The Surety of Unseen Things
“The things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
Despite its popular dissemination, the Flammarion Engraving is in fact an anonymous image with unclear intent, appearing first in an 1888 book on popular meteorology. Gesturing on the one hand to the “wheels within wheels” of Ezekiel’s vision, and on the other to the layered cosmology that frequently adorned medieval texts, the image calls evokes the human attempt to peak beyond the veil of the firmament to the unseen mysteries beneath. But whether the artist means to affirm these efforts or to mock them is unclear!
Faith is the substance things hoped for, the assurance of things unseen.
— Hebrews 11:1
Second Sunday after Pentecost
Texts for This Week
Prayer
Grant, O Lord, that the course of this world may be so peaceably ordered by your providence, that your Church may joyfully serve you in quiet confidence and godly peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Hail, True Body, Truly Born!
The Ave Verum is a rich Eucharistic hymn of the 14th C, particularly suitable for the Feast of Corpus Christi, observed by some Christians this past Thursday. (It is a feast of the Latin Church established in the 12th C, fixed as the Thursday after Trinity as another celebration of doctrine: this one mirroring the mysteries of the Eucharist that have deepened for us on another Thursday — Maundy Thursday — which celebrates the historical drama of the Last Supper, from which Eucharistic doctrine draws its inspiration).
The Eucharistic devotion of the high middle ages was profound and beautiful, although it had the unfortunate side effect of inspiring so much reverence that most people rarely received the Sacrament, gazing upon it and following it in procession more readily than they would consume it. Such excesses were rightly corrected by the Reformation, but the contemplative yearning which such piety inspired — yearning reflected in hymns like the Ave Verum — highlights even for us something that is and has always been true of the Sacraments, that we from our demystified and historicized Protestant and modern vantage point often lose sight of.
Mozart’s setting of the text may be most famous, but the video is a motet setting of the text by the great 16th C English composer, William Byrd, sung by the Franco-Hungarian Ensemble Zene, also well known and loved … indeed, it is sufficiently popular to have a sing along version with the King’s Singers you can enjoy.
