Stephanie A. Mann's Blog, page 239

Divine Mercy Sunday, 2014

 That was quite a Sunday in the Catholic world! Two popes, one reigning and one emeritus, concelebrating a Mass at which two popes were canonized! The universality of the Catholic Church clearly demonstrated: Mass in Latin; readings in Italian and Polish; the Gospel in Latin and in Greek--hundreds of thousands of pilgrims in attendance throughout Rome! I think this series of pictures from UK's The Daily Mail exemplifies the glories of the day. Duke and Duchess of Gloucester attended the ceremony to represent Queen Elizabeth II and her government--not quite the level of delegation that attended Pope St. John Paul II's funeral (Prince Charles, the Prime Minister Tony Blair, and then Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams), but still extraordinary that a British monarch would send royalty to attend a canonizations of two popes!

Back to Trent with John W. O'Malley, SJ

The  Second Vatican Council has been much in the news, Catholic and mainstream, occasioned by the canonization of the pope who called the Council and the pope who really implemented the Council (John XXIII and John Paul II). When George Weigel wrote on First Things about the canonization of those popes, he commented on the difficulties of implementing the Second Vatican Council;

As everyone who lived through the post-Vatican II years knows, John XXIII’s Council created a lot of turbulence of its own. One reason why, I’m convinced, is that Vatican II, unlike previous ecumenical councils, did not provide authoritative keys to its own proper interpretation. It defined no dogma. It condemned no heresy or heretic(s). It legislated no new canons for the Church’s law, it wrote no creed, it commissioned no catechism. These were the ways previous councils had told the Church, “This is what we mean.” Vatican II did none of that.

The Council of Trent did all all that. From that "Counter-Reformation" Council a new catechism, new statements for reform, decrees on the Sacraments, the crucial doctrine of Justification, etc, gave direction to the Catholic Church for centuries--well, until the Second Vatican Council! In fact, if you compare and contrast the two councils, the usual commentary is that Trent was doctrinal and Vatican II was pastoral. 
John W. O'Malley might disagree about that comment re: Trent: it was both doctrinal and pastoral as it was called both to combat the errors of Luther (and later Calvin) and to reform the Church of abuses and scandals, particularly to improve the care of souls. Thus the three sessions of the Council of Trent focused on both the definition of those doctrines most threatened by Lutherans ideas and the reform of the Church, especially the actions of bishops and parish priests. 

As Harvard University Press describes this 2013 book:

The Council of Trent (1545–1563), the Catholic Church’s attempt to put its house in order in response to the Protestant Reformation, has long been praised and blamed for things it never did. Now, in this first full one-volume history in modern times, John W. O’Malley brings to life the volatile issues that pushed several Holy Roman emperors, kings and queens of France, and five popes—and all of Europe with them—repeatedly to the brink of disaster.

During the council’s eighteen years, war and threat of war among the key players, as well as the Ottoman Turks’ onslaught against Christendom, turned the council into a perilous enterprise. Its leaders declined to make a pronouncement on war against infidels, but Trent’s most glaring and ironic silence was on the authority of the papacy itself. The popes, who reigned as Italian monarchs while serving as pastors, did everything in their power to keep papal reform out of the council’s hands—and their power was considerable. O’Malley shows how the council pursued its contentious parallel agenda of reforming the Church while simultaneously asserting Catholic doctrine.

Like What Happened at Vatican II, O’Malley’s Trent: What Happened at the Council strips mythology from historical truth while providing a clear, concise, and fascinating account of a pivotal episode in Church history. In celebration of the 450th anniversary of the council’s closing, it sets the record straight about the much misunderstood failures and achievements of this critical moment in European history.
O'Malley masterfully narrates the struggle to convene the Council, blocked by papal concerns about conciliarism and the efforts of Francis I of France to thwart the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, who urgently wanted the Church to launch a council for the sake of unity throughout his Empire. Francis I, Henry VIII, and the Schmalkaldic League of Lutheran princes wanted the Holy Roman Empire to be weakened from within by religious disunity. Throughout the following chapters that cover the three sessions of Trent, O'Malley keeps the narrative of events and his analysis of the decisions reached/documents issued in balance, providing details about personalities, the different factions, and the results of the theologians's discussions and the bishops' decisions.

