This is a beautiful painting. Yet, I think something is wrong. It’s not the technical expertise, that is very good, or the colors, they are well chosen.
I believe it is St. Joseph himself. He is too far away from Mary.
He would have been much closer to her, to give her comfort and to be quickly aware of any of her needs. He would have been much closer to the donkey’s head, holding the reins softly yet securely in order to prevent any bucks or missteps that the animal might be in mind to give.
The rope shows a distance, a separation, between them. Possibly it indicates the separation that a husband experiences when his wife is in the last days, or hours, before the birth. It is a separation because no husband can understand or experience his wife’s physical pain, her labor, and her extreme maternal joy at the moment of birth.
But, on this night, as they slowly travel toward Bethlehem, they are not separated at all. They are united in their humility, the silent secrets of their own thoughts, and their total obedience and trust in God’s will, and, each other.
May you be united to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph this Christmas Day and throughout the New Year. Glory be to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen. Alleluia.
Merry Christmas from my home to yours!
** I have not been able to discover the artist of the above painting. If anyone knows who he or she is please comment and I’ll give the proper credit. Thanks
The Vatican, last week, unveiled the 2020 Christmas crèche in St. Peter’s Square.
Historical tradition explains that St. Francis of Assisi was the first to promote the display of the birth of Our Lord. He believed that it would edify and improve prayerful worship of Jesus, the moment of His Nativity, and subsequent events.
For approximately 800 years the Christmas crèche has been portrayed in a respectful and accurate way. It combined different elements of the Nativity found in Sacred Scripture into one scene that conveys spiritual and historical truth to the viewer. Within the last fifty years people with specific agendas have changed that tradition.
I rarely use the first person pronoun in this blog. There are times that it must be done, this is one of them.
I believe that the Christmas crèche that was unveiled this past week, with the approval of certain high ranking Vatican authorities, is atrocious. The current crèche is presumed to be an example of modern Christian sacred art. It is not sacred art; it is secular art masquerading as sacred.
The purpose of sacred art (in both the Latin and Greek Rites of the Catholic Church, and the cultural Rites in union with Rome) is to edify and remind the viewer of the events surrounding the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Successful and reverent sacred art instructs and edifies the mind and soul of the viewer to those basic truths.
Christian sacred art does not confuse; it is not duplicitous. It is clear in proclaiming the Gospel of Christ and the witness of His faithful followers. Sacred art personalizes the Truths of the Church. It accomplishes that goal by being beautiful, good, and truthful as well as being spiritually transcendent.
The sacred art of the Church does not demean its history, Scriptures, dogma, traditions, and visual or musical arts. It acts in the same way as photographs which are remembrances of loved ones, activities, friends, places, and personalities. The Roman Catholic, Greek and Russian Orthodox, and the twenty-six ethnic Rites in union with Rome, have never worshipped sacred images; we venerate them in the same way we remember our loved ones.
Christian sacred art snaps our attention back to the preeminent Lover and Loved One, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The writings of St. John of Damascus (Damascene, born 675 – died 749) were successfully used during the Second Council of Nicaea (787), to explain these points and to explode the errors of the iconoclasts then, and, today.
The 2020 Vatican Christmas Creche, in my opinion, falls significantly short of the mark. It is a complete and total failure. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so important.
Briefly, it portrays the Blessed Mother, in what resembles a sarcophagus, looking like a reincarnation of an Egyptian Queen. A huge angel appears to resemble something out of a bad dream (I cannot understand its large rib cage). There is an astronaut (or is it a deep sea diver)? Let us not forget the repulsive and weird looking thing, with a horned helmet, to the right of the astronaut/diver. Sheep resemble goats. Geese are running around in a frenzy of honking. The main characters all have oversized heads reminiscent of the dolls called Cabbage Patch Kids which were all the rage with my daughters and nieces over forty years ago (at least the dolls were cute). At night a single hideous crooked string of neon lights illuminate the figures. Instead of traditional and appropriate sacred music the viewer is subjected to a bizarre rendition of what appears to be a compilation of joyless ethnic music from a specific area of the world. There is more of this vapid artistic effort but this is enough to give you the scope of the travesty.
The Christmas angel looking like the head logo for a popular coffee company.
The 2020 Vatican Creche display is a very sad example of the misguided and ignorant intentions of those that approved it. It displays contempt for Scripture and Tradition and is an insult to all Christians. If the students who created it over a period of years wanted the public to see their final product then they should have displayed it on their campus not sacred ground.
