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Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The story of Joachim, his wife Anne (or Anna), and the miraculous birth of their child Mary, the mother of Jesus, is told for the first time in the 2nd century apocryphal infancy-gospel the Gospel of...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Wading carefully through the water of the River Jordan, Christ leans his upper body forward, and extends his arms for balance, his fingertips gently touching Saint John the Baptist's side. Christ’s outstretched arms...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Feast of Corpus Christi (Ecclesiastical Latin: Dies Sanctissimi Corporis et Sanguinis Domini Iesu Christi, lit. 'Day of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus Christ the Lord'), also known as the Solemnity...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Mount of Olives or Mount Olivet is a mountain ridge east of and adjacent to Jerusalem's Old City. It is named for the olive groves that once covered its slopes. The southern part...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The words Ave gratia plena Dominus tecum (Greetings most favored one! The Lord is with you) from Saint Luke’s Gospel (1:8) emerge from the archangel Gabriel’s mouth as he announces the conception of...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Representative of the early work of Lorenzo Monaco, a Camaldolese monk and leading Florentine painter of the end of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth century, the delicate colors and simplified forms of...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Abigail was married to Nabal; she became married to the future King David after Nabal's death (1 Samuel 25). Abigail was David's second wife, after Saul and Ahinoam's daughter, Michal,...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! At the left, Saint Peter and other disciples of Christ pull their teeming nets of fish aboard a boat. After an unsuccessful night of fishing on the Sea of Tiberius, the tired and hungry disciples had...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Named for Pope John Paul II’s first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis (Redeemer of Man), the Shrine’s church invites its visitors to contemplate the mystery of God’s profound love for mankind, to worship Him, and...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Flagellation of Christ, sometimes known as Christ at the Column or the Scourging at the Pillar, is a scene from the Passion of Christ very frequently shown in Christian art, in cycles of the Passion...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Virgin Mary, hieratic and still, looks out toward the viewer while gently supporting Christ with her left arm. The smiling infant gazes lovingly toward her and playfully stretches out his arm, grabbing the edge of...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This statue of Saint James the Less was made by Angelo de Rossi. Angelo (1671 – June 12, 1715) was an Italian sculptor. Born in Genoa, he was apprenticed to Filippo Parodi in 1680; Parodi's...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Lamentation of Christ is a very common subject in Christian art from the High Middle Ages to the Baroque. After Jesus was crucified, his body was removed from the cross and his friends mourned over...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! God the Father sits enthroned, holding the crucified Christ with the Holy Spirit between them, all three dominating the composition. Together they represent the Trinity, the central doctrine of the Christian faith, in which all three...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Christina is an early virgin Christian martyr. She was born into a rich family, and her father was governor of Tyre. By the age of 11 the girl was exceptionally beautiful, and many wanted to marry...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Man of Sorrows, a biblical term, is paramount among the prefigurations of the Messiah identified by the Bible in the passages of Isaiah 53 (Servant songs) in the Hebrew Bible. It is also an iconic devotional...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! A cut-away wall reveals a small bedroom where an angel appears to Pope Sergius in his sleep. The angel tells Sergius that the bishop Saint Lambert has been assassinated and Sergius is to appoint a new...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Saint John the Baptist cradles the Holy Lamb, a symbol of the sacrificial Christ. The sculpture illustrates the saint's exclamation, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world&...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Saint George (died 23 April 303), also George of Lydda, was a Christian who is accepted as a saint in Christianity. According to traditional rumors, he was a soldier in the Roman army. His parents were...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! For the medieval viewer, this Crucifixion instantly recalled wrenching extra-biblical details, like the fact that Christ could not rest his head to the side lest his shoulders be pierced with thorns. The German tract Christi Leiden...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Cruets are small vessels of glass or metal that hold the water and wine which are to be mixed in the Chalice for the Sacrifice of the Mass. They are also used for the Lavabo and...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Parable of the Prodigal Son (also known as the parable of the Two Brothers, Lost Son, Loving Father, or of the Forgiving Father) is one of the parables of Jesus in the Bible, appearing in...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! St. Philip Neri was a Christian missionary and founder of the Congregation of the Oratory, a community of Catholic priests and lay brothers. Giovanni Domenico Ferretti (Giandomenico), also called Giandomenico d'Imola (15 June 1692...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Saint John Paul II National Shrine in Washington D.C., USA is a place of worship, religious formation, and cultural renewal to feed the minds and souls of its visitors. The Shrine’s chapel provides...
