Hic calix novum testamentum est in meo sanguine. (From the Epistle for the Mass in Cena Domini, I Corinthians xi, 25: "This chalice is the new testament in My Blood.")
Chalice - Lily. The chalice is the lily, stylized and adapted to our use, and which, born from water, is proper for us to take to our lips.
The lily, and especially the water-lily, also called lotus or nenuphar, has always had a peculiar place in the symbolism of all religions. It projects its roots to substantial and deep regions, separated from our sight by these fluid, contemplative, mirror-like layers which are the domain of that which is contingent, unstable, of illusion and of this "time", of this reflection which relates to several circumstances.
It is there, from below, that it feeds from this mysterious mud where the hand of the Creator searched and modeled the matter of man. Infixus sum, Psalm LXVIII tells us, in limo profundi and it is from there that Israel "will spring like a lily" (Os. xiv, 6). Whether in Egypt, in Assyria, in Persia, in India, or in China, it is the lily which stands as a support for all gods or which, between its fingers, recreates their souls by opening their nostrils. It is the lily which also has its place in the capitals of columns and in the arms of the candelabra, such a prominent place in the decoration of Ark and Temple.
On the elongated stem which it uses to reach the deep, to search for life through moment and accident, it blossoms, in a circle of geometrically composed petals: the flower, the essential and synthetic cup, the central point which bestows perfect meaning and is the supreme center of the calculated dispositions of a concentric universe.
Ego flos campis, say the Canticles (ii, 1) et lilium convallium.
Paul Claudel
Un poète regarde la croix
Un poète regarde la croix
