{"id":58736,"date":"2015-09-01T07:00:30","date_gmt":"2015-09-01T14:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=58736"},"modified":"2015-09-01T18:29:12","modified_gmt":"2015-09-02T01:29:12","slug":"st-johns-chalice-and-snake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2015\/09\/01\/st-johns-chalice-and-snake\/","title":{"rendered":"Symbolism: St. John’s chalice and snake"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the next few months I’ll be writing some more about ancient Christian symbols (the fish, the anchor etc), but I thought I’d reboot my Symbolism Series<\/a>\u00a0by talking about something which caught my eye at Liturgy this morning.<\/p>\n

In my parish, around the inner portion of the dome, we have paintings of the Twelve Apostles (with St. Matthias replacing Judas). This morning I\u00a0ended up\u00a0sitting next to the following painting of St. John:
\n\"John\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It occurred to me that, while I know the book he is holding is symbolic of his Gospel, I had no idea of the symbolism behind the chalice and snake. When I got home I needed to satisfy my curiosity, so I did some research…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As with most symbols, I found a few different explanations, as well as some evolution of the symbols over time. In art, St. John’s association with a chalice appears to have begun around the Thirteenth Century. Some commentators see this as\u00a0pointing to the Last Supper, but possibly the most obvious reference would be to the line in John’s own Gospel where Christ promises James and John that\u00a0they will both “drink of [His] cup”<\/em> <\/span>(Matthew 20:23<\/a>).<\/p>\n

However, the addition of a snake\u00a0to the chalice seems to point to\u00a0something a little different. There is an old legend that once St. John was given a cup of wine which had\u00a0been poisoned but that, by his blessing, the poison came out of it in the form of a snake and John\u00a0drank the cup unharmed.<\/p>\n

A number of rather lovely traditions have built up around St. John’s association with wine. The old Roman Ritual contained a blessing of wine on\u00a0the feast of St. John, in which the wine would be taken home and drunk with the main meal, with members of the family passing around a single cup, inviting each other to drink “the love of St. John”<\/em><\/span>. In my research I also found references to wine being used in the wedding ceremony separate from the Eucharist, as well as its use as a sacramental for the dying.<\/p>\n

So, that’s the origin of the symbols. What I think we have here is a perfect reason to go and buy a nice bottle of wine on the next feast of St. John:<\/p>\n

Western Church: December 27
\nEastern Church: May 8 and September 26 (Repose)<\/p>\n

September 26th is around the corner… Cheers!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the next few months I’ll be writing some more about ancient Christian symbols (the fish, the anchor etc), but I thought I’d reboot my Symbolism Series\u00a0by talking about something which caught my eye at Liturgy this morning. In my parish, around the inner portion of the dome, we have paintings of the Twelve Apostles (with St. Matthias replacing Judas).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[3265,1178,2969,2050,928,2239,189,2946],"class_list":["post-58736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","tag-chalice","tag-cup","tag-featured","tag-serpent","tag-snake","tag-st-john","tag-symbolism","tag-symbolism-series"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/JohnBanner.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58736"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59040,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58736\/revisions\/59040"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}