The Said Symphony: move 18 with cadenza
Christ, who is simultaneously the sacrificing Priest and the sacrificial Lamb, is understood in the theology of the Eucharist as extending throughout and beyond all times and spaces – he is “slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13.8 as quoted above), he re-enacts the original Passover in the Last Supper (Mark 14.14) and at his Crucifixion (his body broken and blood spilled), and is present at every Eucharist…
Dom Gregory Dix, after 700 pages of exceedingly detailed scholarship on the early formation of the Eucharistic rite in his seminal book, The Shape of the Liturgy — suddenly bursts out with this stunning paragraph:
Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacles of human greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth. Men have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat; for the wisdom of the Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; for a schoolboy sitting an examination or for Columbus setting out to discover America; for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover; in thankfulness because my father did not die of pneumonia; for a village headman much tempted to return to fetich because the yams had failed; because the Turk was at the gates of Vienna; for the repentance of Margaret; for the settlement of a strike; for a son for a barren woman; for Captain so-and-so, wounded and prisoner-of-war; while the lions roared in the nearby amphitheatre; on the beach at Dunkirk; while the hiss of scythes in the thick June grass came faintly through the windows of the church; tremulously, by an old monk on the fiftieth anniversary of his vows; furtively, by an exiled bishop who had hewn timber all day in a prison camp near Murmansk; gorgeously, for the canonisation of S. Joan of Arc — one could fill many pages with the reasons why men have done this, and not tell a hundredth part of them. And best of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the plebs sancta Dei — the holy common people of God.
And every Eucharist, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council tells us, offers us “a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the Holy City of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, Minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle.”
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Within Islam:
We find the same in the profound reaches of Islam, where as Gerhard Böwering notes in The Concept of Time in Islam:
Through a distinct meditational technique, known as dikr, recollection of God, the mystics return to their primeval origin on the Day of Covenant, when all of humanity (symbolically enshrined in their prophetical ancestors as light particles or seeds) swore an oath of allegiance and witness to Allah as the one and only Lord. Breaking through to eternity, the mystics relive their waqt, their primeval moment with God, here and now, in the instant of ecstasy, even as they anticipate their ultimate destiny. Sufi meditation captures time by drawing eternity from its edges in pre- and post-existence into the moment of mystical experience.
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I’ll leave off with the celebrated words of St. Augustine on time:
For what is time? Who can easily and briefly explain it? Who even in thought can comprehend it, even to the pronouncing of a word concerning it? But what in speaking do we refer to more familiarly and knowingly than time? And certainly we understand when we speak of it; we understand also when we hear it spoken of by another. What, then, is time? If no one ask of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not.
— Augustine of Hippo, Confessiones lib xi, cap xiv, sec 17 (ca. 400 CE)
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Ben Harwood:
March 4th, 2012 at 4:44 pm
This is a fascinating project and post. Interesting point to share: quite possibly in regards to the move from swine to sheep, one theory suggests that since pigs are not easily herded, nomadic tribes, and shepherds in particular, eventually abandoned the futile task of trying to drive herds of pigs over long distances. Pigs also require a considerable amount of water for sustenance. http://bit.ly/wjHUek
Michael Robinson:
March 4th, 2012 at 10:24 pm
The Ghent Altarpiece (Adoration of the Mystic Lamb)(1432), Hubert (d. 1426) & Jan van Eyck (d. 1441), a detailed website assembled prior to its beginning restoration later this year:
http://closertovaneyck.kikirpa.be/#home/sub=altarpiece
as an ‘alterpiece’ the work is not an image but simultaneously participant in, witness to and evangelist of the mystery it depicts.
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“The complex theological program is based partly on the liturgy for All Saints’ Day, which included readings from the Book of Revelation; however, no single text has been found to “explain” the entire program. Rather, the work stands on its own as a visual account of the redemptive mysteries of the Catholic faith, beginning with the incarnation of Christ at the moment of the Annunciation represented on the exterior. Didactic and identifying inscriptions, including legible texts in painted books, amplify and explain the imagery. … When the wings are open, the main feature of the lower level is a continuous heavenly landscape, verdant and rich, through which a multitude of figures travel on horseback and on foot to adore the mystic lamb of God on the central altar. The lamb, whose blood flows into a chalice, symbolizes the Eucharistic sacrifice of Christ and its repeated celebration through the daily masses in the Vijd Chapel. Underlining the concept of the Mass as the source of eternal grace is the stream of crystal-clear water gushing from the Fountain of Life in the center panel, which, with daring realism, is channeled downward toward the actual altar itself. At the upper level is a Deësis, showing Christ as High Priest, flanked by the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist, in the positions they assume as intercessors at the Last Judgment. To the left and right, angels play instruments and sing, their expressions reflecting their vocal pitch. Adam and Eve, at left and right, stand as the originators of sin in the world.
By the end of the fifteenth century, visitors were already paying to see this famous painting in the chapel; artists who admired it include the Netherlandish painter Gerard David, who made drawings from it and, in 1521, the German Renaissance painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer.”
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ghnt/hd_ghnt.htm
Michael Robinson:
March 5th, 2012 at 2:14 am
One American series of expressions of the same idea are Edward Hicks (1780 -1849) sequence of ‘Peaceable Kingdom’ paintings.
Hicks, a sign and coach painter by trade, and Quaker preacher by vocation adapted an engraving after Richard Westall — Peaceable Kingdom of the Branch — issued in 1815 as one of a set of bible illustrations. [Much of the discussion available is mistaken in emphasis because the Westall engraving, the primary source, is discussed as if an independent engraved image of some obscurity rather than being one illustrative component of a widely disseminated printed edition of the biblical text.] The engraving both illustrated and quoted the well known text from Isaiah 11:6 (AV) “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them”
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The paintings — over 60 executed on the same theme survive — are as much preaching in paint as they are works of art. All the early versions include a surround of the sacred text with additions by Hicks (often not shown in reproductions). Some locate the earthly paradise in a definite physical place — for example those showing the celebrated ‘wonder’ of the Natural Bridge in Virginia in the background; many others locate the text geographically and as ‘history’ showing, upper left, a vignette of William Penn’s Treaty with the Indians (A well known work by Benjamin West celebrating Quaker peace). Yet others can include elements such as Penn preaching to a group of followers with a ghostly Christ and the apostles on mountain behind.; or children as an allusion to further verses in the prophecy.