Retuning our Hearts
“Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, and not rather that they should turn from their ways and live?”
Jamini Roy (1887-1972) was one of the most renowned Indian artists of the 20th century. A student of the renowned Bengali artist Abanindranath Tagore, Roy first worked as a portrait painter, but he found himself unfulfilled by the commissioned nature of his work. In 1925, while visiting the famous Kalighat temple in Calcutta, he discovered his true artistic calling after observing folk paintings displayed outside the temple. This experience led him to develop a unique style that combined traditional Indian and Western art influences, including Christian themes and iconography.
Roy's art is characterized by a threefold quest: to capture the essence of simplicity embodied in the lives of folk people, to make art accessible to a wider section of society, and to give Indian art its own identity. His paintings were the first Indian artworks to be displayed on a British-ruled street in Calcutta in 1938, and during the 1940s, his popularity soared, with the Bengali middle class and the European community becoming his main clientele.
Roy's paintings covered a diverse subject matter: from bhakti images and the Ramayana, to portraits of contemporary figures such as Mahatma Gandhi, to Biblical subjects and images of Christ, as above. His works reflected a shift in modern Indian art from European academic leanings to a renewed interest in traditional iconography and abstract forms. Yet despite his diverse subject matter, Roy's focus on the mundane and everyday was a defining characteristic of his art.
Like many of his paintings, this depiction of Christ preaching is technically untitled. We see Christ seated, crowned, and with his hand raised — a posture of dignity and authority. In the background figures, we can imagine either the two brothers of the parable, or the Scribes and the Pharisees to whom he is telling it.
God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.
— Philippians 2:13
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Texts for This Week
Prayer
O merciful Lord, grant to your faithful people pardon and peace, that we may be cleansed from all our sins and serve you with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Tchakrulo
The stirring words and haunting polyphony of the Georgian folk song Tchakrulo evoke themes of exile and hardship, unity and resilience. Like the Psalmist crying out to God for deliverance from enemies on the one hand and establishment in the right path on the other, Tchakrulo is a poem of gritty determination, a tribal anthem, a preparation for difficulty and (if need be) for battle.
We rejoice that — as we hear in the words of the Prophet Ezekiel, and we hear in our Lord’s own mouth — that God does not delight in our destruction, but that he desires us to turn to him and live. Yet our life here is often characterized by conflict and hardship, and our initial “Yes” to God’s ways quickly disintegrates in the face of our scheme for the good of ourselves and our tribe. But just as this tribal song of battle was lifted and transfigured by its inscription on the Golden Record affixed to the Voyager 2 spacecraft, launched into deep space as a representative inheritance of humanity, so too, by God’s grace, our finite and fallible attitudes are transfigured, and our relationships reconfigured, as we put the mystery of his Cross in the center of our contemplations.
From Jerome’s Commentary on Matthew
These two sons represent the Gentiles and Jews, as described in the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15, and the two staffs in Zechariah 11:7, one called Favor and the other Union. The Gentiles were first told through natural law to not do to others what they would not want done to themselves. They arrogantly responded "I will not." But later, at the coming of the Savior, they repented and worked in God's vineyard, correcting their defiant words with labor.
The second son represents the Jewish people, who responded to Moses "All that the Lord has spoken we will do," but did not go into the vineyard, because after killing the landowner's son they presumed themselves the heir.
Others think this parable simply represents sinners and the righteous, as the Lord himself explains later, "Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you." This is because those who denied serving God through evil works later received the baptism of repentance from John. But the Pharisees, who boasted of their righteousness and claimed to follow God's law, rejected John's baptism and disobeyed God's commandments.
