March 15: The Forgiveness of Sins
♫ Music:
Day 11 - Saturday, March 15
Title: The Forgiveness of Sins
Scripture #1: Ephesians 1:7 (NKJV)
In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.
Scripture #2: 1 John 1:9–10 (NKJV)
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.
Poetry & Poet:
“Confession”
by George Herbert
O what a cunning guest
Is this same grief! within my heart I made
Closets; and in them many a chest;
And, like a master in my trade,
In those chests, boxes; in each box, a till:
Yet grief knows all, and enters when he will.
No screw, no piercer can
Into a piece of timber work and wind,
As God’s afflictions into man,
When he a torture hath designed.
They are too subtle for the subtlest hearts;
And fall, like rheums, upon the tend’rest parts.
We are the earth; and they,
Like moles within us, heave, and cast about:
And till they foot and clutch their prey,
They never cool, much less give out.
No smith can make such locks but they have keys:
Closets are halls to them; and hearts, high-ways.
Only an open breast
Doth shut them out, so that they cannot enter;
Or, if they enter, cannot rest,
But quickly seek some new adventure.
Smooth open hearts no fast’ning have; but fiction
Doth give a hold and handle to affliction.
Wherefore my faults and sins,
Lord, I acknowledge; take thy plagues away:
For since confession pardon wins,
I challenge here the brightest day,
The clearest diamond: let them do their best,
They shall be thick and cloudy to my breast.
About the Art:
Blood Pool (Installation)
Jeffrey Mongrain
2006
Plexiglas
4 x 88 in.
St. Peter’s Catholic Church
Columbia, South Carolina
One of artist Jeffrey Mongrain’s more accessible works, entitled Blood Pool, is part of a 2006 installation in Saint Peter’s Church in Columbia, South Carolina. Here a sculpted Plexiglas pool of blood lies on the marble floor in front of the altar. Carved deep into the altar’s marble face is a traditional high-relief sculpture of the Last Supper, presumably created during the church’s renovation in the early 1900s. Mongrain’s flat pool of wine-colored blood intervenes between the viewer and the marble altar, recasting the familiar tableau as a reflection in its liquid, polished surface. Here the association is with the redeeming blood of Christ.
https://imagejournal.org/article/jeffrey-mongrain-iconography-eloquence/
About the Artist:
Jeffrey Mongrain creates both gallery-based works and site-specific installation pieces primarily located in sacred spaces. Art in America’s contributing editor, Eleanor Heartney, says, “Jeffrey Mongrain brings a human dimension to abstracted yet iconic forms. Obliquely references personal metaphor, history, science, sensuality, and the pervasive echoes of sacred spaces he astutely balances form and content. Mongrain’s richly coded images are visually quiet, physically eloquent and conceptually meaningful.” Some of Mongrain’s recent solo exhibitions have been at venues including the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art in Sedalia, MO; the San Angelo Museum of Fine Art in San Angelo, Texas; the National Museum of Catholic Art in New York City; the Museo de Antropologia in Mexico; and the Perimeter Gallery in Chicago. Mongrain has been a professor of art at Hunter College in New York City since 1995, having previously taught for seven years at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland.
https://huntercollegeart.org/studio-art-faculty/jeffrey-mongrain/
https://imagejournal.org/article/jeffrey-mongrain-iconography-eloquence/
About the Music: “Confession (1 John 1)” from the album Hiding Place
Lyrics:
I see a struggle now within.
A light in my soul,
As I’m dying to sin.
I do the things that I hate.
So, I hate what I do.
Who will deliver me?
And thanks be to God,
Through Jesus Christ,
For there is no condemnation at all.
This the message we have heard?
We have seen with our eyes,
We have touched with our hands.
The Word on high appeared
The Word became flesh.
The Word dwelt among us.
The Word on high.
The God of light
And in Him there is no darkness at all.
If we claim to have fellowship with Him.
Yet we walk in the dark.
We live in the light.
If we claim to be without sin
We deceive ourselves
The Word is not within us
We confess our sins.
And cry out to God.
And He will forgive and
Purify our human hearts.
Those who walk in Jesus Christ
He has given us of the spirit of God.
Espiritu, Espiritu, Espiritu
I see a struggle now within.
Alivet in my soul,
As I’m dying to sin.
About the Composer/Performer:
John Michael Talbot (b. 1954) is a singer-songwriter, guitarist, author, and founder of a monastic community known as the Brothers and Sisters of Charity. His songs were the first by a Catholic artist to cross well-defined boundaries and gain acceptance by Protestant listeners. Talbot won the Dove Award for Worship Album of the Year for his album Light Eternal with producer and longtime friend Phil Perkins. He is one of only nine artists to receive the President's Merit Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. In 1988 he was named the No.1 Christian Artist by Billboard magazine. Today, Talbot is one of the most active monk/ministers alive, traveling over nine months per year throughout the world inspiring and renewing the faith of Christians of all denominations through sacred music, teaching, and motivational speaking.
https://johnmichaeltalbot.com/
About the Poetry and Poet:
George Herbert (1593–1633) was a Welsh-born English poet, orator, and Anglican priest. Herbert’s poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets and he is recognized as “a pivotal figure: enormously popular, deeply and broadly influential, and arguably the most skillful and important British devotional lyricist.” He was born into an artistic and wealthy family and was raised primarily in England. He received his education at Trinity College, Cambridge. He went there with the intention of becoming a priest, but he became the university’s public orator and attracted the attention of King James I. Herbert subsequently served in the Parliament of England in 1624 and briefly in 1625. After the death of King James I, Herbert gave up his secular ambitions and took holy orders in the Church of England, spending the rest of his life as the rector of St. Andrew’s Church in Salisbury. Throughout his life, Herbert wrote Christian poetry with a precision of language and a masterful use of imagery. Some of Herbert’s poems have been turned into hymns and are still in use today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Herbert
About the Devotion Writer:
Sian Draycott
Instructor
Torrey Honors College
Biola University
Sian Draycott grew up in Wales and graduated from Oxford University with an M.A. in theology and from the Open University (UK) with an M.A. in classical studies. She is a Ph.D. student at Talbot School of Theology. Sian loves to discuss Great Books with students as an Instructor in the Torrey Honors College.