Midweek Devotion 28 August 2024

Reading

Psalm 63:1-2

    O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek you; 

my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you,

as in a barren and dry land where there is no water.

    Therefore I have gazed upon you in your holy place,

that I might behold your power and your glory.

Devotion

By Ary Scheffer - Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24831017

This week's work of art, Saint Augustine and his mother, Saint Monica (1846) by Ary Scheffer, lives in the National Gallery in London.   Scheffer was a French-Dutch romantic painter.  Romanticism emphasized a reverence for the supernatural and the imagination seeking to inspire a sense of the heroic within the viewer.   Since Augustine and Monica were North Africans likely of Berber ethnicity, as well as Roman citizens, you see that this painting is likely not the way they appeared historically.  However, they are the way they appeared in the artist's imagination.  

I think Scheffer is showing us a number of things. We behold a mother's love for her child, in this case a young Augustine.  We see their spiritual and intellectual curiosity leading them to ponder something 'off screen' up and to the right that is the source of light in the painting.  I'm struck by the hand holding and the contrast between the light raiment of Monica and the chthonic, earthy tones of Augustine.  Read any biography of Augustine and his life as a young man was anything but holy!

Who is it that has had a holy influence on your life, dear reader?  Think of a person or two who have helped you find the light or have seen something in you that you did not see yourself.  Maybe drop them a text or note if they are still with us.  Give thanks for them regardless.  Perhaps you, too, have been that person for another or perhaps, this week will be that person!  Be ready!

Prayer 

Lord God, the light of the minds that know you, the life of the souls that love you, and the strength of the hearts that serve you: Help us, following the example of your servant, Augustine of Hippo, so to know you that we may truly love you, and so to love you that we may fully serve you, whose service is perfect freedom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Lesser Feasts and Fasts)