Fruits of the Spirit – this year’s Lent course
“the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” Galatians 5:22-23
This Lent we are doing something different. We will be exploring ‘the fruit of the Spirit’ from St Paul’s letter to the Galatians. You don’t have to buy a book because the weekly discussion groups will be based around the National Gallery’s online exhibition “Fruits of the Spirit” curated by our former curate Ayla Lepine.
The groups will start the week beginning 27th February and there will be 5 sessions. There will be a sermon the Sunday before on the Fruits to be discussed the following week, beginning on 26th February. Sign up sheets for each session can be found at the back of church.
The exhibition is based around 9 paintings in the National Gallery which have been paired with 9 paintings from regional galleries, museums and Canterbury Cathedral. The catalogue with images of the paintings and discussions about them can be found at https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/research/research-resources/exhibition-catalogues/fruits-of-the-spirit-art-from-the-heart Or you may like to explore the virtual gallery at https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/visiting/virtual-tours/fruits-of-the-spirit
We will be discussing the fruits in the following order-
Love, with kindness
Joy, with generosity
Peace (incl. ideas of justice)
Patience with Faithfulness
Gentleness with self-control
You will see the first is ‘Love’ and the paintings are below. They are the beautiful late Titian “The Virgin Suckling the Infant Christ” in the National Gallery’s collection; which has been paired with a tender modern painting from Leicester Museum and Art Gallery – Ernst Neuschul’s “Black Mother”.
To get you started Ayla has done a video with her thoughts on Monet’s large painting of waterlilies which has been chosen to represent ‘Peace’. You can watch it on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAjVEaiC9dk&t=1s
If anyone would like to take part and doesn’t have access to the internet please contact Courtney in the vestry office and we can arrange for a hard copy of the text to be sent to you.
The National Gallery have chosen paintings and text to describe Fruits of the Spirit. You may be inspired by other paintings or poems. We would love it if you would like to share these on Church Chat. You could even start now. Please email your suggestions to [email protected]
