Into the Wilds
“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led in the Spirit in the wilderness.”
Chris Cook is a self-taught artist living in the Georgia. While he identifies himself as an artist who produces “fine art paintings with a southern flavor,” his oeuvre actually extends across a wide variety of genres. His “Temptation of Christ” — and indeed, each of his depictions of this moment in the life of our Savior — renders the subject by accelerating the theme into abstraction.
It’s not entirely clear what is going on in this image, and without the title, one would not necessarily conclude it was intended as a representation of the experience of Christ in the wilderness. But there’s something both appropriate and arresting about this image. Both Christ and the Devil are shadowy figures; but Christ, in his divine-humanity, effuses a certain luminance, and is both held by and (paradoxically) seems to hold the ground of reality, while the devil floats above it. Christ, actually, is the figure who is more warped and distended. To my eye as the viewer, the invitation of Satan looks perfectly reasonable: his less-distorted form a path away from the torture of holding back the darkness. But his wings point off into the abyss. The sure road, rather, is the road emanating from the feet of our savior: streaked with blue and red, the water and the blood, the instruments of our redemption.
He shall deliver you from the snare of the hunter and from the deadly pestilence.
— Psalm 91:3
First Sunday of Lent
Texts for this Week
Prayer
Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations, and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
O Love, How Deep, How Broad, How High
The anonymous 15th C Latin hymn O amor quam ecstaticus — sometimes attributed to Thomas a Kempis, but actually of unknown authorship — has been variously set to music in its translation by Benjamin Webb. The focus of the poem is the pro nobis of every aspect of Christ’s incarnation, temptation, teaching, life, death — everything is for our sake! This arrangement, with it’s interpolated “Alleluia”s and “Deo Gratias”es, has a distinctively Christmas-y flavor, but an electric use of bells and percussion; chant-like sections, and long phrases of parallel fifths give the arrangement an attractively mysterious and medieval vibe. But we are reminded in that convergence that the miracle of God in Christ from his incarnation to his redeeming death is one and the same act of our salvation. Praise the Lord!
For a more “Lent friendly”, here is the text sung by the congregation of Christ Church in Fitchburg, Mass. The French church tune DEUS TUORUM MILITUM really is the best hymnal setting of the text, in my opinion; even if this rousing melody from the 18th c Grenoble Antiphoner did depart somewhat from the older chant traditions.
