Seasons of Grace

Ain’t that the truth?!

Was Orson Welles thinking about eternity when he scooped up the Academy Award for his blockbuster hit film “Citizen Kane”? Probably not—just as you and I are not usually thinking about eternity when we acquire a bigger home, the newest electronic gadget, another item for our collection of DVDs, athletic jerseys, or teacups.

Welles was a young man of 25 in 1941 when he wrote, directed and starred in the film which was voted “best film of the previous century” by the American Film Institute. In the movie, Welles played a fictional media tycoon (based loosely on the life of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst). In his ruthless pursuit of power, Welles’ character acquires more and more property, more wealth, more prestige—but at the end of his life, it’s not his worldly riches which he remembers but the sled he had enjoyed in the innocence of childhood. His dying word was the name of the sled: “Rosebud.”

Orson Welles died on October 10, 1985; but his legendary film lives on. Considered by many film critics to be the greatest film ever made, “Citizen Kane” was re-released on Blu-ray in a special 70^th anniversary edition on September 13, 2011.

Welles’ much-deserved Oscar will be going on the auction block this month, according to Sam Heller of Nate D. Sanders Auctions, a Los Angeles auction house.

An attempt to auction the famed trophy in 2003 was stopped by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which testified that the award’s value at that time was at least $1 million. The Academy has aggressively challenged efforts to sell Oscars in the past, and successfully stopped the sale of two Oscars which had belonged to silent screen star Mary Pickford. A more recent court ruling, however, has cleared Welles’ prize for sale, after a ruling in 2004 that Welles had never signed the Academy’s agreement not to sell the trophy.

So the Motion Picture Academy wants to hold onto the Oscar; so, most likely, did Orson Welles hope to keep it. The thing is, though, you really CAN’T take it with you. Orson Welles walked into eternity and met the Lord Jesus, just as you and I will, alone—with none of the riches acquired during life, but with only his record of good deeds or ill.

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“I’m bored.”

“I have so much to do at home.”

“It’s the only day of the week that I really get to sleep in.”

Have you used any of these excuses for missing Mass on Sunday morning? Check out this video trailer featuring Fr. John Riccardo, pastor of Our Lady of Good Counsel parish in Plymouth, Michigan. Then tell me again….

Father Riccardo will be the keynote speaker on May 10, 2012, at the Mother and Unborn Baby Care dinner. Mark your calendars!

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What did Jesus really look like?

Since there was no Kodak Easy-Share to be found in all of Galilee, we can only speculate whether Jesus looked more like Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ) or like Willem Dafoe (The Last Temptation of Christ).

In December 2002, the magazine Popular Mechanics featured a cover story titled “The Real Face of Jesus.” Based on information gleaned from forensic anthropologists, author Mike Fitton concluded that Jesus stood only 5’1” tall, and he had curly hair and a prominent nose on a broad peasant’s face, with dark olive skin.

Egoists, all of us, we always seem to think that Jesus looked like us. For the medieval artists, that meant that Jesus frequently was painted with fair skin, blue eyes and long, light brown hair. Those same guys painted the Virgin Mary in a heavily adorned blue gown in a medieval castle.

And the self-adulation was not unique to the likes of Michelangelo and Botticelli. Once when I was younger, my cousin—who was serving in the U.S.military stationed in Japan—gave his parents a one-of-a-kind gift, an oil painting of the Last Supper. And there they were: Jesus in the center, with John leaning his head on the Savior’s breast and Judas leaning back, holding onto the bag of money. The only thing was, since it had been painted by an Asian artist, everyone in the painting—Jesus and all the apostles—had the sallow skin tone and angular, single-eyelid eyes of an Asian male.

* * * *

One retrospective that’s sure to please art enthusiasts and people of faithis the Detroit Institute of Arts’ current exhibition on Rembrandt and the Face of

Jesus. The exhibition—which was organized by the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Musée du Louvre and the Philadelphia Museum of Art—features 64 works by 17^th Century Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn and his students, including 52 small, intimate paintings, prints and drawings that portray Jesus and events described in the Bible.

According to the Detroit Institute of Arts:

Western portrayals of Jesus in the 17th century were based on ancient Greek sculpture and Renaissance imagery, and represented him as either performing heroic actions or the embodiment of profound suffering. Rembrandt’s own initial renderings of Jesus conformed to this tradition.

