2 October 2025

There is an exhibition in the National Gallery, London featuring some paintings by Jean-Francois Millet. When we got married, a couple gave us a copy of his painting, ‘The Gleaners’, reminding us of the foreigner, Ruth, gleaning in the field of her mother-in-law’s kinsman, Boaz.

The central feature of this exhibition is ‘The Angelus’. A husband and wife pause at the end of the day when they hear the distant church bell indicating that it is time to say the final ‘Angelus’. He has taken of his hat and bowed his head. She has clasped her hands and bends her head towards them.

It’s twilight. Millet has captured that moment when a haze seems to fall upon the earth. The vitality of early morning gives way to the closing day when darkness begins to embrace  the light and rest beckons after a day full of hard, agricultural, manual labour.

The ‘Angelus’ prayer is particular to the Roman Catholic Church. There are two aspects to it. The prayer introduces us to the Angel Gabriel who says to Mary, ‘Hail, Mary, full of grace’. It is framed by  the annunciation and the acknowledgement that Mary is the one chosen by God to give birth to his Son.

The other aspect relates to the ministry of Mary. Interwoven with the words of the annunciation, there is an appeal made to Mary, ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.’  This is Mary, the intercessor  challenging  our belief in Christ as our unique intercessor.

 ‘The idea for the Angelus came to me because I remember that my grandmother, hearing the church bell ringing while we were working in the fields, always made us stop to say the Angelus prayer for the poor dead, very piously and hat in hand.’ said Millet in Simon Kelly’s essay, ‘Millet, God and the Angelus’.

The prayer ends with the beautiful collect, ‘Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord,  Thy grace into our hearts; that, we, to whom the Incarnation of Christ, Thy Son, was made known by the message of an angel, may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection through the same Christ our Lord.’

Here Millet affords dignity to the workers in the field. He has chosen to highlight their devotion. In later life, Millet was no longer a churchgoer. When the priest asked him if he still read the Bible and the Psalms, the artist replied, ‘They are my breviary … It is there that I find all that I paint.’