I have not read his book about the Second Vatican Council--perhaps I'll look it up too. I checked this book out from the Wichita Public Library. I've read and reviewed his Trent and All That , and I read his Four Cultures of the West (might need to re-read it soon).

Between Conscience and Duty: William Byrd and Thomas Tallis at Princeton

Gallicantus, the group that recorded The Word Unspoken: Sacred Music by William Byrd and Philippe de Monte, is performing two concerts at Princeton University this weekend--one on Saturday, based on the album and the other on Sunday, featuring several "lamentable" compositions. Here is a link to the programs for the concerts.

The first concert is all about Byrd's dilemma, which I've described before of how to be a faithful musical servant to Elizabeth I and be a faithful Catholic at the same time. Gallicantus explores Byrd's motets that serve as coded lamentations over the fall of Catholicism in England (his conscience), then some English works written for Protestant audiences, praising Elizabeth I (his duty), and finally juxtapose the settings of Psalm 136 he and Philippe de Monte exchanged in 1583.

The second concert is all about Thomas Tallis' survival as a Catholic throughout the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I, but seems to set an elegaic and dark tone, as works chosen for the concert are settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah (for Lenten Tenebrae), and hymns for night prayer (Te Lucis Ante Terminum and Christe Quui Lux es et Dies)--"Sweet Laments of the English Renaissance" could be a Lenten concert, but is being performed on the Octave Day of Easter! And it much resembles the program of Latin works recorded by Magnificat on Linn Records' Where Late the Sweet Bird Sang!

Read more about the concerts here and here.

Easter Friday: Feasting in Easter after Fasting in Lent

Today, being Easter Friday and a Solemnity, we are free of any obligation of abstinence. Blessed John Henry Newman discussed the proper way of observing the cycle of fasts and feasts of the liturgical year in this PPS:
And yet, though the long season of sorrow which ushers in this Blessed Day, in some sense sobers and quells the keenness of our enjoyment, yet without such preparatory season, let us be sure we shall not rejoice at all. None rejoice in Easter-tide less than those who have not grieved in Lent. This is what is seen in the world at large. To them, one season is the same as another, and they take no account of any. Feast-day and fast-day, holy tide and other tide, are one and the same to them. Hence they do not realize the next world at all. To them the Gospels are but like another history; a course of events which took place eighteen hundred years since. They do not make our Savior's life and death present to them: they do not transport themselves back to the time of His sojourn on earth. They do not act over again, and celebrate His history, in their own observance; and the consequence is, that they feel no interest in it. They have neither faith nor love towards it; it has no hold on them. They do not form their estimate of things upon it; they do not hold it as a sort of practical principle in their heart. This is the case not only with the world at large, but too often with men who have the Name of Christ in their mouths. They think they believe in Him, yet when trial comes, or in the daily conduct of life, they are unable to act upon the principles which they profess: and why? because they have thought to dispense with the religious Ordinances, the course of Service, and the round of Sacred Seasons of the Church, and have considered it a simpler and more spiritual religion, not to act religiously except when called to it by extraordinary trial or temptation; because they have thought that, since it is the Christian's duty to rejoice evermore, they would rejoice better if they never sorrowed and never travailed with righteousness. On the contrary, let us be sure that, as previous humiliation sobers our joy, it alone secures it to us. Our Savior says, "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall he comforted;" and what is true hereafter, is true here. Unless we have mourned, in the weeks that are gone, we shall not rejoice in the season now commencing. It is often said, and truly, that providential affliction brings a man nearer to God. What is the observance of Holy Seasons but such a means of grace?

