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Maureen Mullarkey: Studio Matters

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Hearts, Sacred And Profane

Devotion to the Sacred Heart is deeply rooted in the traditions of the Latin Church. Its prompt to compassionate meditation on the sufferings of Christ, to gratitude and contrition, is venerable. Less so is the iconography that attaches to its modern form. Promoted in conformity to Margaret Mary Alacoque’s apparitions, the devotion’s iconic motif remains […]

Pesach To Pasch, With Miriam

The calendar smiled on us this year. Passover and Holy Week coincided. The week began with the first day of Pesach, folded into the Triduum, and closed with the Paschal mystery. Bracketed by two great re-enactments of the saga of redemption, salvation history colored six successive April days. The Book of Exodus recounts the decisive, […]

Beauty & Accidents of Perception

Nature is terrifying. Aesthetic distance from dread of it increases only in proportion to our mastery over it. Shelter from it frees us to make art of our aesthetic promptings, so easily confused with a spiritual consciousness. It is snowing as I type this. Icicles two and three feet long hang from the gutters. A […]

Of Calendars And Memory

The sixties were generous with gifts that keep on taking. I cannot help thinking that one of them was the Church’s 1969 calendar revision for January 1. / /The Church began withdrawing recognition from the circumcision of Jesus in the sixties. Today, circumcision itself is under threat once-Christian Europe, from Switzerland to Scandinavia. Because it […]

Keeping It Lite

It was a gift from the Sixties, our user-friendly funeral Mass. Every time I attend one, I come away convinced that resurrection is in the bag. In keeping with the confident, self-affirming modern cosmology that animates our memorials, it is as if the dead were already risen. So why not just strike a commemorative medallion […]

Act of Mercy

From “Visiting the Sick,” a tutorial by Ariel Scheib: Visiting the sick  bikur holim) is considered an act of loving kindness (gemilut hasadim). The concept of bikur holim is first introduced in the Bible when God visits Abraham while he is recovering from circumcision (Genesis 18:1). It is from this instant on that Jews are required […]

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