The First Sunday in Advent

by CCW | 28 November 2010 05:00

The collect for today, the First Sunday in Advent, being the Fourth Sunday before Christmas Day, from The Book of Common Prayer [1](Canadian, 1962):

[2]ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious Majesty, to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, now and ever. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 13:8-14[3]
The Gospel: St Matthew 21:1-13[4]

Artwork: Entrance Into Jerusalem, Pala d’Oro (upper part), St Mark’s Basilica, Venice.

The Pala d’Oro[5] (literally, “golden cloth”) is the altarpiece of St Mark’s Basilica[6], Venice, made of cloisonné enamels on gold leaf (Byzantine, 10th-12th centuries) in a gilded silver frame encrusted with pearls and precious stones (Venetian, 14th century).

The lower two-thirds of the altarpiece was commissioned by Venice from Byzantine craftsmen in the early 12th century. The upper third was looted from the Pantokrator Monastery[7], Constantinople, and brought to Venice after the Fourth Crusade of 1204.

The Pala d’Oro[8] assumed its present form in 1345 when doge Andrea Dandolo commissioned Giambattista Bonesegna to make the Gothic frame of gilded silver, studded with almost two thousand precious and semi-precious stones, to contain the two parts.

Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2010/11/28/the-first-sunday-in-advent-2/

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