The
Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor
L'Eternel m'a oint pour porter de bonnes nouvelles aux
malheureux
Isaiah, or rather a disciple of his
who wrote just after the end of the Babylonian captivity, offers us a powerful
message of hope and an insight into God’s compassion for the poor, the
broken-hearted, the mourners and the captives.
Like
the deported Jews, we live in a world that often rejects our values, and in
which no Christian can feel completely at home. Populists are appealing to
people’s worst fears and prejudices, often perverting our own Christian faith.
Virtually everything we cherish is under relentless attack: the political and
social progress that we have collectively made, our wonderful environment,
indeed truth itself; and of course our Christian faith. But God gives us real
hope in this world, as well as in the world to come. This hope comes with an
exhortation to act urgently: it is our job “to proclaim good news to the poor,
to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives”.
And in Brussels, we have some of the
means that we need to do this. We live in a city that symbolically embodies
European values, which are of course rooted in our Christian faith. Many people
are working for the oppressed and for the poor. Others are working to create a
more fair and more sustainable economy, and to engage constructively with the
world. We are blessed with a wonderful and vibrant church. Let these words of
Isaiah at the same time comfort us and urge us to act.
Attribution
Saint Nicholas Accuses the Consul from Scenes from the Life of Saint Nicholas, ca. 1200–1210, Made in Picardy, France, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1980, www.metmuseum.org.
Saint Nicholas Accuses the Consul from Scenes from the Life of Saint Nicholas, ca. 1200–1210, Made in Picardy, France, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1980, www.metmuseum.org.
Description:
This scene is one of two that illustrate an early episode in the life of Saint Nicholas, soon after he was elected bishop of Myra in Asia Minor in the fourth century. In the first scene (acc. no. 1980.263.2), two knights, identified by their shirts of mail, are being falsely accused of treason and condemned by the consul. A third knight, the right arm of the consul, and the beginning of the inscription—[S N]ICO/ LAVS: PR[A]ESES/ MILITES (Nicholas protects the soldiers)—were lost when the panel was cut down at an undetermined time. In the second scene here, Nicholas responds to the knights' prayers by appearing before the counsul to plead for their release. A palace guard looks on from the left.
The panels probably came from an ambulatory chapel dedicated to Saint Nicolas in the cathedral of Soissons, whose choir was under construction in the 1190s. This type of composition, in which each narrative element is framed under an arcade, is among the earliest known examples of its kind and is strongly associated with Soissons. The elegant figural style and flowing drapery patterns exemplify a classicizing trend found in northern France from the late twelfth through early thirteenth century.
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