Gilfedder Designs

'The Cosmic Madonna' is a recent work in memory of Canon Reginald Fuller, a noted Biblical scholar who died in 2011 at the age of 102. I had become acquainted with him around 1989 when he mooted in the Catholic press the idea of a shrine to the 'Unborn Christ'. At that time, he was retired and assisting in Saint Mellitus parish at Tollington Park. Whilst there, he was attacked by a burglar and hit over the head with a brass crucifix. Thankfully he recovered in hospital.  Up until then, he had decided that one of my paintings, 'Mary Mother of God', would be ideal for the shrine but had been unsuccessful in finding a church to commission it. The late Jerry Nolan, a London Irish poet took up the search for a church to host the shrine and did get some serious interest from one church. Sadly, they backed off due to concerns about objections from women's rights activists. Jerry Nolan went on to publish a poetry book (Cat of the Inner Cities) which included a poem

    St Michael     St Raphael Saint Theresa of Avila Saint Veronica Saint Catherine of Siena Saint Bernadette Saint Camillus Saint Clare Saint Issac Blue Madonna

How must Mary have felt when she encountered the Angel Gabriel and was asked to allow the Holy Spirit to overshadow her and thus conceive the Christ Child? Saint Augustine in his Sermons says about Mary: “When the angel had spoken, she, filled with faith and conceiving Christ first in her mind before she did so in her womb, replied: ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word’.” (Sermon 215) In another sermon on the Nativity, he makes the same contrast between Mary’s conceiving the Eternal Word in her mind through faith and conceiving him in her womb. It works better in Latin: Angelus nuntiat, Virgo audit, credit et concepit: Fides in mente, Christus in Ventre. (The Angel announces : the Virgin hears, believes and conceives: faith in her mind, Christ in her womb) Saint Augustine also makes the obvious link with us when he says: The mother carried him in her womb, but we do so in our heart – or mind, through faith, as she first did. Therefo