Dennis McNally Art, Philadelphia, PA (2026)

04/02/2026

By Death or Distance

—//—

The Lantern of the Doors
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Sometimes a lantern moves along the night,
That interests our eyes. And who goes there?
I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where,
With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?

Men go by me whom either beauty bright
In mould or mind or what not else makes rare:
They rain against our much-thick and marsh air
Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.

Death or distance soon consumes them: wind
What most I may eye after, be in at the end
I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.

Christ minds: Christ’s interest, what to avow or amend
There, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, foot fóllows kínd,
Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd.

Painting: By Death or Distance [Hopkins] (ND). Acrylic on canvas. 68" x 68"

Status: Available for sale or loan.

04/18/2025

Centurion and Christ

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So, Centurion, you put your sword into His side,
Saw the blood and water,
Knew He was dead,
And decided surely this is the "son of God."

Is that something all the Jews call themselves?
Or is it something special for a Roman?
Did you then think that He, because of His honesty, integrity,
Strength, or just even His physical beauty,
Was godly like a Caesar?

And now, how come you are so full of energy and why,
With sword raised and dripping with His blood,
Are you so poised for pe*******on of any deviant
With a mind to do His body harm?

Is there something now newly sacred in this dead thing,
Which evoked no self-sacrifice from you when He needed it?
Now, full of insight and courage,
Why do you care?
Why do you risk everything,
Career, creed, caution, and
Credibility?

There is so much at stake, you know,
When you fall for the dead,
They do not fill your longing with embraces
Nor do they stand behind you in battle,
Except in some mysterious mystical way
That you can ignore
And even doubt.

So, whence comes this heedless guardianship?
Have you found something more precious than any dream you'd ever had?
Are you full of a vision, now?
What would you do to me ----for Him?
Or I to you?

He does seem so holy and so fully human, hanging on that cross,
No matter where I see the image, I remember how grateful I am.
I am full of the awareness that I don't deserve this salvation.
I think I could bear my sword,
Bare my soul, and
Risk it all for Him, too, now.

— Centurion, by Dennis McNally

Painting: Centurion and Christ (ND). Acrylic on canvas. 60" x 60"

Status: Available for sale or loan

07/22/2024

The Good Shephard

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“I myself will gather the remnant of my flock from all the lands to which I have banished them and bring them back to their folds; there they shall be fruitful and multiply.”

Jeremiah 23: 3

Painting: The Good Shephard (2010). Acrylic and glitter on canvas. 66” x 48”

Status: Available for Sale

03/23/2024

Into The New Land

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"The paintings are big, very big. I think that is so that I can be totally lost when I look at them, involved, in communion with the image. It is like prayer for me to be into these paintings. I hope it can be for others."

— Dennis McNally, 1999

Painting: Into The New Land (2008). Acrylic & glitter on canvas. 72" x 58"
Destination: On Display in Synodality in Catholic Higher Education in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia's art show.

To leave a reflection on this piece, visit the link in bio.

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02/18/2024

When You See My Bow, You Will Know

—//—

To The Editor:

We are writing in support of the gay and le***an members of the Saint Joseph’s community. It is a sad fact in our society today that sexual orientation is still used as a rationale for unfair discrimination and sometimes even violent abuse. As members of a community whose religious roots commit us to affirm the inherent dignity of all, regardless of race, age, gender, or sexual orientation, we wish to have no complicity in such discrimination, even a complicity of silence.

In recognition of the inherent dignity of all and in acknowledgment that sexuality is, in principle, good, we propose that Student Life and Campus Ministry sponsor a series of public lectures on human sexuality in which both heterosexuality and homosexuality are openly discussed.

We further propose that the University make a long term commitment to explore ways in which all of us can understand our sexuality more fully.

— Signed by 39 SJU faculty members, including Dennis McNally

The Hawk, September 14 1990. “Faculty members voice their support for homosexuals in the Saint Joseph’s Community” [Letter to the editor].