Continuing the contrast of the worldly and the Christian when the seasons of Lent and then of Easter occur in the course of each year, Newman describes the different patterns of fasting and feasting--the world begins with the last and then is forced into the first; the Christian begins with the first and rejoices in the last:

This too must be said concerning the connection of Fasts and Feasts in our religious service, viz., that that sobriety in feasting which previous fasting causes, is itself much to be prized, and especially worth securing. For in this does Christian mirth differ from worldly, that it is subdued; and how shall it be subdued except that the past keeps its hold upon us, and while it warns and sobers us, actually indisposes and tames our flesh against indulgence? In the world feasting comes first and fasting afterwards; men first glut themselves, and then loathe their excesses; they take their fill of good, and then suffer; they are rich that they may be poor; they laugh that they may weep; they rise that they may fall. But in the Church of God it is reversed; the poor shall be rich, the lowly shall be exalted, those that sow in tears shall reap in joy, those that mourn shall be comforted, those that suffer with Christ shall reign with Him; even as Christ (in our Church's words) "went not up to joy, but first He suffered pain. He entered not into His glory before He was crucified. So truly our way to eternal joy is to suffer here with Christ, and our door to enter into eternal life is gladly to die with Christ, that we may rise again from death, and dwell with him in everlasting life." And what is true of the general course of our redemption is, I say, fulfilled also in the yearly and other commemorations of it. Our Festivals are preceded by humiliation, that we may keep them duly; not boisterously or fanatically, but in a refined, subdued, chastised spirit, which is the true rejoicing in the Lord.

In one of those great, long sentences Newman can sustain with clarity to its periodic end, he cites three Gospel accounts of Resurrection appearances:

In such a spirit let us endeavor to celebrate this most holy of all Festivals, this continued festal Season, which lasts for fifty days, whereas Lent is forty, as if to show that where sin abounded, there much more has grace abounded. Such indeed seems the tone of mind which took possession of the Apostles when certified of the Resurrection; and while they waited for, or when they had the sight of their risen Lord. If we consider, we shall find the accounts of that season in the Gospels, marked with much of pensiveness and tender and joyful melancholy; the sweet and pleasant frame of those who have gone through pain, and out of pain receive pleasure. Whether we read the account of St. Mary Magdalen weeping at the sepulchre, seeing Jesus and knowing Him not, recognizing His voice, attempting to embrace His feet, and then sinking into silent awe and delight, till she rose and hastened to tell the perplexed Apostles;—or turn to that solemn meeting, which was the third, when He stood on the shore and addressed His disciples, and Peter plunged into the water, and then with the rest was awed into silence and durst not speak, but only obeyed His command, and ate of the fish in silence, and so remained in the presence of One in whom they joyed, whom they loved, as He knew, more than all things, till He broke silence by asking Peter if he loved Him:—or lastly, consider the time when He appeared unto a great number of disciples on the mountain in Galilee, and all worshiped Him, but some doubted:—who does not see that their Festival was such as I have been describing it, a holy, tender, reverent, manly joy, not so manly as to be rude, not so tender as to be effeminate, but (as if) an Angel's mood, the mingled offering of all that is best and highest in man's and woman's nature brought together,—St. Mary Magdalen and St. Peter blended into St. John? And here perhaps we learn a lesson from the deep silence which Scripture observes concerning the Blessed Virgin after the Resurrection; as if she, who was too pure and holy a flower to be more than seen here on earth, even during the season of her Son's humiliation, was altogether drawn by the Angels within the veil on His Resurrection, and had her joy in Paradise with Gabriel who had been the first to honor her, and with those elder Saints who arose after the Resurrection, appeared in the Holy City, and then vanished away.

Thus Blessed John Henry Newman reminds us that the source of our rejoicing is the Resurrection; even as we feast and do not fast during this Easter Octave, our joy should be in the Lord's triumph over death, not the meat or the other pleasures we enjoy. Read the rest of the sermon here.

"Gravity", the Octave of Easter, and Mystagogy

My husband bought me the DVD set of Gravity for me as an Easter present and we watched it together Easter Monday evening. I readily admit that my viewing of movie, beyond appreciating the plot, excellent acting, and special effects is influenced by this week of Easter celebration. But from the special features on the second DVD in this package, I know that the creators meant for this to be a story about rebirth and redemption; it's a space adventure that helps even the viewer overcome her fears. Warned by George Clooney's character Matt Kowalski (as he jokes) that he has a bad feeling about this mission, at first I did not think I could watch the disaster that was about to occur.

