Icons of Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat and Saint Philippine Duchesne
Patricia Tighe Reid rscj and Anne Davidson rscj
(Click on an image to view a larger version)
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Mission to America
For a long time I had wanted to paint an icon of St Madeleine Sophie and St Philippine. The pressure of backed-up icon commissions, however, made me postpone this subject: I never felt free to do it just for my own satisfaction.
In 2003 I had an accidental but providential conversation with Susan Maxwell, Headmistress of our school at Sheridan Rd in Chicago. Eventually the subject of my icon ministry came up. I mentioned my desire to do one of our two saints at the moment of the mission to America. Susan was delighted and said the school would commission one - a large one - for their chapel. So our two desires coincided perfectly.
I thoroughly enjoyed researching Society history as well as the clothing (especially the hats) and sailing ships of the early nineteenth century. While painting, I felt immersed in the scene, prayed to each of our saints for guidance–and for patience: this is a 3 x 4 foot wooden panel, requiring a specially elevated table and another pair of hands (not readily available) to set the icon upright for critique. With egg tempera one cannot use an easel because the thin washes would run right down the surface. Because I could not reach the top of the icon except from either side, I sometimes resorted to painting upside down with a mirror!
For me the highlight of the dedication of the newly restored Sheridan Road chapel was the moment when the Bishop anointed the new altar. I couldn't help smiling as I watched him do exactly what I had done to the finished icon a few weeks before: pour oil on the center and four corners of the plane, and, with the flat of the hand, spread it across the surface until all is covered. It is a moment of sensuous delight and of consecration.
Patricia Tighe Reid rscj
province of the United States
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Poem by April O'Leary rscj
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The territories of friendship
The territories of friendship are not mapped.
You do not plan the journey, it is made
by moving, day after day
into an unknown land.
No chart first guided you to thread its guardian seas.
This landfall came to you as though by chance,
wind and tides propitious, soundings clear.
But when you beached it was on friendly sands you leapt ashore,
a growing confidence and joy compelled your steps,
wondering if you slept, so dreamlike and so comforting it felt
along this new and unexpected way.
Towards what beckoning heights, mysterious, unscaled,
dark with the somber secret of their forests, pure
in their crowing snows,
will these paths insist on taking you?
Over what unplumbed depths, what still dark-watered lakes
will you be called to venture?
Sunlight itself, reflected goldmeal, blinding
in splintered gleams, making the joy
well-nigh unbearable, ort shadows, rock-gold,
challenging a new-born trust, as yet untried,
must twin by twin colour your journey.
The territories of friendship are not mapped.
Not that you are the first to travel this land,
you are no pioneer along an unblazed trail
but rather one, neither the first nor the last, of many
who rejoice that they are carried by this road;
who in the sacramental light of each new dawn have seen
the boundaries of the country wider spread,
have watched new valleys drink the shadows of the moving clouds,
fresh peaks rise up beyond the former skyline.
Many have passed along this way, have halted evening come,
to view spread out below the ever-widening prospect
of their golden world. But they keep silence;
this territory
is not won with guides, each-for each self must find the way
and enter step by step
into the promised land.
It is a lonely and a solitary quest, you cannot show me
nor can I lead you, and yet we travel on it
side by side.
The territories of friendship are not mapped.
the journey’s made
by moving day after day
into an unknown land.
April O’Leary rscj
province of England - Wales
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