New Priorities
“We were buried with Christ through baptism into death in order that, just as he was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”
Jorge Santana is a artist from Mexico, and progenitor of an artform he styles, “cyber painting.” His art variously incorporates themes and memes from our everyday digital and “screened” experience in playful and provocative ways. This is his appropriation / adaptation of Carravagio’s The Calling of St. Matthew, painted in 2017. The effect in this image is somewhat more muted than Santana’s other works: primarily, the themes of Carravagio’s original have been elevated into a sort of colorful dreamscape, the figures all being distorted by a number of floaty bubbles, with a fluid effect.
This presentation somewhat interrupts the force of the original painting. Caravaggio provocatively depicted Jesus standing in the shadows; a light streaming in from an unseen window illuminating a table full of surprised friends, as Matthew himself is hunched over his money counting, also draped in darkness. But what is lost in the play of composition and light is regained in the contemporary homage. In the strange and illusory dreamscape of our digital age — our own sort of odd darkness — the call of Jesus goes out still. He sees us, bathed in the pale blue light of our screens, and beckons us over the fluid strangeness, and the noise, and invites us to a firmer and fuller light.
Mercy shall be built up for ever; your faithfulness shall be established in the heavens.
— Psalm 89:2
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Texts for This Week
Prayer
O God, your never-failing providence sets in order all things both in heaven and on earth: Put away from us all hurtful things, and give us those things that are profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
To Whom Shall We Go?
John Polce is a Jesus-y folk artist after the mold of some of the early folk-inspired contemporary Christian music. His approachable sound and style is loosely reminiscent of John Michael Talbot and Dan Schutte. His “To Whom Shall We Go?” is a lovely apophatic profession of faith: the faith of those who have found Christ to be deeply satisfying, and more satisfying than the things of this world … even when faith itself runs into challenges of doubt and distress.
The Reconciling Heart - A Meditation for Ordinary Time
What is the reconciling heart? The reconciling heart is aflame with faith. It burns with faith, not because it embraces counterfactuals or believes in spite of evidence, nor because it commits to a fantasy narrative or froths itself up with wishful thinking, but because it experiences, in its uttermost depths and essence, how deeply it is seen, known, loved, and forgiven. Transparent to such deep and such absolute love, it cannot help but become love itself. Every barrier, every boundary; every marker, every tribal distinction is erased to it. It loves all people — indeed, every created thing! — because it beats in time with the rhythms of the resistless and uncreated Love that is the source and summit of all Being. It remains small in itself, but boundless in its scope. It is circumscribed in its presence, but unlimited in its benevolence. It navigates this world like every other creature, subject to all the ambiguities and ambivalences, all the terrible and tragic limitations of our sad mortal estate. But it blooms with hope irrepressible, because it knows so fully, beyond all doubt or discussion, that God in Christ Jesus is reconciling all things to himself, not counting our sins against us: and its own presence to and participation in this beautiful ultimacy, is for to delight in this ever-unfolding divine work, and not accomplish it.
