More Gallery Visitation

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has housed a collection of Arms and Armor for a hundred years.

In the 1920’s, art snobs complained that suits of armor do not belong in world-class museums filled with paintings by such geniuses as Pablo Picasso.

Au contraire: Many suits of armor are exquisite works of art.

One may discover this fact for oneself by visiting The Art of Power, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. It is just about the coolest museum exhibit ever.

…Back to El Greco: His most famous painting is “Burial of Count Orgaz,” which is in a church in Toledo, Spain.

One of the benefactors of the church was such a good and pious man that, when he died, Saints Stephen and Augustine came down from heaven to lay the dead man in his casket.

(click once or twice on the picture to see it even larger)

The painting is so grand, it opens heaven up to our contemplation.

But for many of us the most excellent thing about the painting is…the vestments worn by the saintly clerics.

If you zoom in on St. Stephen’s dalmatic, you can see–right beside the little boy, who is supposedly painted to resemble El Greco’s son–a tiny little El Greco painting of the first Christian martyrdom, as embroidery on the vestment. (St. Stephen is the first martyr.)

Palm Sunday Cheer

Nothing can cheer a guy up on a rainy day like a picture of the Holy Father in a beautiful cope, accompanied by Cardinal-Deacons in lovely dalmatics.

Here is a quote from a Palm Sunday sermon by St. Andrew of Crete:

Let us run to accompany the Lord as He hastens toward his Passion, and imitate those who met Him then, not by covering His path with garments, olive branches or palms, but by doing all we can to prostrate ourselves before Him by being humble and by trying to live as He would wish.

…Last Tuesday Benjamin Netanyahu was sworn-in as Prime Minister of Israel.

Pope Benedict will arrive in Israel in just over a month.

At this moment, the second half of the NCAA national championship is already well underway. Therefore, there is no real reason for you to believe what I am about to tell you.

The fact of the matter is, however: We here at P&BD have been saying for two days that this game was going to be another Super Bowl XXIV.

This morning, numerous parochial-school seventh graders heard Preacher predict that, “This game is not going to be pretty.” And it ain’t.