If you are in Rome, do not take your children to see it – they will either collapse in laughter or run screaming from the Square.
Artistic images of the Blessed Mother of Jesus, as portrayed by different cultures within historical periods, have been part of world history for centuries. Below are a few examples of these images.
The various images of Jesus and His Mother portrayed by each ethnic group are beautiful and have spiritual meaning. Are the artists of these works prejudiced or racist?
Because of the controversy over comments made by political activists over the last few weeks it would appear that the motive of cultural artistic contributions is based on racial superiority. Their opinion points to the obvious truth that in our social and political climate confusion is very possible.
A debate is occurring within the fields of physical anthropology, genetics, and evolutionary biology concerning the issues of race and racial supremacy. Some scholars have concluded that racial supremacy and even the various categories of human races do not exist.
“Races are highly genetically differentiated populations with sharp geographical boundaries.
Alternatively, races can be distinct evolutionary lineages within a species.
By either definition, races do not exist in humans but doexist in chimpanzees. [italics mine, P.O.I]
Adaptive traits such as skin color do not define races and are often discordant with one another.
Human populations are interwoven by genetic interchanges; there is no tree of populations.”
Thus, in the grand scheme of things superficial traits are what separate us not genetic differences. Valid scientific evidence may be proving that the concept of five races is outmoded and not substantiated by modern genetic research. It is correct to say that specific ethnic groups, with superficial physical traits, living within specific geographical areas, do exist.
If American or European “white” artists portray Jesus and all the individuals found in Holy Scripture as members of Caucasian ethnic groups, they would in the majority of cases, be artistically portrayed as having the superficial physical genetic traits of European/Middle Eastern populations.
The images above certainly portray that the artists within another culture, or dominant ethnic group/cultures in specific regions of the world, do the same thing. This is logical because the artist of a specific ethnicity paints or sculpts to meet their group’s spiritual needs, or, the patron’s specific request. That is not an act of ethnic supremacy or racism.
Genetically, can we say with any assurance what the genetic make-up of Jesus, Mary, and His fellow Hebrews were when they existed? There is historical evidence to contribute to the answer.
Since the time of the Patriarch Abraham’s son Isaac, and Isaac’s son Jacob, there occurred the development of the twelve tribes of Israel.
These tribes definitely took shape and became a cultural, military, and political force by circa 1925 BC. Tribal leaders were very strict about intermarriage with other populations. Under Moses’ leadership, circa 1250 BC, they did not allow it at all. They were a large enough population to marry within the system of their tribes, and their members conformed to the demands of God and their leaders.
Abram (Abraham) and his flock of followers originated within the city of Ur, which was a Chaldean city-state of the Sumerian civilization. Today the archeological remains of the city of Ur are located in Southern Iraq. Ur was Abram’s home before he, his family, and followers were given the order by God to travel to the land of Canaan.
Abram would later be given the name Abraham by God. “In various sources, “Canaan” refers to an area encompassing parts of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel. The Israelites occupied and conquered Palestine, or Canaan, beginning around 1750 BC, or perhaps earlier. The Bible justifies such occupation by identifying Canaan with the Promised Land, the land promised to the Israelites by God” (source: https://www.britannica.com/place/Ur
Bottom line, Jesus, Mary, and “His friends” were ethnic Israelite/Hebrews. They were Hebrews from the genetic line of King David. David’s genetic line originated from Abraham’s son, Isaac, and grandson Jacob. There is no way to prove that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’s genetics are related to the people of today’s southern Iraq, or any other ethnic group.
If a person believes in the truth of the Holy Scriptures then the answer is that Jesus, His family, and Apostles, were all of the genetic line of Israelite/Hebrews with the superficial physical traits of that ethnic group.
Ultimately, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican Biblical sacred art is not about race or superficial physical traits. The entire Hebrew and Christian Scriptures point to the truth that the human nature of the Son of God, Jesus the Christ, was born of Mary within Roman occupied Israel. The spiritual union of the power of the Holy Spirit with the consent of Mary led to the birth of Jesus, the Redeemer of mankind.
Supremacy is not found in race, ethnic group, or prejudice/bigotry. It is only found in the authority and power of the Holy Trinity.
The Fra Angelico Institute for Sacred Art 
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