Originally published at National Catholic Register
COMMENTARY: Ours is an emaciated culture, starved of both beauty and meaning. Beauty, while it instructs our minds, simultaneously prepares our souls. Let’s start at home.
After the front door of a home opens, both guest and resident step forward to cross a literal and metaphorical threshold between the outside world and protective sanctuary of a home. The room that serves as the landing place is known as an entry. Regardless of the various shapes and forms these rooms can take, they still convey a lot about the home through the artwork or items hung upon the walls. No other place of the home serves as an introduction to the culture of a home as an entryway. It serves as an initiation into the life of the home within which both guests and residents are now enclosed.
On a wall in our entry hangs an antique gilt frame containing something easily overlooked. Upon notice, one sees vast networks of paper filigree of beautiful patterns in movement toward the same focal point: anAgnus Dei relic from the first Easter of the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII. Tucked within the scrolls of paper are the relics of the Blessed Virgin Mary
