Mount Tabor Ecumenical Center recently sponsored Lux Ecclesiae, The Light of the Church, a week long retreat focused on the Church’s expression of its life through architecture and the visual arts. Monsignor Timothy Verdon, Canon of the Cathedral of Florence, and director of the Cathedral Museum, delivered a series of lectures while Filippo Rossi of Florence, Italy led visual artists in an intensive art workshop. We would like to share with you some excerpts from the retreat’s lectures and dialogues.

Filippo Rossi, Colors of Silence, 2013.

Speaking of how he seeks in his work to “recount the mystery of salvation” Filippo Rossi said:

In my case…, the task of recounting the mystery of salvation means revealing deep and deeply personal relationships. I am speaking above all of the relationship between a creature—the artist, who transforms the matter entrusted to him—and the Creator, who gave the artist talent and of whom the artist is a witness. In fact, the artist doesn’t really “make” the work he makes, but becomes responsible, according to his own intelligence and will, for that which he represents as he transfigures matter.

Filippo Rossi, Light of the World, 2014.

Filippo Rossi, Verbum panis factum est, 2007.