Arms of Love

The Anno Domini year-numbering system was developed by a monk named Dionysius Exiguus in Rome in 525, as an outcome of his work on calculating the date of Easter. Anno Domini (Latin: "In the year of Our Lord"), abbreviated as AD, defines an epoch based on the traditionally-reckoned year of the conception or birth of Jesus of Nazareth.

For Christians, the season of lent and Easter are the solemn yet joyous remembrance of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Inspired by the movie, The Passion of the Christ, I researched medieval heraldry to create a coat of arms for Christ.


In his classic book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis (author of The Chronicles of Narnia) describes Jesus as

a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed . . . This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin . . . A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.