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"The Infant Saint John with the Lamb" Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1618-1682) "He is Elijah who is to come." (Matt 11:14) |
"Saint John the Baptist stands in a rocky landscape, a reference to the wilderness in which he lived as a young man, dressed in a camel-hair tunic and eating only locusts and honey.
"He embraces a lamb, a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice, and points towards heaven. According to the Gospel, when Saint John met Christ he declared: ‘Behold, the Lamb of God’. These words are inscribed in Latin on a ribbon wound around a reed cross, one of Saint John’s attributes (a symbolic object associated with him).
"The lamb is also a symbol of Christ as the Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for his sheep – as Christ is believed to have done for humanity’s salvation." THE NATIONAL GALLERY
FIRE OF LOVE
"'I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!' (Lk 12:49) In the Bible, God often appears in the form of fire. Jesus has come to light the world with the fire of God's love. Fire is a powerful and ambivalent gift: it can give light and strength, it can purify, it can destroy. God is preparing us to live a life of eternal love. His fire burns away all that cannot live in the presence of such love." [Magnificat, August 14, 2016, page 181-2]
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| The Christ Child tends a lamb in a landscape with classical ruins that allude to the defeat of paganism. "The Good Shepherd" Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1618-1682) |
Love, Jeanne