Painting: When You See My Bow, You Will Know (2009). Acrylic and Glitter on canvas. 62” x 48”
Destination: Arrupe Hall, Saint Joseph’s University

02/15/2024

A Christ for All

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The dream this time was of a traditional icon of the Lord Christ falling into a bank of clouds or waves. It was framed (a detail which I don’t remember happening before in inspirational dreams) with a couple of figures in some pendent frames and other blank panels. The painting took off, becoming much different from the dream. There were two figures, both seeming female, one in grief. There were also other empty panels representing I didn’t know what. Those panels were filled in the developing painting with symbols of other religious faiths: the Dome of the Rock, the Temple of Solomon, the Buddha, the Basilica of St. Peter, a gilt Byzantine onion dome. I think the painting is about the way God sinks into our reality, through Christ, the Beloved Son, and this is recognized in all religions analogously. It’s not an “us against them” revelation that God sends but something beautiful and inviting. We should love like God loves—everything under His gaze is gift, embraced and beloved by Him.

— Dennis McNally, SJ
Published on August 4, 2016

Painting: A Christ for All (2016). Acrylic on Canvas. 72" x 48"
Destination: Sold, unknown

02/03/2024

"My Life is Like the Wind"

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There is a lot unknown about Fr. McNally's life. As the steward of his remaining artwork, I've been privileged to view and pray with some of his late work few others have seen. My desire (and responsibility) is to share his work with the world.

The first reading of this Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time made me think of this 2020 painting, cataloged as "Boy Against Barren Tree." Fr. McNally passed away in May of 2020. He was still teaching his Encountering Mystery class. He died two days before the final. In the grips of pandemic fears, he and his brother Jesuits were confined to their rooms with little to no social interaction.

Fr. McNally's ministry was one of presence. He held sacred space for us uncertain and uneasy travelers, encouraging us to, at all times, fall into the arms of a God who did, indeed, love us unconditionally. The isolation and anxiety of the pandemic separated him from his ministry.

In one of his final days while teaching on Zoom, he broke down in tears. For someone who so deeply loved others, to be physically distant from his family, friends, and students was a difficult, lonely road "filled with restlessness until the dawn."

I don't know whether his works dated "2020" were painted before or during quarantine, but they seem to mirror a deep internal struggle and a longing for reunion with God. This one reminds me a lot of Job's restless heart.

—//—

Job spoke, saying:
Is not man's life on earth a drudgery?
Are not his days those of hirelings?
He is a slave who longs for the shade,
a hireling who waits for his wages.
So I have been assigned months of misery,
and troubled nights have been allotted to me.
If in bed I say, "When shall I arise?"
then the night drags on;
I am filled with restlessness until the dawn.
*My flesh is clothed with worms and scabs;
my skin cracks and festers.*
My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle;
they come to an end without hope.
Remember that my life is like the wind;
I shall not see happiness again.

Job 7: 1-7

—//—

Boy Against Barren Tree (2020). Acrylic on canvas. 72” x 48”

Status: Available for sale

* For some reason, this verse is omitted from the lectionary ...

12/11/2023

Second Sunday of Advent

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Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God. A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the LORD! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God! Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low; the rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley. Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

Isaiah 40: 1, 3-5

Unnamed (2020). Acrylic & glitter on canvas. 72” x 48”

11/26/2023

Anima Christi

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“I do love this prayer, Anima Christi, Soul of Christ. Father Ignatius incorporated it into his life changing ‘Spiritual Exercises.’

Remember how, when we love someone, it’s got this component of discovery. Our hands, eyes, mouths go all over and we fall and commit to this beauty.

Life leads us to loss. Disappointed again and again by our loves, we continue. We love whom we lose to distance, death, and difference.

The adorable can be cantankerous, vain, veiny and wrinkled, and can leave me, and alone, confused, I wonder at the worth of all this yearning to love.

I’m old now and afraid to fall again. I fear that I will disappoint, abandon, not care enough, dare enough, or be left too much, too often.

Then there’s this prayer. I see the beloved skin and flesh of the Lord whom I know. He changes, He leaves, but there is something my eyes, my mouth have learned.

