The Collect for Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity is another which Archbishop Cranmer derived from the Gelasian Sacramentary. For the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, the first Anglican prayer book, the Archbishop left out a phrase from the Gelasian collect: “from all things hurtful.” The omission was corrected in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The Collect places great emphasis on the merciful nature of God and, correspondingly, the frailty of man, His creation. Church historian Massey Shepherd thought it echoed the theme of the Collect for Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, which was based on a collect from the Gregorian Sacramentary in which the “frailty” of mankind is also mentioned.

KEEP, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy Church with thy perpetual mercy;
and, because the frailty of man without thee cannot but fall,
keep us ever by thy help from all things hurtful,
and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Collect for Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity is discussed in Episode Six in the AIC Christian Education Video series, Trinitytide: the Teaching Season and the related Collect for Fourth Sunday after Epiphany in Episode Three in Epiphany: the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, both also linked (in the order of the Church Calendar) from the Digital Libary page.

This week’s Epistle reading is again from St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians, a congregation in the central region of Asia Minor east of present-day Istanbul. The name is thought to derive from the ancient Gauls who migrated from Europe into Asia Minor in the 1st C. St. Paul’s missionary activity in the region is described in Acts 16 and 18. The region includes the cities of Antioch (not be be confused with Antioch in present-day Syria), Iconium, Lystra and Derbe. I traced out the route taken by St. Paul on his second missionary journey overlaid on a late 19th C. American Bible Society map of the Mediterranean region as Illustration No. 56 in the AIC Bookstore Publication, The Acts of the Apostles: Annotated & Illustrated, available through my Amazon Author Central page. St. Paul addresses the dispute between the Judaizers who advocated circumcision as a requirement for Christians and the emerging Christian understanding that circumcision’s symbolic function had been replaced by the Christian rite of baptism. In the epistle, St. Paul calls the Church the “Israel of God” (Galatians 16:16).

The Gospel reading, the second of nine readings from the Gospel of Matthew in Trinitytide: the Teaching Season, is Matthew 6:24-34, one of two Gospel accounts of Jesus’ sermon on the conflict between God and Mammon, the other being Luke 6:13. St. Matthew’s account is often described as the long form account of this part of the Sermon on the Mount. It provided inspiration for several of the greatest early Church commentators on the Gospels, including Gregory of Nyssa (brother of Basil of Caesarea) and John Chrysostom (literally, John the Golden Mouth) in the 4th C. and, in the Western Church tradition, late 19th and early 20thth C. artists illustrating Bible themes in books and paintings.

The key word from the reading is Mammon, which is derived from an Aramaic word, mamonas, generally interpreted to mean wealth, or “riches.” Gregory of Nyssa interpreted the name as referring to the Devil, or Beelezub. The more literal-minded preacher, John Chrysostom, interpreted mammon as a personification of the vice of Greed. Greed was one of the “seven deadly sins” in the Western Church tradition since the reign of Gregory the Great as Bishop of Rome in the 4th C. For more on the concepts of virtues and sin(s), see the entries for each in Layman’s Lexicon: a Handbook of Scriptural, Theological & Liturgical Terms. Like The Acts of the Apostles volume mentioned above, the book is available through my Amazon Author Central page. The Podcast Homily for Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity is linked from the Podcast Homilies page.

For this Blog posting I offer you two images concerning Mammon. The first is an engraving from a 582 page book on the Devil and other aspects of “demonology” published in France in 1818 by Jacque Collin de Plancy (his longer name is used in the image’s credit line). The source did not identify the “L.B.” initials or the “Jazzault” signature under the image which came from a later edition published in 1863, 45 years after the first edition. You can read more about J. C. de Plancy on Wikipedia, which lists of all his published and unpublished work. Mammon is shown seated on a locked wooden box clutching his possessionsn. The 1863 volume found a much wider audience than the first edition, which probably pleased the artist, who died in 1881.