At the end of the movie, Ryan Stone, the neophyte, stumbles to her feet after her rebirth and baptism, experiencing gravity after being weightless, and murmurs, "Thank you". Who is she thanking? She has emerged from the womb of a tiny capsule and plunged into death before rising to a new life. How will she live from now on? At the beginning of the movie, while she feared being in space as a scientist-cum-astronaut, she enjoyed the silence and isolation. Facing her fears and overcoming one danger after another, she has to accept both letting go and deciding to go on. When she thinks she is going to die and prepares to give up and die, she regrets that there is really no one to mourn for her, no one to pray for her--and that she does not know how to pray, because nobody ever taught her how. Once she decides to try to survive, she does pray: she talks to a person she believes is in some happy afterlife so that he can give a message to someone she loves. And then she says her prayer of gratitude once back on earth.

In the early Church, this Octave week of Easter, each day celebrating the Solemnity of Solemnities, Easter Sunday, was dedicated to the neophytes, those who had been brought into the Church at the Easter Vigil. As they attended Mass during the week they wore their baptismal white robes until Low or Quasimodo* Sunday (From the Introit: Quasi modo geniti infantes, rationabile, sine dolo lac concupiscite ut in eo crescatis in salutem si gustastis quoniam dulcis Dominus--I Peter 2:2). After that Mass, they put aside their white albs and join the community without distinction--but they continue their mystagogic catechesis, learning more about the mysteries they had only heard about during their long catechumenate.

The movie, of course, ends with Ryan Stone on the beach, waiting for her rescuers The movie is over, but the story hasn't ended. If she is to continue to grow in her new life, she will need some mystagogy: perhaps someone to teach her more about prayer; a community to give and receive help and support; some way to live out the change (the conversion) she's just experienced. She may have escaped the dangers of carbon dioxide, space debris, fire, freezing. and hopelessness by herself, but she wasn't alone. Kowalski was somehow there with her even after he sacrificed his life for her, and the simple Inuit fisherman Aningaaq, with his barking dogs and crying baby, comforts her. Those who trained her had prepared her; Houston awaited her and would track her once her capsule entered the atmosphere of Earth, sending someone to bring her home. Perhaps now home will be something more than going to work and driving aimlessly.

Even if you don't make connections like I have, Gravity is an exciting movie about resilience and survival. Sandra Bullock should have won the award for best actress of the year for this performance!

*Quasimodo, the bell-ringer from Victor Hugo's novel Notre Dame de Paris, is found as an infant at the cathedral on Low Sunday and is thus given his name from the Introit. More about Low Sunday here.

Two Popes to be Canonized on Divine Mercy Sunday

I think The Wall Street Journal gave this editorial the wrong subtitle ("Two popes who differed on the Second Vatican Council become saints a half century later.") although the headline could be correct ("A Moment of Reconciliation for Catholics"): Pope John called Vatican II in 1959 because he had come to the "conviction that something ought to be done in order to make the church more responsive to this modern world, in order to make the modern world more responsive to the church," according to Jesuit Father Ladislas Orsy, one of the council's official theologians. Or, as Pope John famously put it, he wanted to open the church's windows and let in some fresh air. Initiating Vatican II was by far the most consequential action of his pontificate, though he died in 1963 after the first of the council's four sessions.  Pope John Paul attended the entire council as a young bishop, making major contributions to the 1965 document "Gaudium Et Spes," which dealt with the church in the modern world. He argued that Catholics could better engage secular culture if they approached it more sympathetically. He was also a supporter of the council's declaration on religious freedom, and he furthered the council's aim of world-wide evangelical outreach by traveling to 129 countries during his pontificate. But he also made it his job to correct what he viewed as deviations from the council—including dissent in religious orders—that some had justified by appealing to an expansive spirit of Vatican II.  We cannot say that soon-to-be-canonized Blesseds John XXIII and John Paul II disagreed about the Second Vatican Council because the former died before the Council concluded and had no opportunity to implement it in his own diocese (Rome) or in the universal Church. The latter did have the opportunity to implement it in his own Polish diocese and brought that experience to the universal Church when elected Supreme Pontiff. I think that Blessed John Paul II had already worked to open the Church's windows "and let in some fresh air" as he taught in university, worked with young laity, and opposed the oppression of the Communists in Poland.