He is not gone. This God who is absurdly beautiful and so hard to comprehend, this God bleeds with us, feels our pain, is destroyed by me.

Again and again, I want to love Him back. This prayer takes me over Him again and I fall, again and again. The wisdom wounded Lover, all glitter and glory.

He bleeds and dies and promises, anyway, to love me, in the ones who will die anyway, in the beautiful ones who catch my heart, in the Eucharist.

He is not gone. I will never be alone. He understands and promises it’s all OK. There is a heaven and we are all somehow together with God, now and forever.”

— Dennis McNally, SJ
Published October 3, 2016

Anima Christi (2015). Acrylic & glitter on canvas. 66” x 48”

11/24/2023

America the Beautiful

—//—

“I’ve been thinking about the Americas for so many years,

sometimes feeling that we have built a world by the subjugation of indigenous peoples,

thinking with grief that their empires, decimated by new diseases and war,

had been given a promised land by earlier not quite alien manifestations of the Creator God,

and we, the new-comers, seeking fortune and power, immigrants with industrious desires

for the supposed good of all, have been terrorists, conquistadors, imperialists, and thieves.

Many of us have those feelings of collective guilt and shame; do we not, sometimes?

But we also have enormous gratitude for the ways in which the land has blessed us.

This painting comes from a Jesuit, whose forebears, in the name of Christ Jesus,

brought religion, culture, and ways of social development, education, and land management

to a world which had not yet heard of the great Book and the redemptive gospel of Jesus. Yet,

there are always ways still to feel shame, aren’t there, for mistakes made under the guise of good, as Thomas Aquinas so wisely suggested centuries ago.

So the wars of take-and-control as well as the peaces of give-and-share are our history.

This diptych shows a kind of pristine gift; in the right panel squash forms, in green and yellow,

look like canoes seen from below with a mechanized or constructed sun in the sky above.

Have we not tried to harness the environment for our own good?

The other panel shows an enshrined priest in a wreath of gems and fruits and a squaw princess

in a banana-boat. Does she worship him, learn from him, fear him? The questions are with us now.

Religion is important; it’s where we learn to appreciate the gifts of the Creator and one another.

It is our shared wisdom. And yet, we do so much harm, looking for wealth, power, and pride.

America the Beautiful is both a gift and a responsibility. The painting tells me

to find something inside myself, inside all of us, which would relish the gifts, learn to

live like we (almost) deserve them. There is something of God in the whole of creation,

which demands a response — not just a recognition that we are empowered but an obligation

that we be engaged in a common project. The interactivity of it will teach us each something,

more than we deserve, about who the Giver is and what The Giver deserves from us.

Our America would be “something beautiful for God,” Mother Theresa’s other Indian suggestion!”

— Dennis McNally, SJ
Published August 15, 2016

Painting: America the Beauitful (ND). Acrylic on Canvas. 72” x 96”

Status: Available

11/01/2023

Dennis McNally, SJ // “The idea of flowers containing seeds is easily put into parallel with the words of the Lord about the grain of wheat falling into the ground and dying before it can become new life. Recall briefly for them that the dead person's life is now planted in the hearts of the grieving. If the love is cherished and the living do good in the name of the deceased, the seed shall have taken root and will blossom in the lives of those standing at the grave. It is good to remember that loving carries responsibilities well beyond the seeming termination of this place. This kind of reflection is very easily understood by chil-dren; actually addressing children at the grave makes the adults more attentive. This also focuses, without saying it, on life perduring—‘Life goes on.’ We owe it to the dead to take care of the living.”

Painting: Ancestors (ND). Acrylic on canvas. 48” x 60”

—//—

10/31/2023

Painting: Wall for Wailing at Bolsena (ND). Acrylic on Canvas. 36” x 48”

Status: Available for sale

—//—

Dennis McNally Art

04/02/2026

04/18/2025

07/22/2024

03/23/2024

02/18/2024

02/15/2024

02/03/2024

12/11/2023

11/26/2023

11/24/2023

11/01/2023

10/31/2023

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