I might as well admit something about prayer from the very start: sometimes when I read a formal prayer, from memory or with a prayer book, I find my mind wandering. Somehow, I can’t always keep my mind focused. For times like these, I sometimes revert to “visual prayer”: the process of praying to God while imagining myself visually within a spiritual scene that I remember from meditating on a work of art. My two books on art and God, Pilgrimage to the Museum and Visions of the Divine, are both in some form “visual prayer books”; they provide the reader with reflections on dozens of artistic masterpieces that can lead him or her more intimately to the Divine. Beautiful art can do this. Afterall, God is Beauty. And artists, given the talent to describe beauty, are in some mysterious way communicating with Him through their art—even when they don’t fully realize what they are doing.
The following excerpt from Visions of the Divine provides an example of what I’m talking about: a visual to enhance your prayer the next time you make the sign of the cross. Give it a try. In Visions, we use this image to reflect on the sign of the cross we make as we leave the church after a Mass.
One Last Sign Of The Cross
Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Scotland. Evelyn and I are here at the Kelvingrove to see the painting now before us. Although controversial from its initial unveiling, even to this day, it’s risen above the theological and artistic debates of its time, and since. Among the religious and art world “laity,” it’s been dubbed “Scotland’s favorite painting.” So, for sure, we expected fireworks when we got here. Still, we were not prepared for this.
Looming above us, nearly nine feet high and almost four feet wide, Christ of St John of the Cross transfixes. Unlike any crucifixion painted before or after, we are looking at Christ from above, from the perspective of the eyes of God the Father Himself. We can almost imagine ourselves as Eve in that image of the Creation of Adam on the Sistine Ceiling; the Father has us up there with Him, cradled in His big fatherly arm, watching the scene of Christ’s sacrifice unfold below.
One of the initially disarming aspects of Christ of St John is the darkness above. That darkness was one of several “problems” that made Dali’s Christ of St John so controversial when it first appeared. Unlike Giordano’s The Fall, which we just visited in Vienna, and unlike every other image of Heaven we’ve seen, Dali has painted Heaven above as pitch black, at least in this moment. Dali never fully explained this, but I think the darkness in Heaven is a sign that God the Father is in mourning, for the sacrifice of His son. Maybe God is even crying, for a moment.
In the name of the Father…
As we look down with God the Father from Heaven, we see Christ’s athletic body hanging from the Cross. Well, not exactly “hanging.” Although He appears to be hanging, as we look closer, we can’t find any nails holding Him on. In fact, we don’t see any sign at all of the wounds or blows inflicted on Christ in His Passion. Rather, as he did in in Hypercube, Dali portrays the spiritual reality of Christ’s sacrifice here, rather than the bloody, physical one. Christ is holding Himself unto the Cross, in an act of complete and total self-giving. He’s holding Himself to the Cross with his love.
… and of the Son…
We look for the Holy Spirit, and don’t initially see Him. Like the Father, He’s invisible. Then, we realize we do see Him. We see Him in that very loving way Jesus holds Himself to that Cross. That agapic love is the love of Anthony van Dyck’s Charity. It’s the Love of the Holy Spirit. And then we notice something we didn’t initially see. The Cross, with Christ on it, is not actually on the ground anymore. It is rising, through the opening in the clouds, towards Heaven. It is being lifted there by the Holy Spirt, by love, back to the Father.
… and of the Holy Spirit.
This is not just a painting of the crucifixion. It’s a painting of Christ’s victory of the Cross, of the Resurrection and, then, His Ascension. Christ is alive. He’s ascending into Heaven.
As our eyes descend lower towards the earth, we can see the landscape below clearly, bathed in a bright light. This light must be the divine light of Heaven, which God the Father has poured out, to the very last photon, onto the earth. Not unlike the sacrifice of His Son’s very last ounce of blood.
Down there, in the bright shimmering light which has poured out of Heaven, we see an iridescent blue lake. There’s an open boat in it. That boat must be for us|—|for you, and for me. It would seem to be the barque of Peter, the boat of the fishermen. The boat we’ll need to fulfill the priest’s last command, to go forth on mission, to be fishers of men. And we’ll be doing so with and through the Trinity. He’s there in the scene, giving every ray of light He has, to light our way….
“As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea; they were fishermen. He said to them, ‘Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.’ At once they left their nets and followed him.”–Matt. 4:18–20
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