Franciscans of Canada Newsletter

Christmas 2020

A Word from the Provincial Minister

Glory to God and peace on earth !

My Christmas greetings this year are inspired by Andrei Rublev’s icon of the Nativity. Rublev was born just a few years after the first wave of the Black Death, which killed millions of people across the globe from 1347 to 1352.

It was with this harsh and chaotic backdrop that the artist decided to depict this Nativity scene. It seems to me that this image can bring us comfort as we approach the end of 2020 and as we, in our turn, are in the throes of a global pandemic.

We can sense an agitation and a struggle among the figures in the icon: in the centre we find Mary, the Theotokos – the Mother of God – and Jesus her child, lying in a manger and wrapped in swaddling clothes. Against a black background, which symbolizes all of the world’s darkness, suffering and silence, our Saviour is born – so fragile....

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