Inspired by Truth, Enlightening Minds for the Church in Canada and Throughout the World
Inspired by Truth, Enlightening Minds for the Church in Canada and Throughout the World
On this Good Friday, a fitting help to our devotion is Allegri’s Miserere, his unsurpassed musical setting of Psalm 51, recited in Lauds (Morning Prayer) every Friday. Composed around 1638, under the patronage of Pope Urban VIII- the same one who battled Galileo – the sublime piece was performed only on certain occasions in the[…]
As we enter in Holy Week, it is fitting to suggest some solemn music to fit the season, here the two settings of the ‘Passion’ put to music by Johann Sebastian Bach. According to sources, Bach wrote five ‘Passions’, orchestral chorales based on the final days in the life of Christ, but only two have[…]
Editor’s note: this reflection was originally posted by the Catholic Artist Connection. The mission of the Catholic Artist Connection is to connect and support Catholic artists of all disciplines both professionally and spiritually, to ease the loneliness of being a Catholic artist and encourage the creation of art for Christ. People look at the same[…]
For our musical offering on this Third Sunday of Lent, here are a few renditions – amongst many – of the perduring Stabat Mater, the 13th century poem on the sorrows of Mary ‘standing by the Cross’, attributed to the Franciscan Jacopone de Todi, or, some say, Saint Bonaventure or Pope Innocent III. Here is[…]
J.S. Bach was a devout Lutheran, and, unlike some of the Protestant sects, had a great devotion to Our Lady. In 1725, on this February 2nd, the Feast of her Purification, when we also celebrate the Presentation of our Lord, Bach first performed his cantata he had composed for the occasion, Mit Fried und Freud[…]
Over the past few months, I have found myself scrolling through Facebook Reels that surface fragments of 1990s television, shows like Step by Step, Saved by the Bell, and Beverly Hills, 90210, programs that quietly shaped the moral and emotional imagination of a generation. Cody Lambert, played by Sasha Mitchell, the surfer-kickboxer nephew in the[…]
Between 1734 and 1735, J.S. Bach composed six Oratorios – or six parts of one long Oratorio – for the Christmas season, which the Lutherans in his day still celebrated with gusto and devotion, each part commemorating an aspect of the Christmas story: The first, the Birth of Christ; the second, the Annunciation to the[…]
It’s lovely how the simplest tunes often – perhaps most often, maybe even always – make the most beautiful of melodies. So it is with Gustav Holst’s (1874-1934) carol ‘In the Bleak Midwinter‘ (1906) a very simple F-major progression, all within the octave – of the scale, that is, but also in reference to Christmas.[…]
Charles Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol was first published on this December 19 back in 1843, and it has been a much beloved classic ever since. It is really is an Advent story, as are most Christmas stories, and songs, as Stephen White recently wrote. Just as most marriage films are really ‘engagement’ films –[…]
A Christmas Reflection on Evil, Freedom, and Redemption in Bad Santa Editors’ note: the film reviewed below contains explicit sexual and violent scenes, sustained crudity and profane humor. This review is not meant to serve as a recommendation, but rather as an example of the application of Christian principles to morally disordered narratives to seek[…]