In the second image Mammon is shown as a god-figure gripping a bag of money while being worshipped by a young woman, painted in 1909 by Evelyn de Morgan (1855-1919), an English painter associated with the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood school and whose style featured highly-symbolic imagery.

The lesson to be learned from the Gospel reading is the danger of becoming obsessed with possessions/wealth/status/money or other earthly “treasures.” While it is often said that “money is the root of all evil,” in truth it is anyone’s obsession with it and not the object itself that is the problem. One of the great early Christian thinkers, St. Clement of Alexandria, countered the claim that it is money that is evil with an essay often labelled in modern times as “Who Is the Rich Man Who Shall Be Saved?” (the link reveals the full text). St. Clement suggests methods and manners for putting wealth into service of the Christian faith, vs. giving it all away (a solution often practices in the 1st, 2nd & 3rd C.) and then being unable to help anyone.

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

With the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity we are past the midpoint in Trinitytide: the Teaching Season, the longest season on the Anglican Church Calendar..

The Collect for the day is yet another variation by Archbishop Cranmer from the 1549 Book of Common Prayer based on the Gelasian Sacramentary in the Roman Catholic tradition. As in earlier Collects, this one was modified for the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The key phrase is “faith, hope and charity” in the King James Version and “faith, hope and love” in the New King James Version. The quotation comes from 1st Corinthians 13:1-13, St. Paul’s extended essay on the virtue of love. Nearly all modern translations use the NKJV pattern. The root word is the Latin caritas, reflecting the English academic preference for Latin rather than Greek. The Greek word with the same meaning is agape; however, in the Greek language tradition there are many words which describe different aspects of love; examples: love of fellow man; love of money.

The Epistle reading is again from St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians (Galatians 5:16-24), which is another lesson on Law vs. Spirit and the human emotional struggle with “passions.” St, Paul compares actions which are “fruits of the spirit” (nine actions) to their opposite, “works of the flesh” (seventeen actions). These verses are not easily illustrated and, since there have been several images of St. Paul in earlier posts, I will not include another here.

The Gospel reading is the tenth of twelve readings for the season from the pen of St. Luke, Luke 17:11-19, another account unique to the Gospel of Luke, in this case of Jesus’ healing (technically, “cleansing”) of ten lepers at Capernaum. The time is likely around the Spring of 30 A.D. in the third year of Jesus’ public ministry. For this week’s Fr. Ron’s Blog entry I offer you two images, representing two different styles of Scriptural illumination. The first, from the Codex Aureus of Echternach, was prepared in the Byzantine/Spiritual-minded style and includes a word or label which offer viewers a key to understanding St. Luke’s account. The artists present an interpretation of St. Luke’s account in two scenes. The actual healing, or “cleansing,”is presented in the left-hand image, in which all ten men are present. In the right-hand image the artists interpret the return of the one who gave thanks to Jesus (described in verses 15 and 16). I could not enlarge the image without distortion of the very important notation which is painted into the right-hand scene just in front of Jesus’ left hand and directly above the kneeling man who is prostrate at the feet of Jesus. The label is “Samaritan.” In the image, the artists answer Jesus’ question in verse 17: “Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the other nine!” The last of the other nine are shown fading out to the right of the image.

There are two very illuminating details about this account. First, Jesus did not take credit for the healing/cleansing, saying instead to the one who returned and gave thanks: “Your faith has made you well.” Second, as in the Parable of the Good Samaritan (described & illustrated for Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity), it is notable that the one who returned was not one of the Chosen People (expected to do the right thing) but, as the label notes: “Samaritan.” As noted in last week’s Blog posting, I explore the long and troubled relationship between the Hebrew nation and the Samaritans in the text box, Samaria and the Samaritans in the Gospel, found on page 119 in our bookstore publication, The Gospel of Luke: Annotated & Illustrated (available using the link to my Amazon Author Central page and also found at the bottom of the Welcome page of this site and also on the AIC Bookstore page, which offers details about all the AIC Bookstore Publications. Royalties generated by your purchases of these books helps the AIC maintain this site, our Podbean host site and acquire additional images for use in blog posts and other books.