As I grew up in the Diocese of Wichita, I believe that I was spared some of the confusions of the implementation of the Second Vatican Council. We had a wise bishop, David M. Maloney, may he rest in peace. Nevertheless, I remember some of the vapid songs we sang, and of the ridiculous catechesis I endured in high school (interpreting the lyrics of Simon and Garfunkel! "I Am A Rock" as the foundation of life!), and some other horrors ("Stairway to Heaven"--instrumental only at least--at Mass!).

The crucial issue, certainly highlighted in the last sentence of the second paragraph I quoted above, has been the interpretation of the Second Vatican Council and even more, the "expansive spirit of Vatican II". Ay, there's the rub! Blessed John Paul II--not in any disagreement with either of his predecessors--addressed the fullness of the interpretation of the Council, according to the Council Fathers' intent. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI continued Pope John Paul II's work; as a peritus at the Council, he had his own view of what happened in its aftermath. Another great contribution he made to the historical view of the Council was the term a hermeneutic of reform or continuity; not seeing the Second Vatican Council as a break with the past, but as part of the history of the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit. Benedict XVI presented this "hermeneutic of continuity" early in his reign, at the end of 2005:

Well, it all depends on the correct interpretation of the Council or - as we would say today - on its proper hermeneutics, the correct key to its interpretation and application. The problems in its implementation arose from the fact that two contrary hermeneutics came face to face and quarrelled with each other. One caused confusion, the other, silently but more and more visibly, bore and is bearing fruit.

On the one hand, there is an interpretation that I would call "a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture"; it has frequently availed itself of the sympathies of the mass media, and also one trend of modern theology. On the other, there is the "hermeneutic of reform", of renewal in the continuity of the one subject-Church which the Lord has given to us. She is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.

The hermeneutic of discontinuity risks ending in a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church. It asserts that the texts of the Council as such do not yet express the true spirit of the Council. It claims that they are the result of compromises in which, to reach unanimity, it was found necessary to keep and reconfirm many old things that are now pointless. However, the true spirit of the Council is not to be found in these compromises but instead in the impulses toward the new that are contained in the texts.

These innovations alone were supposed to represent the true spirit of the Council, and starting from and in conformity with them, it would be possible to move ahead. Precisely because the texts would only imperfectly reflect the true spirit of the Council and its newness, it would be necessary to go courageously beyond the texts and make room for the newness in which the Council's deepest intention would be expressed, even if it were still vague. . . .

Read the rest of the WSJ article here. Read the rest of Benedict XVI's comments on the implementation of the documents and reforms of the Second Vatican Council here. Perhaps there will be reconciliation within the Church between these two groups. I look forward to hearing what Pope Francis has to say on Divine Mercy Sunday as two Servants of the Servants of God are canonized (and to seeing if Emeritus Pope Benedict attends the ceremony!).

Blessed John XXIII and the Archbishop of Canterbury

As appropriate in these days leading up to the canonization of Blessed John XXIII and Blessed John Paul II, the National Catholic Register publishes this article by Father Dwight Longenecker about the first stages of ecumenical dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Church of England:

On Dec. 2, 1960, the Swiss Guards looked up to see an Anglican archbishop clad in a purple cassock and Canterbury cap striding up the steps to the Vatican’s apostolic palace. It was the first time an archbishop of Canterbury had visited the Vatican for 600 years.

A former school headmaster, Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher had been the head of the Worldwide Anglican Communion since 1945. On the election of Pope John XXIII in 1958, a new spirit of ecumenism was in the air. After Pope John established a new Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity in June of that year, the rambunctious Archbishop Fisher decided to call on the pope. His unexpected visit set the Vatican diplomatic machine into a tizzy, but Pope John XXIII welcomed him, and together they broke centuries of deadlock between the two Churches.

Ever since King Henry VIII’s break with Rome, the tension between Catholics and Anglicans had grown into a bitter, centuries-long feud. Nevertheless, by the 18th and 19th centuries, the relationship began to thaw.

