Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Luc Oliver Merson, The Annunciation (1908)

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Mary, her features so familiar to us from Byzantine icons, stands at a well, facing us while Gabriel walks away, his mission complete. The winter setting makes Gabriel’s scarf (or is it a wing?) both appropriate and tantalizing.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

On today's feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, and in view of tomorrow's memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, perhaps El Greco's mysterious depiction of the Annunciation serves best. It abounds in mystery as Heaven opens up within Mary's room, just as the feasts of these two days abound in mystery.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

For tomorrow's feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos, the Troparion from the Byzantine liturgy:

Your Nativity, O Virgin,
Has proclaimed joy to the whole universe!
The Sun of Righteousness, Christ our God,
Has shone from You, O Theotokos!
By annulling the curse,
He bestowed a blessing.
By destroying death, He has granted us eternal Life.

Donna Pierce-Clark, an Ohio artist whose motto is CELEBRATING GOD'S GLORY, ONE BRUSHSTROKE AT A TIME, beautifully portrays Mary as an innocent child, prophetically intuiting the death of the son whose coming is being announced, and at the same time hearing Gabriel’s reassuring, “Do not be afraid, Mary.” It fits well with the Byzantine hymn for tomorrow's celebration of Mary's birth.