Anotha cuppa and some Rosary art

Welcome to another installment of the A few words and anotha cuppa occasional series. Tonight’s tea is something that arrived today, Teavana‘s Jade Citrus Mint. Yum! There’s a kettle of hot water in the kitchen and some cups. Help yourself. I’m sitting down and I ain’t gettin’ up. (How’s that for Southern hospitality?) I’m using a cup that I got from some of the physical therapy staff when I was going home from the hospital a few years ago. It has a matching lid (that came with another gift and happens to fit most of my cups) to keep the tea warm and I’ve got it sitting on a cup warmer by the sofa. Ah. How relaxing. (Or it would be if Miss Lucy Dawg would settle down. She’s either hearing thunder in the distance or fireworks not so distant, and I don’t know which.) Now I want to share with you some words about a painting you may have seen if you’ve watched the Rosary led by Mother Angelica on EWTN. (1)

I began posting a Live Twitter Rosary Thread nightly back in 2018 and continued until Easter Vigil of 2019, then gave it a permanent home on the blog. Picked it up again to pray for everyone affected by the Coronavirus around the world, this time on Tuesdays and Fridays. Sometimes someone posts a prayer request or intention to the thread, sometimes a comment about the art. This past Friday someone (Hi there, Joan!) mentioned that seeing the pain in the eyes of Jesus in the art for the Third Sorrowful Mystery, the Crowning with Thorns, made her cry.

I can see that. I posted another image (2), this time for the Second Sorrowful Mystery, the Scourging at the Pillar, and said,

It’s the other guy’s eyes that make me cry in this one. What utter coldness and callousness. Practice virtue, become virtuous. Practice vice, become vice-ious, vicious. Oh, how true that is. We see it all around us now, televised to the world.

I don’t remember the source for the connection between practicing virtue or vice and becoming virtuous or vicious, but I think it was Tim Staples. I know it was Tim Staples, I’m just not sure which talk it was. It’s not original with me, I heard it from him and it has stuck with me ever since. We are seeing in our world right now the fruits of many years of the rejection of virtue and the practice of vice. This is what the Word took Flesh for. This is why He dwelt among us. This is what was foreseen, foreknown. This is what He took up His Cross and why He invites us to take up our own. But we balk. We hold back. And those who practice vice greet His invitation with a snarl as they attack.

Every time I see this image
it makes me freeze.
That cold stare
with the One Who is
Love and Mercy right there
in front of him
but he cannot see.
How blind can that guy be?
As blind as you and me.

Thank you for visiting and reading. Until next time, whoever and wherever you are, please stay safe and well and, more importantly, virtuous and holy. May the Lord bless and keep you and yours. And may His peace be always with you. +JMJ+

Notes and Links

Image credits: The Crowning with Thorns, by Valentin de Boulogne. Some sources say Hendrick ter Brugghen, but I’m going with de Boulogne. The Scourging at the Pillar, by Jason Jenicke, not in the pubic domain. See note below.

I think this is the Mother Angelica Rosary DVD that includes the artwork featured in this post. Link is to the EWTN Religious Catalogue with which I am not affiliated.
Now that I’ve discovered the source of that Scourging of the Pillar painting, and that it is not in the public domain, I’ll take it down from the Rosary pages (just did a quick search and it turns out I didn’t have it on the Rosary pages, whew!), because I don’t currently have the artist’s permission to use it. In this post I’m using a copy with his watermark on it. The photos of the painting at different stages as a work-in-progress are pretty interesting.

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