This site's editor-in-chief is a Catholic husband, father, and author. He loves sharing the Catholic faith through art and graphic design. Check out his prayer books and coloring books on Amazon.com
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Polish Catholic Mission, Polish: Polska Misja Katolicka, (PMK) is a permanent Catholic chaplaincy for migrant Poles. It operates in a number of countries under the direction of the Polish Episcopal Conference. The origins of pastoral...
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! These pinnacles were originally set on top of a multipanel altarpiece that has now been lost. The angels' gestures and glances suggest that they were placed to the left and right of a central image....
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! A young Marine finds a moment of quiet and solitude in which to offer up a prayer for the safety of himself and his comrades. Minutes later, the 1st Marine Division launched an offensive against entrenched...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Holy Family consists of the Child Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and Saint Joseph. The subject became popular in art from the 1490s on, but veneration of the Holy Family was formally begun in the 17th...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! A saint, holding an abbot or bishop’s crozier, blesses a kneeling figure, probably the donor who commissioned the window. It forms a pair with another panel showing Saint Fiacre, also owned by the Museum. This...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Worshippers at Holy Angel Catholic Church on Chicago’s south side. It was the city’s largest black Catholic Church at the time (1973). The pastor was Father George H. Clements, who was a leader in...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Dürer’s earliest engraving of the Virgin and Child theme features the Madonna seated on a grassy bench in an enclosed garden, a traditional subject alluding to her virginity. The divine presence of God the Father...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! In Christian theology, the Harrowing of Hell (Latin: Descensus Christi ad Inferos, "the descent of Christ into Hell") is the descent of Jesus into Hell (or Hades), a period of time between the Crucifixion...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! A grotto is a natural or artificial cave used by humans in both modern times and antiquity, and historically or prehistorically. Naturally occurring grottoes are often small caves near water that are usually flooded or liable...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Saint Sebastian was an early Christian saint and martyr. According to traditional belief, he was killed during the Roman emperor Diocletian's persecution of Christians. He was initially tied to a post or tree and...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Descent from the Cross, or Deposition of Christ, is the scene, as depicted in art, from the Gospels' accounts of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus taking Christ down from the cross after his crucifixion...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Monasticism is an important feature of Ethiopian Christianity that needs to be understood by people interested in the history and teaching of the local Orthodox Church. The sources suggest that, for Ethiopians, monasticism is a higher...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Luke the Evangelist is one of the Four Evangelists—the four traditionally ascribed authors of the canonical gospels. The Early Church Fathers ascribed to him authorship of both the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! While Mary is most often depicted wearing a blue shawl, Ethiopian artists in the mid-16th century began painting the shawl red, a practice that related to their study of Cretan icons. The Ge'ez inscriptions...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Awassa, Ethiopia is a city situated on the road to southern Ethiopia. It is situated next to the lake of the same name, Lake Awassa. Along with the lake, another must-see attraction of the city is...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Wearing gothic armor and a spectacular cape, the Archangel Michael prepares to strike down two demons with a broadsword. As the leader of the battle against Satan in Saint John’s vision of the Apocalypse, Michael...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This large icon, meant to be seen by many people, was carried in church processions on holy days. The subject of Christ crowned with thorns and flanked by tormentors was modeled after Ethiopia's famous...
Please Subscribe or Donate to Help Keep This Site Free! The Orthodox Tewahedo biblical canon is a version of the Christian Bible used in the two Oriental Orthodox churches of the Ethiopian and Eritrean traditions: the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. At 81 books, it...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Assumption of Mary (name in full Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary) is, according to the beliefs of the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Churches, Oriental Orthodoxy, Church of the East, and some Lutheran and Anglo-Catholic...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This is an important Ethiopian Orthodox icon that was once owned by a parsonage. On the proper right panel it depicts the gruesome scene of St. George being chopped into pieces below the twelve apostles and...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Surrounded by the deep blue, lapis lazuli background of the gold frame, the silver Virgin Mary, crowned as Queen of Heaven, projects from the background in an elegant swirl of drapery. She stands on a globe,...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Christian doctrine holds that a divine Jesus chose to suffer crucifixion at Calvary as a sign of his full obedience to the will of his divine Father, as an "agent and servant of God"...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This image shows the Holy Family with Mary Magdalene. The Christ Child extends his arm to Mary Magdalene who kneels by the child. On the floor is a skull (which represents Christ’s victory over death)...
