Our Lady and the Holy Child Jesus Visit St Ignatius the Convalescent in Loyola

Our Lady and the Holy Child Jesus Visit St Ignatius the Convalescent in Loyola

"...But in that house none of those books which he normally read could be found, and so they gave him a life of Christ and a book of the lives of the saints in Spanish ... Still, Our Lord was helping him, causing other thoughts, which were born of the things he was reading, to follow these. For, while reading the lives of Our Lord and the saints, he would stop to think, reasoning with himself : 'How would it be, if I did this which St Francis did, and this which St Dominic did?' ...And here the desire to imitate the saints were occurring to him, not considering the details beyond promising himself, with the grace of God, to' do it as they had done it'... These desires were confirmed for him by a visitation as follows : being awake one night, he saw clearly a likeness of Our Lady with the Holy Child Jesus, at the sight of which, for an appreciable time, he received a very extraordinary consolation. He was left so sickened at his whole past life, especially at matters of the flesh, that it seemed to him that there had been removed from his soul all the likeness that he had previously painted in it."

From the Autobiography of St Ignatius Loyola

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Before I began a life as an apprentice Iconographer, I was a student at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. My goal at that time in the 1980's, was to be an illustrator of children's books. I think I illustrated over twenty, including some too, for adults.
One is still available from Paulist Press called The Hurt by Teddi Doleski. These books were so joyful to do and I asked the late Fr Jim Janda to write a trilogy on the Holy Child as a way of teaching children about the kingdom of God. These were The Legend of St Christopher, The Legend of the Holy Child of Atocha and (the legend of the Infant of Prague, titled) Appointments With the Little King. Many more books followed before I sensed that I was being called to paint other images and also enter the world of painting icons, technically called "writing" icons because the Iconographer is doing a work of sacred theology. I offer this drawing made during my life as an illustrator, and the beautiful story of the holy visit, for this year's feast of St Ignatius, 31 July.

Fr Bill McNichols
July 2016
Books Available at:
https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL393234A/J._Janda
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=william+hart+mcnichols