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.

Lessons from a Desolate Place Pt. 4 by Chris White

Coptic Monk in Egypt

     In the 4^th Century the deserts of Egypt received a reverse exodus of Christians desiring to leave the general population and seek God in solitude and silence.  As I discussed in my previous installment the physical geography of Egypt was such that a sort walk from any city put you in the land of the “red earth” but beyond the simple practicality of being close by, there was also a spiritual viewpoint that had long been attached to the desolation of the desert.  If you’ll remember the chief motivation for this migration was seeking a deeper and greater Christian commitment in a time of spiritual shallowness.  It was the common perception that after Constantine, Christianity had conquered the city.  But now it was time for the committed to launch a new war and attack the stronghold of the Devil.  Why did they think Satan lived in the desert?  Because that is where Jesus was tempted by Satan (Mt. 4) and where Jesus said demons go when they have been cast out of a man (Mt. 12:43).  To the Christian mind of this time, the desert represented a key place to engage in battle for the sake of God’s Kingdom.  But the desert was more than a battleground against the devil, it was also a proving ground of the truth.  That will be our topic next week.

Lessons from a Desolate Place Pt. 3 by Chris White

     In my last installment I discussed the mass exodus of committed Christians from the cities into the deserts of Egypt during the 3^rd and 4^th centuries.  The impetus behind this movement was to seek a more earnest commitment to the Lord Jesus in a period of time of spiritual shallowness.  But why the deserts of all places?  This had everything to do with the physical and spiritual geography of Egypt.  Today’s Egypt is a large square which takes up the northeast corner of the African continent but, as is the case in many other places, geopolitical boundaries are out of sync with historic reality.  The word Egypt literally means “black earth”.  This is a reference to the land that borders the Nile River and receives its silt and floodwaters.  Beyond this green and fertile corridor lies the dry and dusty “red earth” which roughly translates into the word “desert” in Egyptian as well.  When the Bible speaks of the Israelites or the Holy Family going down to Egypt, they were not hanging out in the region of the “red earth” but rather they lived in the areas that bordered the Nile where the water, food, and people lived.  Because the area where people could live in Egypt was so limited, if you wanted to get away from people and find solitude you had to head for the desert.  But mind you, it wasn’t a super long journey.  Next time, we’ll take a look at the spiritual geography of the Egyptian deserts.

Lessons from a Desolate Place pt. 2 by Chris White

St. Antony Monastery in Egypt

     You would hardly know it today, but in the fourth century Egypt was one of the most Christian places on Earth.  This should come as no small surprise since Egypt is so frequently intertwined with the story of Israel and even Jesus Christ Himself.  By the 4^th Century normalization of Christianity under Constantine, the Churches of Egypt were large, powerful, and very influential among the Churches throughout the world.  But many in their ranks were disturbed by the fact that while prestige was at an all time high, it seemed the spiritual temperature was falling to new lows.  Out of this sense of spiritual discomfort came what might be considered a “reverse Exodus” where Christians began leaving their prosperity and comforts in the city to seek the Lord out in the wilderness.  One by one Egyptian Christians began to do this until one Christian writer described the deserts of Egypt as a city of God’s people.  Why these Christians chose the move to the desert will be discussed next time.

Lessons from a Desolate Place Pt. 1 by Chris White

Constantine

     More than 1600 years ago the Christian Church of the Roman Empire faced a potentially catastrophic situation.  It wasn’t persecution or false teachers, nor was it a plague or the threat of an outside enemy.  The threat Christians faced in this time was spiritual shallowness and softened commitment to the Lord.  After the Roman Emperor Constantine was converted in 312 AD everything changed for the Christians.  Not only were they no longer persecuted, but it seemed as if they were favored citizens with tax monies paying for new Church buildings and the imperial court sponsoring large Church Councils.  This sea change brought a multitude of new people into the Church but it simultaneously lowered the level of commitment that was required to follow Jesus Christ.  In this period that many in the Church considered a great triumph, some were asking “how can I be a true Christian in this new situation?”  Their answer to this question was quite surprising and the subject of our next installment.