By JAMES MONTI
It was my brother Anthony (God rest his soul) who years ago brought to my attention an amazing detail of Jan van Eyck’s famous painting of 1434, the Arnolfini Marriage, renowned as an artistic celebration of the Sacrament of Matrimony. Above the joined hands of the married couple can be seen, on the wall behind, a circular mirror around the perimeter of which are ten spokes analogous to the succession of ascending numbers that ring the perimeter of a clock to tell the time of day. But here the passage of the hours is measured instead by a succession of scenes from the Passion of Christ.
The sequence begins at the bottom of the mirror, at the six o’clock hour, with the Agony in the Garden, proceeding clockwise to the arrest of Jesus, His trial before Pilate, the scourging of Christ, His carrying of the cross and at the noon position, His crucifixion. Continuing clockwise we see thereafter Christ being taken down from the cross, the carrying of His body to the tomb, His descent into Sheol and at the end of the cycle the Resurrection.
On a hot, humid day in mid-July, the ceremonies of Holy Week can seem quite far away, but the mysteries and events those ceremonies commemorate are with us daily as Catholics. As the Van Eyck painting testifies, everything we do should be set in the context of the Passion, for it was on the cross that Christ won for us every grace we have received, and it is by the Passion that every prayer is answered.
In looking about for ways to nourish our daily spiritual life, meditation upon the Passion should be near the top of our list — it is an inexhaustible, imperishable source of inspiration, because it is the ultimate revelation of divine love.
The saints and great spiritual writers have known this to be so. Of meditation upon the Passion of Christ, the French Benedictine abbot Francois-Louis de Bloise (+1566) observes:
“Lay up the thought of his venerable passion as a pearl beyond price in the casket of thy heart, and think of it constantly with a grateful mind….Paint on thy mind most touching pictures of his passion, and plant in the midst of thy heart the beautiful tree of the Lord’s cross….From his rose-coloured wounds flow rivers of grace…It is impossible to write with the pen or even to conceive in the mind what fruit a humble man of good will can reap from loving meditation on the passion of our Lord” (De Bloise, also known as Blosius, The Sanctuary of the Faithful Soul: Part I: Speculum Spirituale, translated by Bertrand Wilberforce, OP, London, Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1926, pp. 109-110).
St. Albert the Great (+1280) remarked that just one tear shed out of compassion for Christ in His Passion was worth more than a year of fasting on bread and water. In his ascetical treatise The Triple Way, St. Bonaventure (+1274) provides invaluable advice on just how to meditate upon the mysteries of the Passion, urging the devout soul to consider “Who it is that is suffering . . . how good is the One who is suffering . . . how great is the One who is suffering . . . why He is suffering . . . how He is suffering . . . how much He is suffering” and what has been wrought by His suffering (The Triple Way, chapter 3, in The Works of St. Bonaventure, I: Mystical Opuscula, translated José de Vinck, Paterson, N.J., St. Anthony Guild Press, 1960, pp. 82-84).
Having about us beautiful artistic depictions of the Lord’s Passion can also be a great help in this regard. The most celebrated work of the Spanish sculptor Juan Martinez Montanes (+1649), a consummate master of the medium of polychrome wood, is his rendering of Christ carrying His cross, the image known as Jesus de la Passion.
Those who have seen this statue in person or have seen photos of it know it to be a masterpiece of stunning realism and majesty. The work had been commissioned by Seville’s Confraternity of the Passion to be carried in one of the city’s famed Holy Week processions, and when the finished sculpture was to be borne in this manner for the first time the artist went out to see it for himself.
No longer simply an object of labor in his workshop but now in its intended setting of inspiring devotion to Christ in His Passion, Montanes saw his handiwork in an entirely new light, and it astounded him. He is said to have followed the statue through the streets of Seville, exclaiming that he could not have made such a beautiful image of the Lord.
Over the years that followed, Montanes made it his habit to venerate the statue each time it was brought out for Holy Week. A nineteenth century painting by the artist Joaquin Turina y Areal (+1903) commemorates Montanes’ devotion in this regard, depicting him toward the end of his life seated upon a chair outside the church from which the Jesus de la Passion has just emerged, his hands clasped in supplication as a nun and two other women beside him kneel and bow in homage at the sight of the image.
Daily meditation upon the Passion is intimately bound up with the sacrament that nurtures our spiritual life like nothing else, the Holy Eucharist. Beyond stating the obvious, that to be at Mass is to be at Calvary, that the Mass is nothing short of a re-presentation of the sacrifice of Good Friday, the Mass is likewise graced with outward actions that evoke the remembrance of the Passion, as the liturgists of the Middle Ages explained in great detail.
Perhaps at no other point in the Eucharistic Celebration do we experience this more vividly than at the consecration. The moments of the elevation of the Host and the chalice following the consecration bring to mind our Lord’s words concerning His elevation on the cross:
“When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will know that I am he . . . ” (John 8:28); “. . . and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself” (John 12:32).
Recently, while attending a solemn Mass in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite (the “Usus antiquior”) for the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, I was reminded just how powerful the sight of the elevated Eucharist can be. At the very moment that the priest elevated the Host, in my line of vision from the pew I saw the sacrament in the hands of the priest through an ascending cloud of incense, with the swinging thurible of the altar boy directly below, as another priest assisting in the role of the deacon gently raised the back of the celebrant’s chasuble.
I felt at that moment an overwhelming sense of awe and majesty — at such a moment faith in the Real Presence comes quite easily. The lesson to be learned is that whether with or without such a convergence of sights, every consecration of the Holy Eucharist is an unutterably awesome event that can and should transfix us.
Watch And Pray
Even outside the immediate context of the Mass, the Blessed Sacrament unceasingly draws us to Calvary. Many of us have known the experience of discovering a church or chapel that is particularly conducive to prayer — a place where truly sacred and beautiful art and architecture, sunlight, silence, and the scent of lingering incense and wax candles mingle to turn and raise the heart and mind to the sacred, to God and the things of Heaven.
It is in such a setting, with our eyes fixed upon the tabernacle, that meditation upon the Passion of Christ can thrive.
One of the most popular devotions of our time is all about the Passion. In the Divine Mercy Chaplet, the prayer verse that is repeated fifty times is but a plea for mercy for the sake of the Passion of Christ. This extremely simple prayer is so powerful because by the Passion everything necessary for our salvation and sanctification has been won for us by Christ — so long as we respond to, cooperate with and act upon the graces won for us. It is also in the Divine Mercy Chaplet that the Trisagion (“Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One…”), a prayer unique to Good Friday in the Roman Rite liturgy, is recited every day of the year.
Like virtually everything our Lord says to His disciples during His life on Earth, Christ’s repeated pleas imploring the apostles to watch and pray with Him in Gethsemane — “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me….So, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation” (Matt. 26:38,40-41) — are all meant for us as well. Our Lord still wants us to watch with Him in His Passion, not because He needs us but because we need Him.
This invitation is likewise implicit in Christ calling us to take up our crosses daily and follow Him. Our Lady has set the perfect example of watchfulness with Christ in His Passion by standing at the foot of the cross, an example that the Apostle St. John, after initially deserting our Lord like the other apostles, in the end took to imitating, joining Mary on Calvary. She will help us to do so as well.
Whatever time we can devote to thoughts of the Passion will always prove to be time well spent: “Once you have learned to realize what the crucifix means, all the jewels in the world will be as nothing compared with the rubies that stand out on the hands and feet of our Lord upon the Cross” (Fr. Bernard Vaughan, Loaves & Fishes: Extracts From Father Bernard Vaughan’s Notebooks, London, Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1932, p. 80).
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