Welcome

Icon Painter

Heinrich Salmannsperger

Dear Reader:

This is the fourth time that we have published the Home Blessing Calendar in English. As it becomes more known thoughout North America, we receive positive responses from many places. "They are wonderful." "I love it", are just some of the responses. We hope thatI the Home Blessing Calendar will bring rays of GOD’s light and hope info more and more appreciating homes in North America. Our neo-pagan western societies, today more than ever before, need CHRIST’s redemption. May His light and grace come info your home.

All those who have a deep longing for not letting their lives just move along, but who rather sense that there is more to life than just earthly desires and who seek out higher and more beautiful things, are the ones who keep searching along a narrow path... Who is the hiker who would not we1come a companion who lovingly and faithfully stands at his side, who cheers him up when courage wanes, when the heart becomes heavy, and when doubts weigh down? The Home Blessing Calendar is such acompanion, the best you can find. You can trust in it.

With its words from Holy Scripture, the selected quotes by great mystics, visionaries, and saints and its expressive, encouraging icon images, it is a vibrant source for the spiritual live which nourishes and strengthens us when we are hungry for the truth and blessings, and when we thirst for consolations and hope.

"For him who drinks from the stream of the eternal word and its wisdom with pious respect, the mere things of this world will lose their alluring attraction. For Christ alone can satisfy our hunger and His words alone are able to quench our thirst for joy, light, love, warmth, and security." Jesus is the Bread of Life for which we should lang and desire, for He gives us the strength to live as Children of GOD. For us, He has come down from Heaven so that our bodies, too, may ome day be resurrected to a transfigured, eternal live. What a supernatural joy and rejoicing awaits us after the darkness of our earthly deaths. A happiness that was only given to the saints to see.

The Holy Eucharist is our nourishment; our pledge as Jesus often stressed. But that also means that we have to keep our minds and souls pure. In this, the Home Blessing Calendar otTers a valuable aid, with its wonderful words and fascinating thoughts, which lead us to hours of silence and meditation, to reflection on our ultimate goal...

The motto of this year's Home Blessing Calendar is in accordance with the word of Christ who said:"I am the bread of life. ... I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever; ..." (John 6: 48 - 52)

And which pictures would be more fitting for these words of Jesus than those of which one thought in earlier days as "having come down from heaven"? At that time, one thought that they had not been made by the hands of men, but that they are rather gifts of Heaven to the faithful. We mean icons, "holy images". In contrast to modem art, the touching imagery of icons represents an "intact" world with an order according to the Will of GOD. One is unable to detach oneself from their fascination. The well known Munich born painter Heinrich Salmannsperger is completely proficient in the lang, unchanged tradition and exactly proscribed forms of icon painting. And it is to him that we are grateful to be able to embellish this year's Home Blessing Calendar with those 27 especially chosen icons. Each of those splendid pictures attracts by their singular, sometimes unusual beauty, a fascination that one neither can nor wants to withdraw from. Over the span of a thousand years, this mysterious imagery pro claims a profound devotion to the Holy Family, which is capable of touching the innermost senses. The serving aspect steps back in favour of the creative one. By this attitude, Salmannsperger has managed to paint icons which are appropriate and worthy of the Home Blessing Calendar's motto. Please take a look for yourself at these precious masterpieces produced according to the laborious original techniques, which serve to proclaim traditional, but also more recent great models of faith, like Padre Pio, Sr. Faustyna, Fr. Maksymilian Mary Kolbe, and others.

(This year, it is even possible to order your preferred image in the Home Blessing Calendar as an original. According to your order, Heinrich Salmannsperger will raint the icon motive of your choice on old oak wood at the approximate size of 10,5” X 13.5". At current exchange rates, the price per original icon is about US$700 or CA$1000. For each icon, you can find the order number with the description of the image in the calendar. Delivery durations and reproductions upon request.)

The moving words and touching images of the Home Blessing Calendar may, again this year, bring the readers closer to GOD, Mary, the Angels, and the saints. Therefore, our goal for 1999 should be to obtain a profound, inner peace in the assurance of being a Child of GOD, who together with many others, strives to obtain joyfully and diligently a deeper interior live. And in order that the number of the faithful may be continously increased, we will look out for our brothers and sisters so that we may make their lives easier by our charity, our aid, and our joy. "Shared suffering halves it, while shared joy doubles it ", are the words of an old German saying. With those words, we want to ask Jesus daily to increase again our charity until the day that we will plunge into the sea of eternal love and joy... In this, the Home Blessing Calendar is a concrete aid, it is a support that is daily at our hands whenever we need it. It is advice, a guide, a means which keeps prayer alive in us and spreads it all over a world which is so direly in need of prayer. It upholds charity and does not water down the Ward of GOD; it admonishes us to faithfulness and to our obligations as Christians. And it gives us its wisdom as a gift. May the Home Blessing Calendar accompany you during the New Year. Make it a gift as a dependable and wonderful companion for your loved ones as well. It is our greatest wish that 1999 AD may become a year of peace and of prayer. May this new calendar of icons with its many beautiful images strengthen and encourage you on your way towards CHRIST, Our LORD.