The second image is a watercolor in the historical style painted by French artist James Tissot (born Jacques Tissot, Nantes, France, 1836; died, Chenency-Boilon, France, 1902). The watercolor is part of a collection of Scenes in the Life of Christ which Tissot prepared between 1886 and 1896. The collection was acquired from the artist by the Brooklyn Museum in 1900, adding to its existing collection of art by James Tissot. Other works by Tissot were acquired by the Museum in 1939. The Life of Christ images were photographed by the Museum in 2008 A.D. and later made available for download in digital form. During his preparation for these images Tissot travelled extensively in the Holy Land and nearby regions. Tissot researched both the physical/geographical details but also the manner of dress thought to have been popular in the 1st C., recording his discoveries in the form of sketches of people and places, many of which were used in the watercolors. His work is featured extensively in the AIC Bookstore Publication series on Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and The Acts of the Apostles. They also are featured in many of our Bible Study and Christian Education Video series. This second image is Illustration No. 87 in The Gospel of Luke: Annotated & Illustrated.

As always, thank you for your interest and support. I invite you to visit the other pages on the site for study materials in print, audio and video formats. Glory be to God for all things! Amen!

Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity is the half-way point in the celebration of the Church’s “Teaching Season.” The themes for the day are familiar and, fortunately for 21st C. Christians, there are many choices of illustrations by artists from the 6th to the late 19th C. In the AIC archives there are sixteen images of the Gospel reading (including examples from the same artist illustrating different scenes in St. Luke’s account.

The Collect for Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity is yet another by Archbishop Cranmer which he adapted from the Gelasian Sacramentary. Like many of the collects in Trinitytide, the final verse was modified for the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The Latin word “Laud,” which means praise, is central to the collect. The final line mentions the “merits and mediation” of Jesus Christ, through whom God’s blessings are received by those who believe.

ALMIGHTY and merciful God, of whose only gift it cometh that thy faithful
people do unto thee true and laudable service; Grant, we beseech thee, that we may so faithfully serve thee in this life,
that we fail not finally to attain thy heavenly promises; through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle reading, the first in Trinitytide from Paul’s letter to the Galatians (Galatians 3:16-22), is St. Paul’s history lesson on the relationship of man to God, tracing it from the promise to Abraham through the delivery of the Commandments to Moses and, finally, to Jesus Christ as the mediator of the promises to mankind (“that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.”

The Gospel reading (Luke 10:23-37), the seventh reading from St. Luke in Trinitytide, is another unique parable, the Parable of the Good Samaritan. My personal favorite among the selection of Christian art mentioned above is an illumination from the Rossano Gospels, produced in northern Italy in the 6th C. following the Byzantine Empire’s re-conquest of Italy. The Rossano Gospels are among the 0ldest of the codexes produced on purple-dyed parchment. The illustration is an example of what I call the “spiritual-minded” illustrations, a style very popular in the Byzantine and Greek Orthodox traditions. In this example the Good Samaritan is depicted as a Christ-figure in the scene showing the payment of the innkeeper’s bill. An angel, depicted in white at center stands over the central scene. The image was captured by the Yorck Project (10,000 Meisterwerke der Malerei, commonly known in English as 10,000 Masterworks) distributed on a DVD and entered into the public domain. The project was one of the first attempts to digitize art, religious and non-religious, from around the world and is now available online.

I discuss the complex and troubled relationship between Samaria and the Jews in the AIC Bookstore Publication, The Gospel of Luke: Annotated & Illustrated in a full page text box, “Samaria and Samaritans in the Gospels,” complete with a map of the H0ly Land in the 1st C. A.D., on page 119. The book is available through my Amazon Author Central page. More information is available through a link on the Virtual Bookstore section at the bottom of the Welcome page and on the AIC Bookstore page.

