"Adoro Te Devote" & A New Painting of the Time Honored Classic "Pelican Piety"

First Friday, the first day of the Marian month & Feast of St Joseph the Worker 2020. This post is dedicated to a favorite art patron and priest, who in the fall of 2019, first emailed me photographs of a sacramental window series that he liked. May he remain well and filled with joy!

Upon inspection of the window photographs and with much admiration for the artistic expertise, I determined to recreate one of these early 20th century windows with paint. The one selected featured a brood of pelicans in a nest with the title, Euchrist, misspelled below it.  Perhaps this "typo" happened because the stained glass artisan did not know English (?) and maybe it was overlooked by the fledgling European-American community.  Honestly, I didn't even notice the error myself. It wasn't until I had laid out the pattern and begun preliminary paint work that my visiting son alerted me to the discrepancy. Whew! Just in time.

 "Aside from the many representations in the plastic arts, the Pie Pelicane makes a rather dramatic appearance in St. Thomas Aquinas’ Adoro Te Devote, one of the Angelic Doctor’s most glorious hymns. The penultimate stanza of that eucharistic song lauds Christ with the appellation of “heavenly pelican”: Pie pellicane, Iesu Domine, me immundum munda tuo sanguine; cuius una stilla salvum facere totum mundum quit ab omni scelere (“O Good and Pious Pelican, Jesus my Lord! Though I am unclean, cleanse me in Thy blood; Of which a single drop for sinners spilt, Is ransom for a world’s entire guilt)." All stanzas and chant instruction HERE.

 The Painting of Pelican Piety or Pie Pellicane in Latin. Music by Chopin:

How could it possibly have been known that the Eucharist, so plentiful and available at the beginning of this project in the fall of 2019, would be so dramatically withdrawn during the lenten spring of 2020? Let us continue to pray together that the public sacrifice of the mass may be restored soon and with even more reverence! Hopefully all will be well in time for the Feast of Corpus Christi Celebrations in June? God willing.

Commissions & print orders by request. Giclee Canvas Wrap or Archival papers up to 11x14 inches. Flat cards of 4x6 or 5x7 can be ordered in groups of 50. Fold cards in groups of 10. Customized notes or prayers for commemorative events can be designed.  Request a current price quote. Contact.

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More historical stained glass. A salute to Mary during  the month of May:

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