In the 1640s, Rembrandt developed a radically different concept. He was the first Western artist to present Jesus as Jewish, likely based on models from Amsterdam’s vibrant Jewish neighborhood where he lived and worked. Additionally, he depicted Jesus as vulnerable and humble, one whose existence compelled reverence in the minds and imaginations of those around him. In Rembrandt’s art, Jesus became an object of meditation not because of his suffering but through his presence as an affirmation of goodness and a source of deep spiritual inspiration.

“Rembrandt’s images were a bold departure from traditional renderings of Jesus by Western artists—both of his time as well as before and well after him,” said Graham W. J. Beal, DIA director. “Visitors will have a rare opportunity to see how Rembrandt developed this image and how he employed his famous ‘chiaroscuro’—light and shadow—to profound spiritual effect.”

Included in the exhibit, which runs through February 12, 2012, are two masterpieces which illustrate the significant shift in Rembrandt’s approach:

• Supper at Emmaus, a hauntingly beautiful painting of the biblical account of Jesus’ appearance to his followers after his resurrection; and
• The Hundred Guilder Print (Christ Preaching; Bring Thy Little Children unto Me), which shows Jesus preaching before a crowd. The Hundred Guilder Print showcases Rembrandt’s mastery of printmaking, using every style and technique in his repertoire to create the work’s stunning effect.

Rembrandt and his apprentices also painted a series of small, contemplative portraits of Jesus on oak panel. These paintings clearly held deep personal meaning for Rembrandt, who hung one in his back parlor and another in his small studio. Seven of these exquisite panels exist today, including one in the collection of the DIA.

To learn more about the Rembrandt exhibit and other collections at the Detroit Institute of Arts, check out the DIA’s website.

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On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there; and both Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding.

John 2:1-2

Marriage is difficult. Even if you love the other person to the rooftop, there are so many pitfalls as two individuals try to build a life together. How one could possibly make it work without God, I can’t imagine.

That’s why it’s good to know that at least in some manner, newlywed Sinéad O’Connor invited Jesus to her wedding. There He is in the wedding photo: prominently tattooed on her chest.

You remember Sinéad: A study in contrasts, she’s the often outrageous Irish singer who shaved her head during her bipolar years (and has stayed bald), and who in 1992 ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live. She has been an outspoken critic of the Church’s handling of the sex abuse claims; but she joined her voice with the voices of the monks at Glenstal Abbey to record Christian sacred music. In 1999 she was “ordained” a priestess, Mother Mary Bernadette, in the Latin Tridentine Church, a breakaway Catholic sect.

So she’s not really a Catholic—which may explain why her fourth marriage to therapist Barry Herridge on December 7 (her 45^th birthday) took place, not in a church, but in the back seat of a pink Cadillac. The happy couple chose Las Vegas for their nuptials—the same chapel, in fact, where Britney Spears and Elvis Presley were wed—because, in the words of the groom, Vegas is “rock and roll.”

Garry O’Sullivan, editor of The Irish Catholic, is reported to have once said, “Who cares what Sinéad thinks! She’s not a Catholic and has no interest in the Church, so she should stick with what she does best, singing. Her anti-Catholic tune is wearisome.”

I’ve got to agree. Although I did find one hopeful quote from the pop queen, who admitted, “I think the essence of Catholicism is beautiful. . . . The love and curiosity I have about religion come from Catholicism. I am very interested in the idea of the saints; everything about it; I mean, it’s beautiful…. What I would love to see is for Catholicism to survive this, so that true Catholicism can shine.”

Sing it, sister.

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Things were going just too well.

I’d had a fairly productive day in the office. My new haircut was perky, with just the right attitude. My most recent blog post had been picked up by the New Advent supersite, and I was watching the stats climb—hundreds of readers, over a thousand, still more….

So I needed a reality check.

I popped into Mass this evening, chatted with a few parishioners, then took my seat in the fourth row. It wasn’t until I sat to listen to the homily that I saw this:

One black Italian leather pump, pointed toe, leather rose. One grey strappy flat, round toe.

Oh, I am such a class act!

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