Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

Several significant feasts fall this week. On Sept. 12, the memorial of the Holy Name of Mary. Two days later, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (a feast common to East and West) and on the following day, the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. (The Stabat Mater was written for the September 15 memorial of Our Lady.) With the mystery of the Cross at the center of these three days, it is hard not to see the fundamental role Mary played in our redemption. The "yes" she said at the Annunciation was not a "one and done" matter. She carried it through each and every day, even when it found her standing ("stabat") at the foot of her Son's Cross, hearing his final, agonizing efforts to breathe and to speak: to speak of us. "Behold, your son."

This week's Annunciation is from the 15th century (about 100 years after the Stabat Mater was written), by Apollonio di Giovanni.  It is from the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery.

Photo credit: Yale University Art Gallery