainfields. He produced the subject frequently. Unlike Van Gogh`s wheatfields, there is a melancholic air in these depictions.

On the anniversary of the election of Pope John Paul II to the Papacy in 1978, one recalls the many sermons and talks of the late Pope. One of his favourite themes seems to be based on the following parable of the wheat grain:

"Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (Jn 12:24).

It is one of a number of parables which concern seeds or growing from seed along with the harvest of crops: The Seed Growing Secretly, Mark 4:26–29; The Sower (The Four Soils), Matthew 13:3–23; The Leaven, Matthew 13:33; The Tares, Matthew 13:24–30.

In a post-industrial society where people live in and work in built up metropolises far from the countryside, agriculture has become "agribusiness", people`s connection with the land is tenuous to say the least, and food of all types (from home producers but increasingly abroad) is a processed commodity purchased at huge supermarket outlets whenever we wish, the impact of such comparisons may be diminished somewhat.

When was the last time you saw a grain of wheat or corn ?

How many people can marvel at the almost miraculous process of germination if they have even considered it ?

In the past the failure of the local harvest could be catastrophic for all members of society. The success or failure of the local harvest affected basic survival. Grace before meals and Thanks to God after meals were not idle prayers.

Consider that even in the nineteenth century, many people in Britain were still tied to the land despite the Industrial Revolution. Food and in particular the corn supply could cause huge political and social upheaval.

Consider the repeal of the Corn Laws in the United Kingdom in the 1840s. Consider the failure of the potato crop in Ireland on or around that time. More recent examples include the rationing of food in Europe in the Second World War. However the memory of such shortages has thankfully faded if not gone.

In the West, the threat of famine has now disappeared provided you can pay the price. We have a superabundance of food of all kinds and qualities. It is of course a great advance which has allowed great and substantial progress and advances in other fields.

But there are always downsides to every great advance.

Perhaps such works of Jacob van Ruisdael remind us of a time when we were not so fortunate. They perhaps help us in the West to again appreciate such parables.

Perhaps today Africa is one of the few places where such parables resonate with such tremendous force.

Here is an extract from one of Pope John Paul`s homilies: at Uhuru Park - Nairobi (Kenya) on Sunday, 18 August 1985 at the occasion of 43rd International Congress of the Eucharist:

""Unless a grain of wheat falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest” (John. 12, 24). Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ; beloved Pilgrims from all the continents of the world,

1. These words were spoken by the Lord Jesus as he thought of his own death. He himself first of all is that “grain of wheat” which “falls on the ground and dies”. The Son of God, of the same substance as the Father, God from God and Light from Light, was made man. He entered into the life of ordinary men and women as the son of the Virgin Mary of Nazareth. And finally he accepted death on the Cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world. Precisely in this way the grain of wheat dies and yields a rich harvest. It is the harvest of the Redemption of the world, the harvest of the salvation of souls, the power of truth and love as the beginning of eternal life in God.

In this way the parable of the grain of wheat helps us to understand the very mystery of Christ.

2. At the same time, the grain of wheat that “falls on the ground and dies” becomes the pledge of bread. A man harvests from his fields the heads of grain which have grown from the single grain and, transforming the collected grains into flour, he makes bread from it as food for his own body. In this way Christ’s parable about the grain of wheat helps us to understand the mystery of the Eucharist.

In fact, at the Last Supper, Christ took bread in his own hands, blessed it and said these words over it: “Take this, all of you, and eat it: this is my body which will be given up for you”. And the broken Bread which had become in a sacramental way his own Body he distributed to the Apostles.

In a similar way he brought about the transubstantiation of the wine into his own Blood, and distributing it to the Apostles, said: “Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all men so that sins may be forgiven”. And then he added: “Do this in memory of me”.

3. This is how the mystery of Christ remains among us through the Sacrament of the Eucharist. The mystery of the Redeemer of the world who gave himself up for us all, offering his Body and Blood in the Sacrifice of the Cross. Thanks to the Eucharist the words of our Redeemer are fulfilled: “I will not leave you orphans; I will come back to you” (John. 14, 18).

In this Sacrament he is always coming to us. We are not orphans. He is with us!

In the Eucharist he also brings us his peace, and he helps us to overcome our weaknesses and fears. It is just as he had foretold: “Peace I bequeath to you, my own peace I give you, a peace the world cannot give, this is my gift to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid” (John. 14, 27).

And hence, from the beginning, the disciples and witnesses of our Crucified and Risen Lord “remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers” (Act. 2, 42).

They remained faithful “to the breaking of bread”. In other words, the Eucharist constituted the very centre of their life, the centre of the life of the Christian community, the centre of the life of the Church.

Thus it was at the beginning in Jerusalem. Thus it has been everywhere, wherever faith in the Gospel together with the teaching of the Apostles has been introduced. From generation to generation it has been so among different peoples and nations. Thus it has also been on the African continent since the Gospel first reached these lands through the missionaries, and since it produced its first fruits in a community assembled to celebrate the Eucharist. "

God's field

Abraham Bloemaert 1566 - 1651

Landscape with the Parable of the Tares among the Wheat

1604

Oil on canvas, 100 x 133 cm

Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore

Print made by Jacob Matham 1571 - 1631

After Abraham Bloemaert Landscape with the parable of the Tares 1605

Engraving

380 millimetres x 505 millimetres

Inscription Content: Lettered below left corner "Cum privil. / Sa. Cæ. M." and at right "A.Bloemaert Inven. / I.Maetham sculp. / et excud.". Dated below sleeping figure at left "A.o 1605". In the margin four columns of text, each two lines "Dum tenet ... fructus" by "SSH" (Simon Sovius of Haarlem).

The British Museum, London

Print made by Crispijn de Passe the elder 1564 - 1637

Parabolarum: The parable of the Tares 1604

Engraving

Diameter: 83 millimetres

Inscription Content: Lettered around design "INTER MATH. XIII".

The British Museum, London

Sir John Everett Millais, Bt 1829-1896

The Tares published 1864

From Illustrations to `The Parables of Our Lord', engraved by the Dalziel Brothers

Relief print on paper

image: 140 x 108 mm

Tate Britain, London

Domenico Fetti

Satan Sowing Darnel (Tares)

First quarter of the 17th century

Brown wash and red chalk over sketch in red chalk. 24.5x20 cm

State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

"There is another aspect of St John Leonardi's spirituality that I would like to emphasise.

On various occasions he reasserted that the living encounter with Christ takes place in his Church, holy but frail, rooted in history and in its sometimes obscure unfolding, where wheat and weeds grow side by side (cf. Mt 13: 30), yet always the sacrament of salvation.

Since he was clearly aware that the Church is God's field (cf. Mt 13: 24), St John was not shocked at her human weaknesses.

To combat the weeds he chose to be good wheat: that is, he decided to love Christ in the Church and to help make her, more and more, a transparent sign of Christ. He saw the Church very realistically, her human frailty, but he also saw her as being "God's field", the instrument of God for humanity's salvation. And this was not all.

Out of love for Christ he worked tirelessly to purify the Church, to make her more beautiful and holy. He realized that every reform should be made within the Church and never against the Church

In this, St John Leonardi was truly extraordinary and his example is ever timely. Every reform, of course, concerns her structures, but in the first place must have an effect in believers' hearts. Only Saints, men and women who let themselves be guided by the divine Spirit, ready to make radical and courageous decisions in the light of the Gospel, renew the Church and make a crucial contribution to building a better world."

Pope Benedict XVI at a General Audience in St Peter`s Square, Rome on Wednesday, 7 October 2009