Questo articolo è disponibile anche in: Italian English Spanish

Congratulations and happy feast for this holy brother of yours, beloved Father! Paolo

Answer from the priest

Dear Paolo,

1. I sincerely thank you for these special wishes on the occasion of the feast of Blessed Angelico, which is celebrated today, February 18.

Blessed Angelico is for us Dominicans one of the most extraordinary expressions of our charism, which consists in contemplating and communicating to others what we are contemplating, according to the famous expression of Saint Thomas:  contemplari et contemplata aliis tradere.

2. Blessed Angelico did just that, so much so that he used to repeat: “Whoever does the things of Christ, must be with Christ.”

He conveyed in his paintings what he had in his heart: the peace and sweetness of paradise.

He acquired this peace and sweetness by being together with Jesus in prayer, in contemplating the events of His life, and in imitating all His virtues.

Rightly, Michelangelo made the most beautiful compliment to our blessed one by observing that “that friar could not have painted those faces with those colors if he had not first contemplated them in paradise.”

I think that Blessed Angelico could also have uttered what his great brother Saint Thomas said before dying, that what he had learned, he had learned more by being together with the Lord than through books.

3. I would also like to highlight another aspect of our blessed brother, that in those times struck the great Giorgio Vasari, painter and art historian, who came out with these expressions: “If he had wanted, he could have lived very comfortably and become rich thanks to his art.” 

Instead, he preferred to live in the footsteps of Christ, the poor par excellence, convinced that true wealth is the inner one, that wealth which no one can take away from us and which constitutes the down payment of the eternal bliss promised by the Lord.

Also for this reason, instead of joining the Dominicans of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, he preferred to join the humbler convent of San Domenico in Fiesole.

Called by the popes to paint in the Vatican, when he was proposed to become Archbishop of Florence, he declined the honor and proposed in his place the prior of his convent, Saint Antoninus of Florence.

This humility shines through as a second nature in his paintings, especially in the faces and attitudes of the saints.

I like to point out that also in this Blessed Angelico is very similar to Holy Father Dominic who chose evangelical poverty as a tool for his preaching, renouncing the bishoprics proposed to him.

And he is equally similar also to our great Saint Thomas Aquinas who also renounced the bishopric of Naples, proposed to him by the Pope himself.

4. He entered the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) and preached more with his brush than with his mouth.

His paintings are his most beautiful sermons that still speak today to many people from every continent and religion.

It can be said of him what Sacred Scripture says about Abel that “though dead, he still speaks” (defunctus, aduc loquitur, Heb 11:4).

Blessed Angelico, true preaching friar, continues to attract countless souls to Christ through the sweetness and peace of paradise.

5. Among these, I like to remember what happened to him who became Father Marie-Joseph Lagrange, pioneer of biblical studies in our time, founder of the École Biblique of Jerusalem and whose cause for beatification is underway.

As a boy, on the day of his first  Holy Communion, he felt inspired to become a priest. He would write in his Personal Memories: “I am certain that I heard God’s call. I confessed it to my mother… She listened to my words with emotion. At that time I only thought about becoming a priest, without a special vocation: my mother blessed God but did not seem to give too much importance to a boy’s outpouring of piety” (b. montagnes, Marie-Joseph Lagrange, p. 27).

But when on March 25, 1870, at the age of 15, together with his high school peers he went to visit the Louvre in Paris and had the grace to contemplate one of Blessed Angelico’s most beautiful works, the Coronation of the Virgin, stolen by Napoleon, he was struck by the radiant figure of Saint Dominic. At that precise moment, he felt his vocation to the Dominican Order.

He would then  write in his Personal Memories again: 

“Ever since I read the conferences of Notre Dame and the life of Saint Dominic by Father Lacordaire, the Dominican ideal has been inspiring my thoughts from above.I have offered myself to Saint Dominic seduced more by the radiant image of the Saint featured in Blessed Fra Angelico’s Coronation of the Virgin than by reading his work.I have no doubt about the accuracy of that portrait and indeed it must be a faithful mirror of a pure soul’s loving vision.Long before entering his Order, I have  already been his son and prayed to him every day” (Father Lagrange at the Service of the Bible, Personal Memories, p. 319).

This is due to Blessed Angelico’s preaching which still continues!

6. Blessed Angelico received the name Guido or Guidolino at baptism.

He was born in Vicchio in the Mugello valley in Tuscany at the end of the 14th century, the same locality where Giotto was born just over a century before.

From adolescence he practiced painting in Florence.

Together with his brother Benedetto, also a painter, he joined the Dominicans of Fiesole in a convent recently built at the behest of Blessed Giovanni Dominici.

From this blessed one he received both religious attire and name.

Later he moved to the convent of San Marco in Florence at Saint Antoninus’s request who was then prior. He decorated the cloister, chapter house, cells, and corridors.

He was called to Rome by Pope Eugene IV and remained there also by order of the great patron Pope Nicolò V.

He died saintly on February 18, 1455, in the convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva where he is still buried today.

The title Angelico (T.N. angelic) was given to him by popular will because he transmitted peace and sweetness from paradise.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to say a few words about this illustrious brother.

I bless you and remember you in prayer,

Father Angelo