Posts Tagged ‘Matthew 14:1-12’
Failing Well – Br. Lucas Hall
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Br. Lucas Hall
We have just heard of two prophets: Jeremiah and John the Baptist. They are both very prominent figures in Scripture. And they both failed.
I don’t say this to disparage them. But John, as we just heard, was killed, overcome by the society he strove so adamantly to change. And Jeremiah escaped martyrdom, but his calls to change went unheeded, and he watched his people reap what they had sowed. They were conquered, and Jeremiah spent the rest of his days in exile and lament.
This is, indeed, a religion for failure. How many crucifixes can you see in this chapel? Why? We have the story of the Resurrection, the Ascension, Christ’s triumphs and glories. Is it some ancient obsession with blood sacrifice? Some medieval holdover of hyper-penitence? No. “We proclaim Christ crucified,” writes Paul to his fellow Christians (1 Corinthians 1:23). A foolish stumbling block to those outside, but central to what we as Christians embrace as the path to salvation. Read More
Freedom from Fear – Br. Lain Wilson
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Br. Lain Wilson
The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist
Last week, while camping in western Massachusetts, I experienced something completely unexpected. Two nights in a row, in the middle of the night, I was seized by overwhelming, crippling terror. I honestly don’t know if I was dreaming or awake. As I lay in my tent, I felt frozen in place, trapped, unable to move. I remember wanting to sit up, to open the rain fly and look out into the dark, but I could not move.
We all feel fear. Some may experience that same crippling terror; others, perhaps the more typical fears of failure, pain, rejection, aging, or death. We all fear something—and most of us, many somethings—and we all respond differently to those fears.
The Chained Leopard – Br. Keith Nelson
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A few years ago, on the way to a conference, I spent several free hours alone at the Art Institute of Chicago, a place I had always wanted to visit. Free to absorb the experience at my own pace, I spent nearly an hour engrossed in a series of six panel paintings by the Renaissance artist Giovanni da Paolo. They had been part of an original series of twelve for a folding altarpiece depicting the life of St. John the Baptist.[1]
Da Paolo’s vision unfolds with the narrative flare of a graphic novelist or a cinematographer. The human figures are set within strange landscapes and fantastical buildings. There are inexplicable details scattered throughout that make the entire series feel like fragments in a dream sequence. One such detail became, for me, the interpretive key to the entire work.
In the scene of John speaking to his disciples through his prison window, there in the courtyard outside sits a tired, old leopard chained to a wall, gazing forlornly over his shoulder through an archway at a distant figure in blue walking toward us through the fields.