Category: Great Art

OUR SUFFERING IS GOD’S PRUNING

On December the 18th, 2019, in his prison journal, Cardinal George Pell wrote “Our suffering is God’s pruning …… no pruning means little fruit.”

6 days later on Xmas Eve, the Cardinal went on to a quote about Xmas by Saint Edith Stein (pictured above), which had been sent to him from Ravensburg, Germany:

“In front of the crib you are connected to all those who are scattered all over the world and beyond. That’s a comforting secret.”

Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Stein’s saintly name) was a nurse, teacher and philosopher, who died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz in 1942:

Some things like people, childhood and babies do not thrive with pruning.

Perhaps Hitler’s “final solution”, a.k.a. the Holocaust, is proof of that

Whatever human pruning may or may not be necessary is best left to God.

All life is sacred.

Geoff Fox, December 18, 2025, Footscray, Australia

HOLY MOTHER CHURCH – ITS ALL ABOUT FAMILY

On this date six years ago, Cardinal Pell’s entry in his prison journal was and is for me a wonderful account of how his church was his very broad extended family metaphorically speaking.

The entry started with reporting receiving a copy of the above artwork, Filippo Lippi’s Madonna and Child from “Pauline, a good friend and a Scot from London …..” (The painting shows Mary as a doting mum to Jesus who is held up by two angels.)

The penultimate thought of the Cardinal’s entry that day is this lament:

“Holy Mother Church in Australia and elsewhere has formidable strengths ……. even in a deeply polarised society. But a fundamental decline has to be acknowledged. The challenge is to slow this down and reverse the trend.”

How very true!

Omnia omnibus,

Geoff Fox, December 17, 2025, Melbourne, Australia