Francis of Assisi writes that “The servant of God cannot know how much patience and humility he has within himself as long as everything goes well with him.” (XIII) Even if Francis had left it at that, that quote could stand by itself and it would have been powerful enough. But he continues by saying that “when the time comes in which those who should do him justice do quite the opposite to him, he has only as much patience and humility as he has on that occasion and no more.” (XIII) As someone who has a younger sister, believe me when I say that if she gets me really mad, it is very hard for me to be patient with her. I consider myself a very patient person but if you get on my bad side, all bets are off.
Word painting in Weelkes’s As Vesta Was from Latmos Hill Descending is quite interesting. And because that is a really long title, I’m calling it Vesta from now on. Word painting is basically when the melody matches up with the lyrics. So in Vesta, when it says “ascending” and “descending”, there are obviously scales going up and down. The madrigal was written for six voices to sing unaccompanied, so when they start to come together, it matches with the lyrics; so if the lyric says “two by two”, there are only two voices; “three by three” there is another voice added, and so forth. All the parts combine in exclamation before Vesta before it is left “all alone” to the highest soprano. All the way to the end of the piece, word painting continues when shouts of “Long live fair Oriana” with the bass sustaining long notes. Word painting in and of itself is a highly interesting topic because a musician takes the words of a poem or a sonnet and writes a melody line that pertains to cer...
What you wrote about patience is very true! Now that I think about it, it's the same for faith as well. It's easy for us to believe in God when things in our lives are going uphill, but when life throws us a curveball and leaves us winded, that's when things get tricky. That's when we really know if we're faithful or not. You can't say you are something until you are truly tested.
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