In the 18th century, a remarkable correspondence developed between Archbishop of Canterbury William Wake and French Catholic bishops, and in the 19th century, Blessed John Henry Newman’s conversion brought scores of Anglicans into the Catholic Church, rekindling the dream of unity. Hoping for a positive response, an Anglican layman, Lord Halifax, pressured for Rome to decide on the validity of Anglican orders. The hope was dashed in 1896, when Pope Leo XIII issued his "motu proprio" Apostolicae Curae (On the Nullity of Anglican Orders) , declaring Anglican orders to be "utterly null and void."

Read the rest here. One of the interesting results of this meeting was that while Blessed John XXIII accepted in a way the Anglican idea of the via media--as being something other than Protestantism--the Anglican Archbishop could not accept the notion of unity through restoration and obedience:

During the meeting, Pope John made some observations on the Gospel. In his meditations, he thought of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. At the end, the gentle pope asked the archbishop when the Anglicans would come back, and Archbishop Fisher made his now-famous reply — that it was impossible to go back; instead, "we must go forward together."

The wisdom of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI with the Anglican Ordinariate is that he created a new, better way of going "forward together" in unity and holiness.

English Martyrs on April 20

From 2012, here is a compilation of posts on English martyrs from the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I--the Nun of Kent and her companions might not be considered martyrs for Jesus Christ and his Church, but they certainly were victims of Henry VIII's break from the Catholic Church.

On April 20, 1534, Elizabeth Barton, the Nun of Kent, was executed at Tyburn, London, along with monks and priests named as her co-conspirators.

On April 20, 1584, Father James Bell and layman John Finch were martyred in Lancaster. Pope Pius XI beatified them in 1929.

On April 20, 1586, two priests captured in the house of Roger Line, the husband of St. Anne Line, were hung, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn: Blessed Richard Sargent and Blessed William Thomson--both beatified by Blessed John Paul II. Roger Line and William Heigham, Anne Line's brother, would both be exiled as they were taken in the arrest of the two priests.

On April 20, 1602, three more priests were executed at Tyburn--and among them another with connection to St. Anne Line--Blesseds Thomas Tichborne, Robert Watkinson, and Francis Page. Father Francis Page was the priest who was beginning to say Mass for the Feast of the Purification (Candlesmas) when the safe house St. Anne Line was managing was raided. He escaped, and she suffered in his stead--that time.

While it at first seems strange to post about this series of executions and martyrdom on Easter Sunday, we should remember that the promise of resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come were not just notions the martyrs held. They believed in Faith and thus would suffer and die. As Chesterton and others have noted, no one would dare die for Jesus and His Church if they did not believe in the glories of Easter!

Happy Easter!

Alleluia!

Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!

Easter Sunday at Durham Before the Dissolution and the Reformation

Remembering the glories of the recent past, a former monk of Durham Abbey recounted the rituals of early morning on Easter Sunday, as the guarding of the Sepulchre ended with the Resurrection:

There was in the abbye church of duresme [Durham] verye solemne service uppon easter day betweene 3 and 4 of the clocke in the morninge in honour of the resurrection where 2 of the oldest monkes of the quire came to the sepulchre, being sett upp upon good friday after the passion all covered with redd velvett and embrodered with gold, and then did sence it either monke with a paire of silver sencors sittinge on theire knees before the sepulcher;

then they both risinge came to the sepulchre, out of the which with great reverence they tooke a marvelous beautiful Image of our saviour representinge the resurrection with a crosse in his hand in the breast wheof was enclosed in bright Christall the holy sacrament of the altar, throughe the which christall the blessed host was conspicuous, to the behoulders;

then after the elevation of the said picture carryed by the said 2 monkes uppon a faire velvett cushion all embrodered singinge the anthem of christus resurgens they brought to the high altar settinge that on the midst therof whereon it stood the two monkes kneelinge on theire knees before the altar, and senceing it all the time that the rest of the whole quire was in singinge the foresaid anthem of Xpus resrugens;