An excellent example of the “historical style” is the stained glass window at the Basilica of Our Lady of the Assumption, Clermont-Ferrand, France, which presents a more simple but straightforward interpretation of Luke’s account. The Good Samaritan is aiding the distressed man in the foreground, with the other characters in St. Luke’s account passing by and away in the background.

In the post- Charlemagne era in Western Europe, the tradition of illustrating Bibles with scenes from the Gospels reached a high point with the series of Ottonian emperors, including Otto the Great, Otto III and Henry II. The Ottonians brought to Reichenau, Germany, illustrators from Constantinople to teach Byzantine techniques to an already-impressive body of artists working at Reichenau Monastery on Lake Constance. One of the results was a beautiful illumination in tempera and gold on parchment made for Emperor Otto III. Below is the full-page illustration in which all the buildings, animals and people mentioned in St. Luke’s Gospel are shown on a gold background, with many imaginative assumed details of the assault. Viewers should take note of the range of facial expressions of the individual characters. The artist labelled this page the “Parable of the Compassionate Samaritan,” a title more accurate than the common usage in the Western Church. The image was used as Illustration 73 in the AIC Bookstore Publication, The Gospel of Luke: Annotated & Illustrated, which is available using through my Amazon Author Central page. It is one of 13 images from the Gospels of Otto III (see more in the caption) I used in that volume alone. The scene is discussed in Episode Six in our Christian Education Video series, Trinitytide: the Teaching Season, linked from the Digital Library page. The Podcast Homily for the same Sunday is linked from the Podcast Homilies page.

Other notable images in the “historical style” were prepared by Aime’ Morot (oil on canvas for the Petit Palais, Avignon, France, 1880); an opaque watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper, part of a series describing events in the Life of Christ, drawn and painted between 1886 and 1894, now in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY (and which can be downloaded from the Museum’s web site); a 15th C. tempera and gold on panel Byzantine-style icon by Russian artist Andre Rublev; and an oil on canvas by Cornelis van Haarlem. Some of these, and other examples not named here, can be seen on the Parable of the Good Samaritan page at Wikipedia Commons. All these are quite superior to the cartoonish examples of “Good Samaritan” images also linked from the Wikipedia site.

I hope you find these example of Christian art to be spiritually inspiring. All Christians should be thankful for the careful attention to preservation of these amazing works and to the digitization which has made these extraordinary works more widely available. The AIC remains committed to wide dissemination of these images, and in other formats, as part of our WATCH (videos) – LISTEN (podcasts) – READ (books) initiative which makes teaching materials available in whatever format one prefers and links them from the appropriate pages on this site.

As always, I thank you for your interest and support and hope you continue to find it useful and instructive. Glory be to God for all things! Amen!

We are just short of the halfway point in Trinitytide for A.D. 2024, with the second and last reading from the Gospel of Mark. This week’s Collect is largely based on Archbishop Cranmer’s interpretation of a Gelasian Sacramentary original, with the final line modified in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The major theme is the mercy of God granted to an unworthy humanity, who is “not worthy to ask.” The editors stress in the final line the “merits and mediation” of “Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord.”

The epistle reading (2nd Corinthians 3:4-9) is another message from Paul to his most difficult congregation which struggled with the temptations of the world, especially beliefs lingering in that port city since its pagan history. A key line, echoing the Collect, refers again to man’s inherent unworthiness overcome only by the mercies of God.

