Category: emoji

Children in France and Belgium are told that church bells fall silent after Mass on Holy Thursday because they have flown to Rome. They come back on Easter night, loaded with chocolate. Holy Saturday is the day their absence is felt the most: no bells, no Mass during the day, bare altars and an open,…

The priest enters in silence, without a hymn, and lies face down before the bare altar. Good Friday begins like that, with a gesture almost never seen the rest of the year. There is no Mass today: the Church celebrates the Lord’s Passion, reads the account from Saint John, venerates the cross and receives Communion…

In Britain it is also called Maundy Thursday, from the Latin mandatum: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.” The evening Mass begins with bells ringing out at the Gloria, and then they fall silent until the Easter Vigil; French children are told the bells have flown off to Rome.…

“No prophet is acceptable in his own country.” Jesus says it in Nazareth, after a rather chilly reception in his home synagogue (Luke 4:24). We might add: nor on his own keyboard. There is no prophet emoji at all, even though the Bible is full of them. In the Bible, a prophet is not first…

Quick inventory: the keyboard offers 🎅, 🤶 and 🧑‍🎄, three versions of Santa Claus. For the Christ Child, the count is zero. No manger, no ox and donkey side by side, no Magi. The guest of honour is missing from our holiday texts, and a truly Christian Christmas emoji has yet to be drawn. Yet…

Your keyboard does have a ⛪, a little building with a pointed roof and a cross on top. It does the job for “meet you outside church.” But one church emoji is not much when you think of the mountain chapel, the Romanesque abbey, the Gothic cathedral with its rose window, the white clapboard church…

There is a well-loved story about a little girl bent over her paper during an art class. “I’m drawing God,” she tells the teacher. “But nobody knows what God looks like!” She does not even look up: “They will in a minute.” Drawing a God emoji takes roughly the same confidence. The Bible does not…

Yes, the cross emoji ✝️ already exists, and so does its Orthodox cousin ☦️. But two crosses for more than two billion Christians feels a little thin when you consider how rich the symbol is: the ringed Celtic crosses of Irish churchyards, the carved calvaries of Brittany, the Jerusalem cross of pilgrims, the tau of…

“I believe; help my unbelief!” The line comes from the Gospel of Mark. It’s the cry of a father whose son has been ill since childhood, and it may be the most honest profession of faith in the whole Bible. It reminds us that believing isn’t a switch you flip once and forget. That verb,…

On 7 October 1571, the fleet of the Holy League defeated the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto. Pope Saint Pius V, who had asked the faithful to pray the Rosary, established a feast of thanksgiving; it later became Our Lady of the Rosary, still kept every 7 October. G. K. Chesterton turned the battle into a…