the which anthem being ended the 2 monkes tooke up the cushines and the picture from the altar supportinge it betwixt them, proceeding in procession from the high altar to the south quire dore where there was 4 antient gentlemen belonginge to the prior appointed to attend theire cominge holdinge upp a most rich cannopye of purple velvett tached round about with redd silke, and gold fringe;

and at everye corner did stand one of theise ancient gentlemen to beare it over the said Image, with the holy sacrament carried by two monkes round about the church the whole quire waitinge uppon it with goodly torches and great store of other lights, all singinge rejoyceinge and praising god most devoutly till they came to the high altar againe, wheron they did place the said Image there to remaine untill the assencion day.
The image above (from Wikipedia/public domain) is of an alabaster carving created in 14th century England. You might remember that there has been a travelling exhibition of these surviving alabasters from the Victoria & Albert Museum the past few years, most recently (from my search) at The Dayton Art Institute. Those alabaster carvings that survived the English Reformation and the iconoclasm of the reign of Edward VI were found on the Continent or in private homes. 
As the book that accompanied the exhibition noted:
During the later Middle Ages, England had a thriving art industry that produced religious alabaster sculptures in large numbers and exported them to virtually every country in Europe. Despite the success and scale of this industry, however, English alabasters have remained a neglected art form. Alabaster is a remarkable and attractive material for a sculptor to work with. It is a fine-grained, rare form of gypsum, superficially resembling marble, but with a softer, deeper translucent glow and a creamy, yellow-ochre finish. Because the material was soft and easy to carve, and was found in large quantities beneath the soil of the English Midlands, medieval English sculptors worked this mineral resource extensively from the late fourteenth century until the Reformation in the 1530s, creating lively, spirited reliefs for altarpieces and devotional figures.

Since It's Easter--Dante's In Heaven

Rod Dreher writes about Dante's The Divine Comedy in The Wall Street Journal this Easter weekend, reminding us that Dante starts his visit to the afterlife in Hell on Good Friday and enters Purgatory and Heaven on Easter Sunday:

On the spiral journey downward into the Inferno, Dante learns that all sin is a function of disordered desire—a distortion of love. The damned either loved evil things or loved good things—such as food and sex—in the wrong way. They dwell forever in the pit because they used their God-given free will—the quality that makes us most human—to choose sin over righteousness.

The pilgrim's dramatic encounters in the "Inferno"—with tormented shades such as the adulterous Francesca, the prideful Farinata and the silver-tongued deceiver Ulysses—offer no simplistic morals. They are, instead, a profound exploration of the lies we tell ourselves to justify our desires and to conceal our deeds and motives from ourselves.

 This opens the pilgrim Dante's eyes to his own sins and the ways that yielding to them drew him from life's straight path. The first steps to freedom require honestly recognizing that one is enslaved—and one's own responsibility for that bondage.

 The second stage of the journey begins on Easter morning, at the foot of Mount Purgatory. Dante and his guide, the Roman poet Virgil, stagger out of the Inferno and begin the climb to the summit. If "Inferno" is about recognizing and understanding one's sin, "Purgatory" is about repenting of it, purifying one's will to become fit for Paradise.

Purgatory is the most dramatic of the three books of The Divine Comedy, because it is in that book that Dante himself and all the Poor Souls can make progress in perfection. The damned in Hell can achieve nothing for all their useless activity; the blessed have achieved their goal in Heaven.

 As Dreher notes, The Divine Comedy is a story of redemption for the poet, and can be for the reader too:

The practical applications of Dante's wisdom cannot be separated from the pleasure of reading his verse, and this accounts for much of the life-changing power of the Comedy. For Dante, beauty provides signposts on the seeker's road to truth. The wandering Florentine's experiences with beauty, especially that of the angelic Beatrice, taught him that our loves lead us to heaven or to hell, depending on whether we are able to satisfy them within the divine order.

 This is why "The Divine Comedy" is an icon, not an idol: Its beauty belongs to heaven. But it may also be taken into the hearts and minds of those woebegone wayfarers who read it as a guidebook and hold it high as a lantern, sent across the centuries from one lost soul to another, illuminating the way out of the dark wood that, sooner or later, ensnares us all.