My subject for today’s example of Christian art is based upon the Gospel reading, Mark 7:31-37, an account found only in the Gospel of Mark of Jesus’ unusual healing of a deaf man with a speech impediment whom He encountered in the Decapolis region on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. The timeline for the account is during the middle months of A.D. 29 during the second year of Jesus’ public ministry. The scene Mark describes was not often used in New Testament illuminations. The AIC image archice includes only two examples, a scene from a very large (48″ wide x 34.4″ high) 17th C. oil on canvas by Bartholomeus Breenburgh, from the collection the Louvre Museum, Paris, France, titled Jesus Healing a Deaf-mute. Another image is a mosaic in the Inner Narthex at Chora Church, Constantinople/Istanbul, Turkey. I was not able to obtain a high-resolution version of that image, but you can see a photograph of it at Dreamstine.com by entering the file number: 36045098.

This week’s Gospel reading is discussed in Episode Five in the AIC Christian Education Video series, Trinitytide: the Teaching Season. My Podcast Homily for the occasion is linked from the Podcast Homilies page or directly: Twelfth Sunday after Trinity. It is discussed but not illustrated in the AIC Bookstore Publication, The Gospel of Mark: Annotated & Illustrated, which is available through my Amazon Author Central page.

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

For the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity in A.D. 2024, the Collect is an adaptation of the Gelasian Sacramentary’s collect that was modified for the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. It declares that the chief attribute of God the Father is “mercy and pity,” and that those who abide by His Commandments may be “made partakers of thy heavenly treasure.” The Epistle reading, 1st Corinthians 15:1-11, is St. Paul’s history-based affirmation of the traditional understanding of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ and a synopsis of his own conversion on the road to Damascus. The Gospel reading, Luke 18:9-14, is one of the shortest pericopes (or Scripture verse selection) with only six verses. It is another of the ten parables that are unique to the Gospel of Luke. Based on the King James Version it is called the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. Based on the text in the New King James Version it is known as the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. In modern English a “publican” is more often understood as one who operates a bar or tavern. The term Tax Collector more accurately describes the occupation of the second man in the parable.

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican/Tax Collector was a popular subject for Scripture illustrators when illustrated versions of the New Testament become widely popular in the Western Church in the second half of the 10th C. Two of the best-known 19th C. examples are the Gustav Dore’s engraving for Le Grand Bible du Tours published in 1866 in Paris and the English language version commonly known as Dore’s English Bible, later in the same year.and London, and a watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper produced by James Tissot, part of a series of scenes in the life of Christ prepared between 1886 and 1894.

For the AIC Bookstore Publication, The Gospel of Luke: Annotated & Illustrated, I used the Tissot version as Illustration No. 89. As part of our LISTEN-WATCH-READ initiative described at the bottom of the Home page, the book is available through my Amazon Author Central page. (More information about the book can be found on the AIC Bookstore page. All book royalties are contributed to the AIC); the Podcast H0mily for Eleventh Sunday after Trinity is linked from the Podcast Homilies page; and the Collect, Epistle and Gospel readings are also discussed and illustrated in the AIC Bible Study Video series, The New Testament, in Episode Seventeen and in the video series, Trinitytide: the Teaching Season, Episode Five. all linked from their respective pages in the menu bar.

The Tissot watercolor captures the meaning of verses 11 and 12 revealing the prideful vanity of the Pharisee, who positioned himself in the most prominent place in the Temple at Jerusalem; the meaning of verse 13, presenting the Tax Collector in the background, standing on only one foot and leaning against a pillar; and Jesus’ summary declaration in verse 14. Tissot’s attention to detail is further demonstrated in the background imagery. The Parable was also, and continues to be in the 21st C., captured in small icons in the Eastern Church tradition.

Thank you to those who follow this Blog page and the AIC web site. We hope you enjoy and benefit spiritually from these resources. Your interest and support is greatly appreciated.

Glory be to God for all things! Amen!

The readings in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer for Eighth Sunday after Trinity are again focused on the writings of St. Paul (Romans 8:12-17), this time on mankind’s struggle against passions, and the second of nine readings in Trinitytide from the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 7:15-21), Jesus’ warning against false pr0phets. The contents of both readings are not easily made into graphic images and so these texts were not often illustrated in the many illuminated Bibles, sacramentaries, Books of Hours, and other types of documents intended for worship or study..

