“Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound, the less it is blind.”
— G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
JOHN 15
1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. 9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. 12 This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.”
THE LORD’S PRAYER
Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven: Give us this day our daily bread; And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us; And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, For ever and ever. Amen.
ART APPRECIATION
The Three Musicians is a famous example of Picasso’s style of Cubism. The three musicians are transformed into a sequence of two-dimensional planes, lines, and arcs.
1
Pablo Picasso (1811-1973) was born in Malaga, Spain. His name at birth was Pablo Diego Jose Franciso de Paula Juan Nepomunceno Maria de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso. His parents gave him many names honoring saints and relatives. His mother claimed Pablo’s first words were “pencil, pencil” (in Spanish, of course). His father was a fine arts teacher at several schools, but legend has it that when he caught his 13-year-old-son finishing one of his paintings, he never painted again. Pablo was enrolled in a prestigious art academy, but soon quit because he didn’t like formal education. Instead, he moved to Paris to learn from the masters there. Picasso was the best-known figure in 20th century art and was more famous for his work during his lifetime than any other artist before him. He was a founder of a new art form called Cubism.
2
MUSIC APPRECIATION
| “O mio babbino caro” from Gianni Schicchi |
Puccini flirted briefly with faintly Wagnerian subjects in his early operas Le villi (1884) and Edgar (1889), though in these operas, the music owes much more to Verdi than to his Teutonic contemporary. Gianni Schicchi is a comparatively late work, comprising the third part of Puccini’s Il trittico (The Triptych), which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1918. The libretto takes an episode from Dante’s Divine Comedy, the damnation of the will-forger Gianni Schicchi, as its starting point. His fraudulent will enriches his clan so that Lauretta, his daughter, can marry Rinuccio. In “O mio babbino caro,” one of Italian opera’s greatest tunes and a number that has become an archetype of late Romanticism’s final flowering in Puccini’s hands, Lauretta begs her father to go with her to buy a ring so she can marry, setting the whole forgery in motion. The tone of the aria is over-the-top in its voluptuousness, almost parodistic, which perfectly fits Lauretta’s melodramatic emotional state.
3
Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) was an Italian composer, one of the greatest exponents of operatic realism, who virtually brought the history of Italian opera to an end. His mature operas included La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), Madama Butterfly (1904), and Turandot (left incomplete). 4
- Lange, Krista, and Leigh Lowe. First Grade Enrichment: Classical Core Curriculum. Teacher Guide. Memoria Press, 2017. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- “‘O Mio Babbino Caro’ from Gianni Schicchi, Giacomo Puccini.” LA Phil, http://www.laphil.com/musicdb/pieces/56/o-mio-babbino-caro-from-gianni-schicchi. Accessed 15 Apr. 2025.
↩︎ - “Giuseppe Verdi.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 19 Feb. 2025, http://www.britannica.com/biography/Giuseppe-Verdi.
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Providence School of Tifton 