The Arresting Beauty of the Cross
Christ's Presence in Unexpected Places
The beauty of this world is Christ's tender smile coming to us through matter -Simone Weil
When I went to Lisbon over the summer for World Youth Day, I spent one afternoon wandering through the steep and winding streets of the oldest part of Lisbon. There at the top of the hill is I stumbled upon an old Augustinian convent dedicated to Our Lady of Grace. It, in a similar way to Santa Sabina in Rome, occupies a spot, which has stunning views of the city.
The church had nearly a dozen side altars covered in gold imported from Brazil. The most important of which is the altar which houses the Senhor dos Passos da Graça. The statue is admittedly uncanny and the backdrop of the ornate green room it is housed in makes it even more unnerving. The statue is clothed with a violet garb, with long real flowing hair, with blood and sweat and tears and with a posture and expression of the heavy weight of the cross. It looks as if the statue at any moment could come to life. I must have stood there for five minutes, frozen, in awe at what I was looking at. In awe of the moment. There was a pilgrim group from France praying the stations of the cross and you could faintly hear the music from one of the many praise and worship concerts going on in the city. It was such a strange experience, a startling experience yet such an oddly beautiful experience.
Catholicism is strange, it is a faith which sees beauty in places and people which the world avoids and finds repulsive. Only in Catholicism can you find churches that have with crucifixes dripping with blood and passionate emotion, the bones of martyrs encased in wax effigies with expressions of ecstasy, the scars of their suffering and the tools of their martyrdom. Statues of St. Lucy with her plate of eyes, St. Agatha with one of breasts and St. Peter of Verona with a clever in his head it's all very strange, it's beautiful, it's real. When you take a moment to reflect on any of the given examples you are confronted with a reality so often ignored. They remind us that suffering is a very inconvenient yet a profoundly real part of our lives and that we can even find beauty in suffering.
Beauty is something I have been reflecting on a lot lately, it's something which if you have followed my Instagram for a while has always been a running theme. This semester I'm taking metaphysics. The professor often mumbles and talks in circles, it's one of those classes where most of the students are just on their phones scrolling through TikTok or using iMessage on their MacBooks. However, I absolutely love the subject matter all the professor talks about is beauty. In one class he talked about the beatific vision, when we will be united in a perfect union with God in heaven. That when we experience something beautiful it's like a sliver of the beauty and happiness that we will see when we meet God face to face. Even the most mundane, the strangest things and sometimes even disturbing things have the ability to ignite that reaction because if God exists, everything shares in that basic quality.
Which brings me back to that statue Christ carrying the cross in Lisbon. Beauty ought to disturb us, I feel like this concept is something we have forgotten. I read somewhere once that St. Augustine said that “The deformity of Christ forms you… Therefore, He hung deformed upon the cross, but His deformity was our beauty.” The picture below is one by Matthias Grünewald. When I first saw it I was reminded of the covers of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, no expense is spared to paint the crucifixion in all of it’s terrifying agony. He is most known for his agonizing depictions of the crucifixion with overly expressive emotions. His most famous work is the Isenheim Altarpiece, the central panel is a crucifix similar to the one below, which is in the National Gallery in DC. The altarpiece was commissioned by a monastery of Antonine Monks who ran a hospital primarily catering to patients with gangrene, Grünewald intentionally painted Christ in such intense agony and with signs of gangrene, not to scare the afflicted but to comfort them. To show that Christ loves us so much became man to share in our suffering, that we might be united with him and after our trials we might join him with perfect bliss in the Beatific Vision. That his deformity on the cross is our beauty.
There are so many beautiful things which we have discarded for the sake of comfortability. Several years ago there was a story in the news about a Baptist Church in the South which removed a statue of Jesus because it was “too Catholic” or more recently the story of a Florida teacher getting fired for showing their students Michelangelo's David. Yet, this isn't a new phenomenon, iconoclasm has existed since the dawn of history(Much of Grünewald’s work was destroyed during the Reformation and dismissed as pious superstition) and doesn’t just effect art but also people.
On one of my discernment retreats, I stayed at the Redemptorist house in Kensington, Philadelphia. The neighborhood has been referred to as the Walmart of Heroin and the countless people with substance abuse addiction as zombies. When I arrived, I was disturbed. One evening I had a conversation with one of the vocation directors. He said to me that when he looked outside at the street below us, he saw beautiful people, that as a Redemptorist these were the people to whom Redemptorists are called to minister to. His words really resonated with me, that beauty isn’t just found in art or in things which are pleasurable to look at but it’s find in people and places that society typically labels as ugly. Like Kensington, in the Bronx, there are many people experiencing homelessness for various reasons and I am surrounded by poverty. Our house overlooks one of the busiest, noisiest and poorest intersections in the country. Needless to say by the world's standards this neighborhood would be considered ugly. Yet I find so much beauty in this environment because I believe Christ is most especially present here.
Every Wednesday, several of us in formation hand out bagged lunches and pray with the people we encounter on the streets of the Bronx. It's always slightly unnerving because anything could happen on one of these walks. However, seeing hope of those society so often ignores, to approach them with sincere love and to pray with them is always one of the most beautiful experiences of my week. In each of the people I encounter truly see the beauty of the suffering Christ. I think back to that strange statue in Lisbon, to those creepy wax effigies and Grünewald’s agonizing crucifix. I realize this is what it means to be a Catholic, to see God especially in those places which everyone ignores, to accompany everyone on this journey of life and to remind everyone that they are truly made in the image of God.
As we journey through Lent, I think it's important to keep this in mind. While not everybody has the specific opportunities that I do, I think it's important to recognize the presence and beauty of Christ in everyone, to be a bit more open and compassionate to those who otherwise are discarded by society. To see the suffering Christ as disturbingly beautiful in everyone.
Many thanks to Dang Nguyen for permission to use the last photo.