Spiritual Quote of the Day (The Prophet Joel, With a Thought for Lent)

“ ‘Yet even now,” says the Lord,
    “return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
     and rend your hearts and not your garments.’
Return to the Lord, your God,
    for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
    and repents of evil.”—Joel 2:12-13
 
The image of Joel accompanying this post is a detail from the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, by the Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564).

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Helen Garner, on the Bible’s Repeated Water Imagery)

“Even now there are days, as I go about my business along certain streets, when my past cruelties, my foolishnesses, my harsh egotisms hang around me like a fog — or, rather, when they haunt me like a pack of cards which offer themselves to my consciousness one by one and with a clever appropriateness, as if a tormentor’s mind were actively choosing and shuffling them, so that their juxtapositions are forever fresh, always bright and with a honest, unbearable edge.  Because of this, I understand and treasure the Bible’s repeated imagery of water, of washing; and of the laying down or the handing over of burdens.  I like the story of the woman at the well.  First, she was a woman.  She belonged to the wrong race.  She had had five husbands and was living with a man she was not married to, but she was the one Jesus asked to draw water for him.  She bandied words with him, but he told her about the other kind of water — the sort that never runs out — the water that he was offering.”— Australian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist Helen Garner, “Sighs Too Deep for Words: On Being Bad at Reading the Bible,” originally published in Portland Magazine, Winter 2004, reprinted in The Best American Spiritual Writing 2005, edited by Philip Zaleski (2005)

The image accompanying this post, Christ and the Samaritan Woman, depicting the “woman at the well” with Jesus, was created between 1520 and 1530 by the Italian painter Vincenzo Catena (1470-1531).

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Gospel of Luke, on the Good Samaritan)

“But wanting to justify himself, [a scholar of the law] asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’ Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.” Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’”—Luke 10:29-37 (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition)

This, one of the most famous of Christ's parables, gains in poignancy when one remembers the animus that so many Jews of his time had for Samaritans. A priest and a Levite, both members of groups deeply familiar to his audience, pass by the robbed and half-dead traveler. It's only a person from the despised Samaritans who comes to the traveler's aid. 

If even someone from an "out" group can react with mercy, Jesus is telling his listeners (and us), why can't you?

The image accompanying this post, The Good Samaritan, was created by the Italian Renaissance painter Jacopo Bassano (c. 1510-1592).

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Marilynne Robinson, on the Bible’s ‘Interest in the Human’)

“The remarkable realism of the Bible, the voices it captures, the characterization it achieves, are products of an interest in the human that has no parallel in ancient literature. The Lord stands back, so to speak. The text does not blur the unlikeness of the mortal and the divine by giving us demigods.” —American novelist-essayist Marilynne Robinson, Reading Genesis (2024)

The image accompanying this post, Abraham and Isaac (also known as The Sacrifice of Isaac), was created by the Venetian painter Titian (ca. 1488-1576).

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Joseph Mary Plunkett, on Christ, the Reaper)

“The sun rose up at midnight,
The sun rose red as blood,
It showed the Reaper, the dead Christ,
Upon His cross of wood.
 
“For many live that one may die,
And one must die that many live—
The stars are silent in the sky
Lest my poor songs be fugitive.”—Irish poet, journalist, and patriotic martyr Joseph Mary Plunkett (1887-1916), “The Stars Sang in God’s Garden,” in Joyce Kilmer’s Anthology of Catholic Poets, with a supplement of more recent poems edited by Shaemas O’Sheel (1939)
 
(The image accompanying this post, a detail of the painting Christ Crucified, was part of the Scuola di San Rocco in Venice, by the late Italian Renaissance master Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-1594).