Articles by Rachel Ross
Lessons from Sacred Spain: How to Bring Faith to Life
May 14, 2010 / 00:00 amTwenty-five years ago, in an interview that Vittorio Messori titled The Ratzinger Report, Cardinal Ratzinger expressed the following sentiments:
Beauty, the Bearer of Hope
Dec 30, 2009 / 00:00 amOn November 21, Pope Benedict XVI gathered 250 artists in the Sistine Chapel in an effort to renew the long friendship between art and the Church, challenging them to reengage the power of authentic beauty in their work. The representatives he gathered came from various cultures, faiths and fields, and the themes of his message were universal: the experience of beauty leads us to discover and confront the meaning of our lives, and a return to authentic beauty in the arts is a powerful answer to the despair of our modern world. Since he is a respected authority on the liturgy, we might expect the Holy Father to have focused his remarks on the recovery of beauty within the sacred space, calling specifically for a new generation of great works of Christian art, music and architecture, the likes of which the Church has inspired and commissioned since her earliest days. Liturgical beauty – in music, in art, in architecture and in the celebration of the Mass itself – certainly deepens our capacity to raise our minds and hearts to God in adoration and praise. This is, in fact, sacred art’s primary purpose.
Picturing the Mystery: James Langley’s The Hidden Years Triptych
May 22, 2009 / 00:00 amIn his 1999 Letter to Artists, Pope John Paul II writes, “Every genuine artistic intuition goes beyond what the senses perceive and, reaching beneath the reality’s surface, strives to interpret its hidden mystery” (6). For virtually all of Christian history, the Church has called on artists to make present the Christian mystery, specifically within a liturgical setting. How does a work of art draw us more deeply into the mystery of our faith? Let’s look briefly at one recent example of art that accomplishes this goal.