Month: December 2014

Owing to a family emergency, all twelve episodes in Reflections on the Twelve Days of Christmas for A.D. 2014-2015 are being made available today instead of one episode per day.  The theme picture is the Nativity window at St. Gertrude’s Church, Gamla Stan, Stockholm, Sweden.  The window was designed by the famous stained glass artist F. X. Zettler.  F. X. Zettler was the son-in-law of Franz Mayer, whose firm launched what become known as the Munich Style of stained glass in the mid-19th Century.  Mayer of Munich designed the windows included in AIC Bookstore publication, Paintings on Light: the Stained Glass Windows of St. Joseph’s Villa Chapel.  (available at my author page at Amazon:   https://www.Amazon.com/Author/Ronald-E-Shibley>

Zettler set up his own firm in the 1860s.  F. X. Zettler became part of Mayer of Munich again in 1939.  Both the Zettler and Mayer studios were known world-wide for the exceptional luminosity and attention to detail of their stained glass windows.  This one glows with soft white light around and from from the central figure, the Infant Jesus.  The halo for the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph are bright gold and stand out against the dark background, with a rural setting barely visible in the background.  Shepherds and domestic animals observe the scene on Christmas morning.

I hope you enjoy the collection of pictures of stained glass windows, icons, frescoes, ceramic tiles, statuary and mosaics that are used for this fourth edition our our annual Christmas series.

May God bless you and your family with a happy and joyful Christmas season.

I have also made Podcast (MP3) versions of all these programs, which are linked from the Podbean gadget on the Digital Library page at our web site:  www.AnglicanInternetChurch.net.

First Day of Christmas (Love)
Second Day of Christmas (Forgiveness)
Third Day of Christmas (Peace)
Fourth Day of Christmas (Compassion)
Fifth Day of Christmas (Obedience)
Sixth Day of Christmas (Joy)
Seventh Day of Christmas (Family)
Eighth Day of Christmas (Church)
Ninth Day of Christmas (Angels)
Tenth Day of Christmas (Commandments)
Eleventh Day of Christmas (Glorifying God)
Twelfth Day of Christmas (Grace & Faith)

A family emergency has caused a change of plan for the daily posting of episodes on the Great “O” Antiphons series.  I uploaded all of them at once.   The podcast versions are linked from the Digital Library page at our Web Site (www.AnglicanInternetChurch.net)

O Sapientia (Wisdom) for December 18th

O Adonai (Lord) for December 19th

O Radix Jesse (Root of Jesse) for December 20th

O Clavis David (Key of David) for December 21st

O Oriens (Dayspring) for December 22nd

O Rex Gentium (King of the Nations) for December 23rd

O Emmanuel (God With Us) for December 24th

Reflections on the Twelve Days of Christmas, originally planned to be released one day at a time, will be released all at once on Christmas Eve, or possibly later today.  In addition to the family emergency, I had to change the music for the series owing to a copyright complication.   I hope each of you finds the pictures added for this year’s series to be as inspiring and uplifting as I do.   Unless you are a scholar, I suspect that there are many of these images which you have never before seen. I had not, which is why I included them.

Thank you for your support and your interest in the Anglican Internet Church ministry.

Watch O Adonai, the second of 7 videos for the final days of Advent A.D. 2014, which is now available as a video on our You Tube channel.   For those with portable devices intended for listening, you can also listen to the MP3 version      Adonai is the only Hebrew word of the seven words or phrases in this 12th Century office.   All the others are in Latin.   The Latin (and Greek) equivalent of Adonai is Kyrie (as in the Kyrie eleison prayer and response favored  by Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox Christians.

Christ as Lord is roughly equivalent to the classic Greek title of Jesus:   Christ Pantokrator, or Ruler of the Universe, expressed in a mosaic at the Basilica of St. Ambrose in Milan around the 12th Century.  I used perspective correction software to adjust his picture of the apse above the altar at the cathedral on the site of the place where the great St. Ambrose of Milan preached in the late 4th and early 5th centuries.   Ambrose’s most famous pupil was St. Augustine of Hippo.  He wrote one of the earliest complet expositions of the Christian Faith and was also a gifted hymnwriter.   In the St. Chrysostom Hymnal at my former parish, I included nine of his hymns.   His closing doxology is very well-known but rarely attributed to him:   “O Father. that we ask be done, through Jesus Christ, thine only Son, Who, with the Holy Ghost and Thee, Doth live and reign eternally.”

copyright Can Stock Photo, Inc./tupungato

The first of seven Antiphon episodes for the final days of Advent, O Sapientia, was published on You Tube and via podcast channels.  A new episode in the series will be posted daily through Christmas Eve.   The series features art, photography and icons plus a mini-homily, illustrating or explaining the key words and themes for each day.  The illustration is an old manuscript on the Latin word Sapientia, which means wisdom.    A podcast version of the sound track is also available from our Podcast site on Podbean: http://saintjohnc.podbean.com/mf/web/rycmui/OAntiphons-Sapientia.mp3

Later today or tomorrow I will post a podcast homily for Fourth Sunday in Advent, which will be linked from the new Podcast Homilies page at our Web site.  The subject is The First Gift of Christmas.

Both the Great “O” Antiphons and Reflections on the Twelve Days of Christmas are advertised this year for the first time on David Virtue’s VirtueOnline web site.  I am hoping this will lead to a wider distribution of these programs.

I am also working on a new advertising campaign to be launched in January.  Here’s a sample graphic.

Thanks so much for your support, encouragement and contributions.  Without a local parish, this Internet ministry remains available owing to public contributions and purchases of our books.  Please consider a paperback or Kindle version of any of our nine publications:  They are available through my Author page at Amazon.

This afternoon I posted the third homily for Advent season, Rejoice in the Love of God.   The homily is an extended essay on the modern corruption of the word “love.”   I examine the true meaning of love, from the Greek agape, and also discuss several other Greek words which can be translated as love, but are only small aspects of love;   storge’ (familial love), philia (brotherly love), philaguria (love of money, or avarice), philautos (love of self), and philanthropia (love of mankind).  I hope listeners are enjoying the musical theme, a modern piano variation on O Come, O Come, Emmanuel by Rob Stroh at each end of the program.  The whole series is available from the Podcast Homily page at the AIC Web Site.

Of these only agape describes the kind of unqualified love which God expressed for His people in sending His only-begotten Son to be Incarnate as a man and ransom Himself for our sins and reconcile God and man.   All other words are commonplace expressions of love: of things; people; places; possessions; sex; self; and, even, one’s fellow men or women.

In my Reflection for the Sixth Day of Christmas (December 29th) I will explore the connection to the Latin verb, Gaudere, and its adjective form, joyful: O be joyful in the Lord, all ye lands.   The Great “O” Antiphons series (12/18 to 12/24) and Reflections on the Twelve Days of Christmas will be available on my You Tube channel, with one new video uploaded daily during that period.