I have chosen two images, the first a Byzantine 11th C. mosaic of St. Paul and the second a colorful illumination from the 10th C. in the Western Church tradition after the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne. I hope the second image will help modern Christians visualize and understand certain phrases in the Collect for Eighth Sunday after Trinity and the final words of the Gospel reading, both of which include a reference to heaven. The Collect for the day, which was adapted from the Gelasian Sacramentary, with changes made in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, refers to a “never-failing providence” who rules over “all things both in heaven and earth.” In the last verse of the reading from Matthew, Jesus refers to the conditions for admission into the “kingdom of heaven.”

The first image is a small Byzantine-style mosaic of St. Paul, one of two in the Inner Narthex (Greek: Esonarthex), Chora Church, Chora region, Constantinople/Istanbul, Turkey. The oldest portion of the building dates to the 4th C, with major additions dating to the 11th C. and the 14th C. The image of Paul is part of the 11th C. improvements. The same image was used in the AIC Christian Education Video series, Trinitytide: the Teaching Season, Episode Four, linked from the Digital Library page. The image presents Paul in the traditional manner, with receding hairline and pointed beard. Note that many tiles which make up the lower level of the mosaic have been lost, likely owing to either earthquake damage or Moslem attempts to cover or destroy Christian images after the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

The second image is a 10th C. illumination in tempera and gold on parchtment depicting the kingdom of heaven. It was made in Liege, Belgium (then Francia), in the 9th C. and taken to England around 942 A.D., when it came into the collection of Athelstan, King of Wessex. Wessex then included all or parts of modern England’s West Country, including the modern counties of Somerset, Wiltshire, Dorset, Cornwall and Devon. The manuscript was damaged in a fire in October 1731 in which the outer edges were damaged by smoke and water and the parchment was warped by the heat of the fire. The Athelstan Psalter was fully digitized before the hacking of the British Library’s web site and collections in October 2023, an event which took their systems offline. When the system is fully restored, which is now espected to be accomplished in the late Fall of 2024 A.D., the entire Athelstan Psalter will once again by available for viewing.

Error corrected: the posting for Second Sunday after Trinity included an incorrect calculation of the number of readings from the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. The correct number for Matthew is 9 and for Mark is two. Apologies for the counting error. The original blog post and the count in the posts for Sixth & Seventh Sundays after Trinity have been corrected.

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

For the Ninth Sunday after Trinity in A.D. 2024 there is no shortage of interesting Christian art imagery. The Epistle reading, 1st C0rinthians 10:1-13 includes St. Paul famous comparisons of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea to the Christian sacrament of Baptism with water, uses the word “rock” t0 describe Christ and “ensample” (both in the KJV text) and closes with his comforting declaration concerning handling mankind’s various burdens. The Gospel reading, Luke 15:15-32, is the Parable of the Lost Son (or Prodigal Son in KJV language), is one of the longest Gospel readings in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, requiring 2 1/2 pages in the B.C.P. Its rivals are the readings for Monday before Easter, Wednesday before Easter, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

The Prodigal Son label is popular with readings of the King James Version. Twentieth and Twenty-first Century readers, especially those using the New King James Version, prefer the Lost Son label because the account is one of three parables in the Gospel of Luke which involve the recovery of something lost: the Lost Son, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Sheep. Among the most famous interpretations of the parable the oils on canvas by Rembrandt (1668), Bartoleme’ Esteban Murillo (1667-1670), and Pompeo Batoni (1773) and, in his unique watercolors, by the late 19th C. artist James Tissot, who painted two scenes, the son begging and the son’s return, as part of his scenes in the life of Christ series (1886-1894, in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum). All but the son begging were included in Chapter 15 in the AIC Bookstore Publication, The Gospel of Luke: Annotated & Illustrated, available through my Amazon Author Central page, with full information posted on the Bookstore page of this site.

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