Three Weeks In

It’s been a mixed up week. Holidays, snow days and sick days meant I spent a lot of time at home this week. It was a nice reminder of life before work. I also read and listened to a bunch of things that got all jumbled up in my mind. I’m still pondering them ― searching for the meaning. Instead, I’m just going to share quotes.

“There are, indeed, large areas of reality in danger of being thus forgotten. And, of course, it is not up to the fine arts alone to counteract this danger that threatens the entire breadth and depth of human existence. Here we somehow sense the artist’s inner relationship to the priest, who is called, above all, to keep alive the remembrance of a face that our intuition just barely perceives behind all immediate and tangible reality — the face of the God-man, bearing the marks of a shameful execution. Incidentally, none other than Goethe declared that the artists should be seen “as someone called to be the custodian and eager herald of an avowed sacred reality.” ―Josef Pieper Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation pg.62

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting” ― Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

“Very often we feel restricted in our situation, our family, or our surroundings. But maybe the real problem lies elsewhere: in our hearts. There we are restricted, and that is the root of our lack of freedom. If we loved more, love would give our lives infinite dimensions, and we would no longer feel so hemmed in.” ―Fr. Jacques Philippe Interior Freedom p.20

“Defend me, O God, and plead my cause against a godless nation. From deceitful and cunning men rescue me, O God.” ―Psalm 43

“His gaze was like lightening, and I understood how the fire of God’s love burns in that look…” ―St. Faustina Diary pg. 459

“Sin itself first enters the world through the eye.” ―Fr. Anthony Giambrone, OP The Incarnation and Art

“Art surges forth from some elemental responsiveness to what is supremely delightful and our aspiration to sustain an ecstatic gaze upon that beauty, a beauty sady. where here below continually eludes our perfect grasp. Art seeks to capture intuitions of the eternal as thought in its own way seeks the same.” ―Fr. Anthony Giambrone, OP The Incarnation and Art

“Reason itself became the vessel of God’s image in Israel. Now all that moves art toward reason and abstraction has the effect of entoning the transcendent in the eternal and this is crucial…Nevertheless, a balance is required, outrageous geometrical painters like Piet Mondrian have lost all account of art’s significance as an act of human artists actively striving in nostalgic disappointment. Like Islamic art, his work represents an accomplished perfection not a dissatisfied yearning.” ―Fr. Anthony Giambrone, OP The Incarnation and Art

“For even the most intensive seeing and beholding may not yet be true contemplation. Rather, the ancient expression of the mystics applies here: ubi amor, ibi oculus ― the eyes see better when guided by love; a new dimension of “seeing” is opened up by love alone! This means contemplation is visual perception promted by loving acceptance.” ― Josef Pieper, Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation, pg. 74