We've spent much of Lent thinking about and praying before images of Jesus' Passion taken from Duccio di Buoninsegna's Maesta Altarpiece painted in the early 14th century for the Cathedral of Siena, Italy. Now, this painting of Christ's Easter Rising is taken from an altarpiece painted in Alsace, France, by Johannes Grunewald who lived about two hundred years later. He created this image (part of a much larger and complex altarpiece) for the Monastery of St. Anthony where the monks maintained a hospital for plague victims and others suffering from life threatening skin diseases.
The artist isn't trying to do what a camera would have done, but offering the dying patients a reason to be encouraged and comforted. We're living in our own pandemic today. May I encourage us to have a long look a the painting. Take in all the details you can find. Pope Benedict wrote: "The Christian is a heart that sees and is moved."
You can click on the Easter painting to join the prayer audibly if you'd like.
The artist isn't trying to do what a camera would have done, but offering the dying patients a reason to be encouraged and comforted. We're living in our own pandemic today. May I encourage us to have a long look a the painting. Take in all the details you can find. Pope Benedict wrote: "The Christian is a heart that sees and is moved."
You can click on the Easter painting to join the prayer audibly if you'd like.
Our Father...
This image of Jesus' Resurrection was painted for the patients of the Isenheim Monastery which treated plague victims and those suffering from ergotism, a gangrenous skin inflammation caused by a rye fungus. Were the sick consoled by this image of Jesus whose whole body is suspended in a halo? I pray for our world today, so in need of healing.
Hail Mary...
Here, we see Jesus rising while the night sky is still full of stars. His burial shroud becomes a kind of yellow, orange and red fireball. In the Springtime, color returns to the bleak and gray landscape. It is a sign that reminds us, "See, we can change."
Hail Mary...
The top of Jesus' tomb has been pushed up, over and off. It had been put in place on Good Friday afternoon as the final word— sealing Jesus away in death. We pray for those who are silenced, done away with, turned away from, sent back, made invisible.
Hail Mary...
The gospel tells us that soldier-guards were stationed at the tomb to prevent a disciple from stealing the body of Jesus. Here we see the armor-wearing, armor-carrying guards, disempowered and blinded by the light of the Resurrection. Armies, armies, armies - while health systems are in disarray, schools fail, the poorest can't get a leg up and minorities are disproportionately sickened and killed by coronavirus.
Hail Mary...
The moment of the Resurrection is not recorded in the Gospels. But here, the artists have used vivid imagination in depicting it. It's not that Jesus has simply been resuscitated and is now in a perfect body, but he has been resurrected, transfigured and ascended all at once. The Easter Christ is something new—a spiritual body. Look closely at the face of Jesus—it is a face of light. Like God's face.
Hail Mary...
We don't know how long it was before dawn when the myrrh-bearing women showed up to finish the embalming of Jesus. But when they did arrive, they were expecting death. Instead they experienced the surprise of God. Mother Teresa would say, "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans." Have I ever been surprised by God in some life-changing way?
Hail Mary...
One tradition says that the Mother of Jesus was not among the myrrh-bearing women because she had already met the risen Jesus—that she had no need to go to the tomb as Jesus had gone to her first. We can believe that. We might even say, "Why not?" The heart has its reasons.
Hail Mary...
A great depth of love is being revealed these coronavirus days: one hundred priests and over one hundred doctors have died in Italy these few weeks. Some doctors and nurses work fourteen hour shifts and are living apart from their families for fear of infecting them. Some people are managing food distribution centers where thousands have been thrust into poverty for the loss of their jobs. We might have been taught that God is all- knowing, all-present, all-powerful. But it's all-love that blasts Jesus out of this tomb.
Hail Mary...
The awful Good Friday wounds of Jesus, which tore open his hands, feet and side, are now radiating and bright. They seem to mingle with the light-bearing stars and planets. Have I ever experienced the healing of a wound—an inner wound? Maybe the old wound, with its pain and sorrow, has become a source of strength, and rather than embittering me, has been transformed into creativity and compassion for fellow sufferers.
Hail Mary...
Behind Jesus, as if suspended in air, is an enormous boulder. It's hard to say what it's doing there. It seems to be too large to have been the stone at the entrance of the tomb which the myrrh-bearers would need rolled back. I'd suggest that it is purely symbolic. Perhaps it is the stone that presses down and leaves me (us) afraid, negative, distracted, sleepless and exhausted. I might name it for myself, as I ponder Jesus, who seems to be ready to dance on it.
Hail Mary...
Glory be to the Father...
