Saturday Stroll

Today I have done some reading and listened to the monks of Le Barroux sing the Tenebrae office.

For lunch I found a great pastrami sandwich and went to the Park.

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Okay… here’s a better shot of the pastrami.   I was told, back home, to post food photos.  Yes, it is as good as it looks.

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Right now the cherry trees are blooming. Stand under a grove of them and you catch their fragrance.

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I walked across to the Frick Collection to see the fine exhibit of Renaissance and Baroque bronzes from a private owner.

I couldn’t take photos of the exhibit, but here is a detail of a painting by El Greco.

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Back to the Park for a bit and a sit down just to watch life go by before going to the Met, which is open late.

I am listening these days to Dante’s Divina Commedia, the action of which, as you know, takes place during the Sacred Triduum.

How wonderful it is to sit outside and feel the sun and not be cold.

Busy comes back soon enough. Right now there is time for refreshing otium. Otium in negotio.

Here is Manet’s Dead Christ with Angels.

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Manet got a couple things wrong about the Lord, as in the wound from the lance is on the wrong side, but he captures well the lifelessness of Christ’s Body… awaiting resurrection.

Awaiting resurrection and the defeat of this thing!

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About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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14 Comments

  1. Priam1184 says:

    Still in New York Father? When are you off to Rome? Going over the Atlantic myself on Monday night, maybe we can share the sky together for a time.

  2. aww Father. Glad you got a moment of peace. The arduous Triduum is not for sissies! May it be fruitful for you and for all attending.

  3. Charles E Flynn says:

    How Dante Saved My Life: A midlife crisis is cured by The Divine Comedy, by Rod Dreher:

    [slightly past half-way down the page]

    As my own pilgrimage came to its end last month, I met with my priest and told him that I was free. All the help my counselor had given me, and all the spiritual direction my priest had provided—especially the demanding prayer rule he had imposed—had played their part in my healing. But above all, it was Dante.

    How had a medieval Florentine appeared to me in my fear and confusion and led me out of the dark forest and back onto the straight way? It’s not like Dante told me anything I didn’t already know. I am a voracious reader of philosophy and theology but have always been immune to the powers of poetry and fiction. From where does the power of this poem come? Charles Williams answers best: “A thousand preachers have said all that Dante says and left their hearers discontented; why does Dante content? Because an image of profundity is there.”

    “An image of profundity”—in words and images, Dante’s poem illuminates what theologian David Bentley Hart calls “the fullness of reality.” In art, Hart explains, “the mysterious boundary between transcendental truth and the particularities of finite material form is at once fruitfully preserved and fruitfully transgressed.”

    Here is the final mystery the Divine Comedy revealed to me. In its very form, the Commedia teaches the attentive Christian reader a fundamental truth about reality. Christians believe that God is three-in-one—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—united by a bond of love. The basis of all reality, then, is relational—and that divine relation, the Trinity, pervades all reality.

  4. excalibur says:

    I found a great pastrami sandwich ….

    So that’s what happened to it!

    Have a great Easter Father, and thanks for the LENTzCAzT’s again.

  5. excalibur: You are welcome.

  6. BigRed says:

    I am a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in NYC (now the International Culinary Center) and understand and appreciate the skills you demonstrate in the kitchen. As a fellow carnivore (steak frite was my personal Saturday night special for decades) I must tell you, because of my wife’s advancing coronary artery disease, we have pledged to embrace a vegetarian/vegan lifestyle. Talk about conversion on the road to Damascus! You show us that pastrami and I despair for your cholesterol reading. Please show us more pix of salads (hold the blue cheese dressing).

    [Your attempts at buzz-kill are gnat-like. I think I’ll get more pastrami tomorrow… and put blue cheese on it… and then fry it.]

  7. Southern Baron says:

    I have a vegetarian friend who specifically eats meat during Easter because it’s, well, Easter.

    Love going to museums on Easter. One year I was fortunate enough to go to the London Oratory for Mass, then lunch at the V&A cafe, and then search out all the depictions of the Resurrection I could find in the collection.

  8. Joe in Canada says:

    Indeed, He is risen! Allelulia!
    Why do you say the author made a mistake regarding the side of Christ where the wound is?

  9. benedetta says:

    Pastrami you say? Super!

  10. jameeka says:

    Interesting. Even though Manet’s Jesus’ eyes are lifeless, there is so much light radiating from Him.

  11. Phil B says:

    That sandwich would seem to point to the superabundance of God’s graces.

  12. Sandy says:

    Love the cherry tree picture! I spent some time in the DC area years ago, and I’ll never forget the cherry blossoms around the Tidal Basin. Magnificent sight! Spring (and all its flowers) is an awesome gift from God.

  13. Mike says:

    @Sandy: Our cherry trees in Washington excel any in NYC. The same, alas, cannot be said of our pastrami.

    Prayers ascending for a safe continuation of Father’s journey overseas.

  14. Venerator Sti Lot says:

    Are wishes in an Octave ever belated? In any case, a blessed Easter, Father!

    And thank you for the El Greco! And the fascinating Manet! He has worked back fron the verse placed on the stone (St. John 20:12, as ther Met site tells me): this, then, must be during the Harrowing of Hell! Trying to learn more about that, I met in St. Thomas (Summa III Q 52 art. 4), “As Christ, in order to take our penalties upon Himself, willed His body to be laid in the tomb, so likewise He willed His soul to descend into hell. But the body lay in the tomb for a day and two nights, so as to demonstrate the truth of His death. Consequently, it is to be believed that His soul was in hell, in order that it might be brought back out of hell simultaneously with His body from the tomb.”

    Virgil’s account of it to Dante (Inferno IV, 52-63), it now strikes me, is told during the anniversary of it!

    But you say, “I am listening these days to Dante’s Divina Commedia” – could you tell us more about that? (I see LibriVox volunteers have put it online in Longfellow’s English and Von Philalethes’ German translations, as well as the Italian original – but am I right in suspecting you are referring to yet another recording?)

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