Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

This modern Coptic icon of the Annunciation was taken by a visitor to St Mary's Coptic Orthodox Church in Colleyville (Dallas) Texas. It is not a decoration, but part of the liturgical architecture.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

This very contemporary Annunciation is by Jean-Marie Pirot(1926-2018), known in the art world as Arcabas. Arcabas was a man of faith, and his professional work was predominantly in the field of sacred art. I have to admit that I don't really "get" this Annunciation, but some of his other work is more within my grasp, and I find it exquisitely moving.

You can also get a sense of that from some of the YouTube videos that were produced when he died (still working!) in 2018, even though the narration and interviews are all in French (which I do not understand).

From the videos and from the samples of Arcabas' work that I have seen on Pinterest, I believe that this Frenchman fulfilled what Pope St John Paul wrote about in his Letter to Artists: 

"Those who perceive in themselves this kind of divine spark which is the artistic vocation—as poet, writer, sculptor, architect, musician, actor and so on—feel at the same time the obligation not to waste this talent but to develop it, in order to put it at the service of their neighbour and of humanity as a whole" (n. 3).

Above is a short news item about a Trappist monastic church

in the Alps for which Arcabas designed some special pieces.

Praying the Angelus with Art: This Week's Image

We are back to Ordinary Time and our extraordinary prayer of the Regina Coeli yields pride of place once again to the Angelus.

Because I never get tired of medieval images (!), here is an Annunciation from early 13th century France (now in a museum in Brussels), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Gabriel's scroll reads, of course, "Ave Maria, gratia plena": Hail, Mary, full of grace.