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Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This reliquary uses the form of a miniature Gothic tower. It makes an elaborate architectural frame for a transparent rock-crystal vessel holding a relic that is identified as a tooth of Saint John the Baptist by...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Samuel (flourished 11th century BC, Israel) is a religious hero in the history of Israel, represented in the Old Testament in every role of leadership open to a Jewish man of his day—seer, priest, judge,...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Joseph tells his dreams to his parents and his brothers. Standing by a bed of his mother Rachel, Joseph tells his dreams to his father Jacob who is sitting in front of the bed, left some...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom is the most celebrated Divine Liturgy in the Byzantine Rite. It is named after the anaphora with the same name which is its core part and it is attributed...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Ezekiel was a prophet-priest of ancient Israel and the subject and in part the author of an Old Testament book that bears his name. Ezekiel’s early oracles (from c. 592) in Jerusalem were pronouncements of...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This illuminated manuscript of the Four Gospels was created at a monastic center in northern Ethiopia. Twenty full-page paintings depict scenes from the life of Christ and four portraits of the evangelists introduce the respective Gospel...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, a Catholic church dedicated to the patroness of our nation, is a place of worship, pilgrimage, evangelization, and reconciliation. Sacred art adorns each sacred space of...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Saint Barbara known in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the Great Martyr Barbara, was an early Christian Lebanese and Greek saint and martyr. Accounts place her in the 3rd century in Heliopolis Phoenicia, present-day Baalbek, Lebanon....
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This is the only known icon devoted to the genealogy of a monastic order. Its subject is the "House of Ewost' atéwos," one of two major monastic orders of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church....
The son of God is represented seated on heaven's throne, with his right hand raised, palm faced outward with three fingers extended. This gesture communicated a particular message to medieval Catholics in Western Europe. It is part of an iconographic pose called in Latin the "Maiestas Domini,...
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Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This monumental panel probably once decorated a chapel. Both are from a large window in which the Crucifixion was in the center and the Saint Christopher at the right. The third panel, which would have been...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! In the Roman Missal we find the instruction, “In the Dioceses of the United States, the practice of covering crosses and images throughout the church from [the fifth] Sunday [of Lent] may be observed. Crosses remain...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Apostle John was one of the "pillars" of the Jerusalem church after Jesus' death. He was one of the original twelve apostles and is thought to be the only one to have...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! “Commesso can best preserve antiquity and memory...and can resist all the battles of water and wind and other mishaps of fortune and of time.” Thus Giorgio Vasari wrote of commesso, a newly revived antique technique...
A monstrance is used to display the consecrated host during the Blessed Sacrament in a Roman Catholic church or in a procession for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. This example, or a nearly identical one, was part of an award winning altar service shown by the firm of Poussielgue-Rusand at...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! According to the Legend of St. Catherine, this young woman converted to Christianity after receiving a vision. At the age of 18, she debated 50 pagan philosophers. Amazed at her wisdom and debating skills, they became...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This scene takes place entirely in the celestial sphere, with a background of defined and golden clouds. Saint Joseph appears in profile, kneeling, and of advanced age, holding a hand to his chest and a flowery...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! An altar server is a lay assistant to a member of the clergy during a Catholic liturgy. An altar server attends to supporting tasks at the altar such as fetching and carrying, ringing the altar bell,...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Jerome (c. 342–347 – 30 September 420) was born at Stridon, a village near Emona on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia. Jerome is best known for his translation of most of the Bible into Latin...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! In this painting Gentile da Fabriano combined several different devotional and biblical subjects: the Madonna of Humility, the Nativity, and the Annunciation to the Shepherds. As the Madonna of Humility, the Virgin sits upon the ground,...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! An altar server is a lay assistant to a member of the clergy during a Catholic liturgy. An altar server attends to supporting tasks at the altar such as fetching and carrying, ringing the altar bell,...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! To test Abraham's faith, God ordered him to sacrifice his only child Isaac. Abraham bound Isaac, laid him on the altar, and drew his knife to kill him. At that moment, an angel appeared...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! A muscular young man with a strong profile, who looks fully destined to kill a giant and to reign as Israel's king, this David is no innocent boy with a slingshot. Carelessly cradling Goliath&...
