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| Who do you see in the picture? |
The Incarnation remains
among the most astounding of Catholic doctrines. It's not easy to believe that the Second Person of the Trinity, the Eternal Word,
. . . though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God
a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being
born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself
and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. (Phillipians 2:6-8)
The Infinite God, St. Paul tells us, willingly took on finite
humanity in the Incarnation. Because we believe this, Catholics have
always understood that humble and material things can serve as channels for greater,
immaterial things. The chief examples, aside from the God-Man Jesus
Christ Himself, are the Sacraments, which are created things that serve as vehicles of
God’s Grace, but we also find the same principle at work, albeit on a less
exalted level, in art, music, and other works of the imagination.
In recent posts about Star Trek [here]
and about biblical films such as Noah [here]
I have discussed the power of images and other works that appeal to the
imagination to mislead and confuse. Such things can also enlighten us, of
course, if they are done properly, and deepen our understanding (which is why the Catholic faith has
always had such a large audio-visual component). I recently came across
an interesting example of an imaginative work being used in a more positive
manner. Two imaginative works, actually, because it involves a
renaissance fresco appearing in a modern work of fiction.
The book is michael O’Brien’s apocalyptic
novel Father Elijah. I’m thinking in particular of a scene in which Fr.
Elijah himself and a friend are looking at a wall painting in the Cathedral of
Orvieto:
Elijah went over to another mural.
His
eyes were drawn to the central figure of the image, a figure of Christ. How
strange, he thought, to see a representation of the Lord
with the figure of Satan whispering in His ear,and his arm penetrating His
robes. Is that Christ’s hand or the devil’s that emerges from the folds
of cloth?
It
was not a literal representation of a scriptural scene, he concluded; although
it might be the artist’s imaginative rendering of the temptation in the desert?
But there was something out of character in the way Christ leaned into
Satan’s embrace and listened with such attention.
He
stared at it for a long time. Suddenly, the meaning of the mural became
clear, like a scene viewed through lenses revolving into focus. The
blurred shapes of reality drew together into a sharp, piercing landscape of
moral disaster.
The figure held in the devil’s embrace was not
Christ but the Antichrist.
Elijah
understood why Don Matteo had wanted him to see it. Now he knew why the
old friar would not tell him the reason for his request. Matteo had
wanted Elijah to discover the secret of the mural himself, and in the process,
to observe the mechanics of perception.
I immediately knew the painting by it's description, because I had used a picture of it to illustrate a
blog post last winter (called, appropriately enough, "'Choice' And The
Father Of Lies", here).
The painting creates a vivid picture of Satan's usual modus operandi:
evil working in the guise of good. The striking image gets the message
across much more memorably than a simple explanation (hence the old saying,
"a picture is worth a thousand words").
But there's more to it than that. Notice
that the characters looking at the mural above don't at first
realize what they're seeing; neither did I, only it took me a lot longer to
figure it out than it does Fr. Elijah. But that's part of what makes the painting so effective: we think we're seeing Jesus, only
to realize that we're actually looking at his opposite. We are not merely
seeing a depiction of deception, we are in fact deceived by the artist's work:
we experience deception itself, "in the flesh" as it were. That's a powerful lesson. That's
why, in O'Brien's novel, Don Matteo wanted Fr. Elijah to experience it first-hand.
Very often our faith is hindered by emotional
barriers: those of us who are believers sometimes give in to doubt, even though
we've experienced God's presence; unbelievers often are incapable of
accepting any evidence at all because of such barriers. A well-crafted
work of visual or imaginative art can often weaken those barriers by creating a
new emotional experience, and so lead to a new or deeper understanding, while
bad or disordered art can lead us further into darkness. What we see,
hear, or read can make all the difference.
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