Our Father...
El Greco painted this Pentecost image to be placed over the altar for a seminary chapel in Madrid. The young seminarians would have felt themselves to be in the lower level (on the bottom step) with Peter and John, who we see from behind. Their eyes would then have moved up towards the Mother of God, and the Spirit, whose rays of new energy cascaded down on them. Powerful stuff!
Hail Mary...
"And there appeared to them tongues as of fire; these separated and came to rest on the head of each of them." These are not tidy, birthday cake flames come down, easily extinguished, but alive. Kind of blowtorch flames. The Holy Spirit is an ignite-r. Do I feel that in my own life?
Hail Mary...
"The tongues of fire came to rest on the head of each of them." Who is them? Acts 1:14 tells us: "With one heart all these joined constantly in prayer, together with some women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers." El Greco includes them. We see Mary Magdalen at Mary's left shoulder and Martha, second over from Mary's right shoulder. A lot of young women want a voice in the life of the Church. Does that threaten me?
Paintings of the Spirit's Descent always show the event taking place within a geographical space, allowing the artist to show off his architectural drawing skills. But not here. El Greco paints nothing more than a couple of steps and something resembling an arch fragment above left. Holy Spirit descends into a world of dark fabrications and fears, suspicions, maneuverings and exploitations.
Look how elongated El Greco's figures are. Holy Spirit stretches us. A rural parish of two hundred families raised enough money to buy a truck for an African nun who took in Nigerian AIDS orphans. Shortly after that project they raised the money to buy and install a well for an African village. They gave their weekly BINGO proceeds to help organizations like the one which funds the corrective cleft palette surgeries of young children. That's Holy Spirit!
A boy told his father that he was being bullied in school. The father tracked down the offending boy and discovered that he was being bullied himself because of his dirty shoes and torn pants. Rather than coming down hard on the boy, he took the two shopping and bought new shoes and pants for both. The two became friends; solving a serious problem with love. That's Holy Spirit.
El Greco's painting doesn't look like a camera's static group shot. Instead, he shows us an animated, informal mix of people, whose body language and facial expressions are reacting individually and collectively, with awe and excitement to a miraculous event! Holy Spirit blows divine energies into us; it sparks something new.
El Greco's work was anti-naturalistic. That means he didn't try to do what a camera would have done. Rather, in his painting he attempted to discover and present new, even inexhaustible possibilities. It's said of him that he believed grace to be the supreme search or purpose of art. That doesn't mean he only painted religious themes - but the quest of art is to discover the close, energizing, everywhere presence of God. Wow!
Hail Mary...
Paintings of the Spirit's Descent always show the event taking place within a geographical space, allowing the artist to show off his architectural drawing skills. But not here. El Greco paints nothing more than a couple of steps and something resembling an arch fragment above left. Holy Spirit descends into a world of dark fabrications and fears, suspicions, maneuverings and exploitations.
Hail Mary...
Hail Mary...
A boy told his father that he was being bullied in school. The father tracked down the offending boy and discovered that he was being bullied himself because of his dirty shoes and torn pants. Rather than coming down hard on the boy, he took the two shopping and bought new shoes and pants for both. The two became friends; solving a serious problem with love. That's Holy Spirit.
Hail Mary...
El Greco's painting doesn't look like a camera's static group shot. Instead, he shows us an animated, informal mix of people, whose body language and facial expressions are reacting individually and collectively, with awe and excitement to a miraculous event! Holy Spirit blows divine energies into us; it sparks something new.
Hail Mary...
Hail Mary...
In doing so, El Greco's style broke all the rules and didn't fit into any of the conventional and acceptable art schools of his day. His critics used words like these to describe his work: "contemptible, ridiculous, worthy of scorn, strange, queer, eccentric, odd, sunk in eccentricity, madness." But these are the kinds of words that should be used to describe Christians. Instead, lots of Christian's are nothing but conventional.
In the Pentecost account the signs of the Spirit's presence are fire and wind. We often see a dove present as well, recalling the Spirit's presence at Jesus' Jordan Baptism (Mk 1:9-11). Here, all the figures are looking upwards at that dove - symbol of God's hovering, creative energies. All the figures but one. Top row, second from the right is a figure who is looking out at us! El Greco has painted himself into the scene. He's even placed the Pentecost flame on his own head. I must never content myself with being a spiritual bystander or admire-r; I want to be a participant.
Hail Mary...
In the Pentecost account the signs of the Spirit's presence are fire and wind. We often see a dove present as well, recalling the Spirit's presence at Jesus' Jordan Baptism (Mk 1:9-11). Here, all the figures are looking upwards at that dove - symbol of God's hovering, creative energies. All the figures but one. Top row, second from the right is a figure who is looking out at us! El Greco has painted himself into the scene. He's even placed the Pentecost flame on his own head. I must never content myself with being a spiritual bystander or admire-r; I want to be a participant.
Hail Mary...
Glory be to the Father...
