Most of the figures of the crèche -- Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the angles, the shepherds and the Magi -- are in the gospels of Matthew and Luke combined, but the early church also had hidden gospels, or what we call apocryphal gospels, that speak about the origins and the end times of Christ.
"The end of the story is not a happy one," says Steel, and he's not referring to the death of Christ.
I wonder if Shostakovich had in mind Haydn's "Seven Last Words of Christ" when he wrote his long string of slow movements at the end.
So is "The Last Temptation of Christ".
There will then be seven years of tribulation – a period of intense suffering – which will end with Christ establishing a new kingdom.
The wonderful "O antiphons," sung at evening prayer and during the Gospel acclamations toward the end of Advent, speak of Christ at the "King of Nations and their Desire".
And his movies are disordered in a similar way — full of "shocking" images and Satan talk and Christ talk and end-of-the-world talk, but meandering and rhythmless and entirely unconvincing.
As much culture as you want: try the Pinacoteca Nazionale (Giotto, Raphael), the Capella di San Domenico (Michelangelo), the restored anatomy theatre where Rossini first performed his glorious Stabat Mater in 1842 and, of course, the courtyard of the Chiesa del San Sepolcro where you will find the basin in which Pilate washed his hands at the end of his cross-examination of Christ.
And, in the end, isn't your experience of Christ all that really matters?
Before the end of the thirteenth century Christ was usually depicted as the peaceful Good Shepherd or as the divine majesty.
It will occur in two stages: the first stage will be the rapture of the saints before the Tribulation and the second stage will be at the end of the Tribulation when Christ will return to defeat the Antichrist, judge the nations of the world, and begin his millennial reign.
