Month: July 2023

I want to thank our newest followers of this Blog as well as those who have been with us for a long time. Owing to recent and pending surgeries related to Carpal Tunnel issues, I will be unable to post regularly until the 2nd week of August. Presently, the left hand is restricted, then the right hand’s turn is next week. As I am completely right-handed the use of a keyboard will be next to impossible. I have already recorded the Podcast Homilies for Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Sundays after Trinity, uploaded them to our Podcast vendor site and linked them to the Podcast Homilies-Morning Prayer and the Welcome page.

Thank you for your patience during this three-week absence from the Web. During this period I am hopeful that the final two images needed for Angels: The Book will arrive from the British Library. I have already placed nine other high-resolutions images from the same source into the body of the book.

Podcast Homily for T-6 now available. Short msg owing to Carpal tunnel surgery. 100 dpi from Stuttgart Psalter (circa 820) illustrating Ps. 16:11. Cod. Bibl. Fol.23.Wurttembergische Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart, Germany.

The Podcast Homily for Fifth Sunday after Trinity in our new series of Podcast Homilies for Morning Prayer focused on the appointed Psalm was uploaded to our Podbean site and linked from the Welcome and Morning Prayer H0milies pages. The appointed readins for the day are Psalm 62 and Psalm 63. Since Psalm 62 was read and commented upon earlier in this series on the First Sunday in Lent, only Psalm 63 is discussed in the Podcast. In addition to the actual reading, I discuss commentary upon Psalm 63 from three great saints of the early Church. From the Eastern Church tradition is Basil of Caesarea (also known as Basil the Great) and his brother Gregory of Nyssa. From the Western Church tradition I quote commentary by Augustine of Hippo. The illustration for Psalm 63 in the companion volume, The Prayer Book Psalter: Picture Book Edition. A 100 dpi version is posted below. The version used in the PBP-PBE is 300 dpi. I thank Wurttembergische Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart, Germany, for its cooperation in the production of the book (which is available using the Virtual Bookstore link on the Welcome page of this site).

I thought to share with you a brief story about the production of our project, Angels: the Book. I was confident that I was nearing the end of the preparation cycle when, for whatever reason, I expanded the scope of the book to include more images of Satan, the Fallen Angel. I had placed the text of the God-Satan dialogue concerning Job from Job 1 into the book, but had no image to go with it. My search of the resources of the British Library, London, using the words Satan, God and Job revealed 83 possible sources, each with multiple possible images. When I do these these searches I review the miniature images, which can be none to hundreds of images. After hours and hours of looking at material that could not be used owing to lack of relevance or poor picture quality or content, I was on item number 83 of 83 without success when I found a page from the start of Job from an early edition of a book I had used in other publications. The volume, Bible Historiale, is a French production from the 15th C. based upon the earlier work of Guyart des Moulins in the 13th C. in France. After editing the image for alignment, brightness and clarity of content, I added it as Illustration No. 49, which meant that Illustrations No. 50 to 146 had to be renumbered, plus adding the image required the addition of two pages, which action meant that all the pages from Page 60 to Page 226 had to be renumbered, all the pages numbers in the Table of Contents and all the cross-references adjusted for Illustration number and page number. Two days later, thanks to the book designer’s system of searching for a specific word, phrase or number, the necessary changes were made. The current version is now complete through the final chapter, Angels in Popular Culture. The volume now has 236 pages with 147 images from the 3rd to the 21st C. About a dozen images will need to be photographed again in high-resolution format before the final layout of the book can begin.

As always, thank you for your interest and support. Glory be to God for all things! Amen!