Lessons from a Desolate Place Pt. 5 by Chris White

     Christians of previous centuries have held the notion that there are three kinds of martyrdom a believer may undergo for the sake of Christ.  Red martyrdom obviously relates to the shedding of blood as a witness for Christ while white martyrdom was associated with boat sails where the believer would leave family, friends, Church, and homeland to spread the Gospel without ever returning home.  Finally there was green martyrdom.  Green martyrs were people who did battle with Satan but also with their own flesh.  Their goal was to die to the world and the flesh in an extraordinary way that they might serve Christ in a greater fashion.  Those who entered the desert thought of themselves as martyrs whose chief aim was unceasing prayer and deep purity of soul.  One would think that moving away from civilization and living in a place of low visual stimulation like the desert would make it very easy to live such a life but most people who attempted this had a constant battle on their hands.  The voice of God does seem louder in quiet places and quiet times, but at the same time the voice of our true inner soul becomes much louder too.  As Christians we are very much aware of the presence of our old nature but many of us do a good job of concealing the really ugly parts from others and ourselves.  Life in the desolate places simply didn’t allow this to continue.  Every believer who did this successfully came into a great awareness of God but also themselves.  Some became so discouraged they gave up, but many, many more looked at their reality, considered the grace of God, and then took some radical steps of towards deep transformation.  But that we’ll save for next time.

Michelangelo's Pieta : Treasure of St. Peter's Basilica by Chris White

Pieta is a term for fulfilling your God-given familial duty.  In this sculpture we see a mother grieving over the death of her son.  It would be utterly unnatural for a mother not to do so and one would probably consider a mother who didn’t grieve to be fairly twisted in her soul.  That said, The Pieta, is its own art form as well.  It is believed to have originated in Germany and later became popular in France.  A Pieta always depicts Mary holding her son Jesus after he was brought down from the cross.  It may include other figures, but Mary and Jesus are the constants in this matter.

Michelangelo was commissioned to do this piece when still in his twenties.  As you can see from the complexity and detail of this piece, this was not the work of someone just starting out.  In fact, Michelangelo was a prodigy and was trained under the sponsorship and supervision of the renowned Medici family of Florence at age 14.  He was not only trained in sculpture but also in other visual arts and even philosophy.  He lived during the glory days of the Florentine Renaissance and was a humanist and renaissance man through and through.

Like other artists of the Renaissance, he was drawn from his hometown of Florence to Rome, where between the Catholic Church and wealthy patrons of the city, he would have enough contracts to make a living as an artist.  This commission came from a French cardinal who wanted this as his funeral monument.  In those days the leader of a church would be buried in the church building he had been connected to in life and so having beautiful monument with your grave would ensure that people would remember you in death.  

Eventually the church building where the Pieta stood and the cardinal was buried had to be torn down.  This sculpture was moved and placed in St. Peter’s basilica where it has been since the mid 1800’s.  If you have ever been or plan to visit the Vatican in Rome, this will be a part of your tour as it is such a famous work.   If you are going by yourself to St. Peters, just as you walk into the sanctuary and are facing the altar, turn immediately to your right and you will see either the Pieta in the first side chapel or you will see a horde of tourists, many of them occluding your view of the statue with their Ipads in camera mode.  It is among the most beautiful works of art in the basilica and worth lunging through a crowd to see or, if time permits, coming back in the early evening when things are less crowded and taking a long gaze at it.  Since the early 70’s, when a mentally deranged man attacked the statue with a rock hammer, it has been behind bullet-proof glass.  In a way this is a blessing as the oil from millions of human hands (which would touch this statue if there were access) discolors marble in a fairly grotesque way.

Background aside, what is this statue’s message to us the viewer?  First look at the face of Mary.  Mary is a young woman.  In fact, much too young to have a son in his thirties as Jesus would have been at his death.  Michelangelo was asked about this detail.  He said that it is because in the spiritual realm Mary is the daughter of her Son Jesus even though on earth she was the vessel God used in his incarnation.  This is very revealing about Michelangelo’s theology.  The Catholics had long thought of Mary as almost a fourth member of the Godhead.  But Michelangelo was known to have a theology that was more in line with Protestantism even though he would have never left the Roman Catholic church.  Another detail we are intended to see in the sculpture is that Mary and Jesus’ faces are not in agony as we would expect.  Instead there is a quiet serenity in both their faces.  This is to speak another spiritual truth:  because of the agony of Christ’s passion on the cross, there is now peace between God and man.

When Jesus entered into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday he told his critics that if the people didn’t worship, the very stones would cry out in praise.  As we look at this sculpture, it is easy to forget that it is just one piece of stone.  And as such, the stone speaks a truth to us—the Lord has come and all is well.