“Sanctus Christus de Capel y ffin”, David Jones 1925, ( 19.3cm X 13.3cm) Tate Collection.
This was painted in 1925 when David jones was staying at Capel y ffin. The landscape closely resembles that Capel y ffin. The chapel on the left suggests the monastic building where he and other artists stayed with the Gill family. He shows the conical mountain, Y Twmpa which stands across the valley from Capel. Tree stumps evoke a world that knows only too well sacrifice and loss. The bare branches of the trees which remain await the arrival of spring. The hills look as they would after rain. The swollen river suggests the Holy Spirit, the giver of life. The lone welsh pony reverences the singular sacrifice at the heart of it all. Years later at the Requiem Mass for David Jones in Westminster Cathedral, Fr Peter Levi, who was a close friend, said, “David Jones understood better than the rest of us the sacrifice of the lamb. His experience in the 1914 war was terrible and it was deep. He understood and he needed what is offered at the stone of this altar and what is shared at the table of this altar and what is said and what is sung in the petrified forest of this church. His need was quite innocent, merely human, to do what has already been done once and for all on another hilltop, outside a different city, and also done many times from the beginning of mankind. In its reality and in its meaning that long series of sacrifices has not ended.” We celebrate the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross on Monday.
The Catholic Chaplaincy serves the students and staff of the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Napier University and Queen Margaret University.
The Catholic Chaplaincy is also a parish of the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh (the Parish of St Albert the Great) and all Catholic students and staff are automatically members of this parish.
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