RESTORING THE SACRED . . . The Reality Of The Sacred Passion
The Lenten season comes each year as a veritable retreat for the Church throughout the world, a particularly “acceptable time” (2 Cor. 6:2) for all of us to begin anew the pursuit of perfection in the spiritual life.
As in a typical retreat, that pursuit opens with the acknowledgment of our need for repentance and the confession of our sins, both fostered by our acts of self-denial that are an essential feature of this liturgical season. The cycle of weekday readings for the Masses of Lent go a long way in spiritually directing and nourishing our efforts to repent and follow our Lord more faithfully.
Yet Lent is likewise a season of preparation for the most important liturgical rites of the year, those of Holy Week, in which we enter deeply into each step of our Lord’s journey to the Cross.
Of course, the Passion is an integral part of each day in the life of the Church. Each and every Mass re-presents the Sacrifice of Calvary, every Catholic prayer uttered in private or in public begins and ends with the Sign of the Cross, and in every genuinely Catholic home there is the constant visible reminder of the crucifix that hangs upon the wall, as well as the crucifix that hangs as a priceless pendant from the Rosary we carry about with us.
From this very familiarity with the Cross arises the need to step back especially in this season of the year and look more attentively, as if for the first time, at the mystery of the Passion lest we become almost indifferent to its reality. We need to reawaken ourselves to the truth that the physical, mental, and spiritual sufferings of our Lord are not merely an abstraction but a vivid reality that Christ, with the full sensitivity and totally undimmed consciousness of His perfect human nature, experienced to the utmost. Through His prophet Jeremiah He says to us from the Cross, “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? / Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow . . .” (Lam. 1:12).
The scriptural prophecies of our Lord’s Passion go a long way toward filling in what the four Evangelists have discreetly left unsaid regarding the violence and brutality of the tortures and torments inflicted upon our Lord. These prophecies liken His persecutors to lions rending their prey, an analogy fulfilled in the scourging that tore His flesh. Isaiah’s description of Christ as “like a lamb that is led to the slaughter” (Is. 53:7) foretells His being led to Golgotha carrying His Cross. The psalmist’s words, “They surrounded me like bees” (Ps. 118:12), prefigure the cohort of Roman soldiers — that is, a contingent of up to 500 soldiers — surrounding our Lord to mock Him, spit upon Him, and crown Him with thorns.
It is a truly providential outcome of our science-obsessed modern age that we now have a rather comprehensive forensic knowledge of what our Lord suffered physically through all the research that has been done to understand the wound and blood marks on the Shroud of Turin. Of course, the Shroud itself, simply as one of the foremost relics of the Passion, is an especially overpowering manifestation of the utter reality of what our Lord underwent on Good Friday.
Yet the medical studies of the body image on the Shroud have yielded a detailed picture of the sheer range of pains that Christ would have experienced from His scourging through His death on the Cross. Forensic medicine has been able to tell us that the nails through our Lord’s hands would have stricken the median nerve, one of the most sensitive nerves in the entire human body. Doctors have also been able to identify what three hours on the Cross would have done as well, from agonized breathing to voracious thirst.
Long before these modern-day discoveries drawn from the Shroud of Turin, artists from the late 15th century through the 18th century found ways to depict in an increasingly realistic manner the visible appearance of the “Man of Sorrows,” making the Gospel accounts of the Passion come alive, as it were.
This is particularly the case with the Spanish sculptors and painters of the 17th and 18th centuries. Their meticulous work in this regard was very much purpose-driven. Their Passion art was calculated to move the beholder to devotion, to love for Christ, and to contrition for one’s sins. They were in large part responding to the Council of Trent, which had summoned artists to produce sacred works that were genuinely conducive to piety.
Among the greatest of these Baroque-era Spanish masters was Pedro de Mena (1628–1688), who from his own hands and from the hands of the other artists of his workshop produced a huge effulgence of inspiring polychrome wood religious sculpture.
In his personal life, Mena was a deeply devout Catholic family man, the father of 14 children, five of whom became religious (four nuns and one priest). The finest expressions of both his piety and his artistry came in addressing the theme of Christ as the Man of Sorrows, which he wrought in a series of busts portraying the Ecce Homo, usually paired with a bust of comparable devotion and artistic skill, that of the Blessed Virgin as Our Lady of Sorrows.
In each of these examples, Mena depicts our Lord from the waist upward, attired as the Roman soldiers who had carried out the scourging had dressed Him, wreathed with the crown of thorns and stripped of His own clothing, wrapped instead in the scarlet robe with which the soldiers had mocked His divine kingship. Around the Savior’s neck hangs a rough rope tied to represent His captivity in the hands of His enemies.
What makes these images so remarkable is the sheer depth of human expression that Mena has brought to the face of our Lord. In some of these Ecce Homo sculptures His gaze is upward, with the eyes of Christ lifted to His Heavenly Father, silently repeating what He had pledged to the Father in Gethsemane, “. . . not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matt. 26:39). In other instances Mena directs the eyes of Christ slightly downward, as if calculated to meet the gaze of the devout supplicant.
In all these depictions, the face of Christ conveys an immense weariness, visually capturing the overwhelming pain and grief that the Old Testament prophecies of the Passion describe time and again:
“Save me, O God! / For the waters have come up to my neck. / I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; / I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me. / I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched. / My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God. / . . . rescue me from sinking in the mire; / let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters. / Let not the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up, or the pit close its mouth over me” (Ps. 69:1–3, 14–15).
Mena is likewise unsparing in impressing upon the viewer the stark reality of our Lord’s physical torment, with extremely real and profuse rivulets of blood running down His face and torso.
In the busts of Our Lady of Sorrows that Mena wrought as companion pieces to his Ecce Homo sculptures, there is a comparable intensity in the facial expression of Mary. Rather than resorting to the often-employed iconic symbol of a sword or even seven swords through the heart of Mary, Mena tells us everything through our Lady’s face.
As if to emphasize the deep affinity between our Lady and Christ as her divine Son, Mary’s eyes are directed either upward or downward to match the upward or downward gaze of our Lord in the Ecce Homo bust with which each particular Sorrowful Virgin bust has been paired. Those of our Lady with an upward gaze express both her desperate supplication to God and her acceptance of the Father’s will, repeating what she had promised at the Annunciation: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Those of Mary with lowered eyes convey an expression of stunned grief and a sense of overwhelming sorrow corresponding to the sorrow of Christ:
“What can I say for you, to what compare you, O daughter of Jerusalem? / What can I liken to you, that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? / For vast as the sea is your ruin; who can restore you?” (Lam. 2:13).
As with the Ecce Homo images, the Sorrowful Virgin busts with lowered eyes allow the viewer to feel our Lady’s gaze upon them. In fact, the overall bust form of all these Ecce Homo and Sorrowful Virgin sculptures places the supplicant face to face with our Lord and our Lady, clearly to fulfill Mena’s ultimate purpose of inspiring love and devotion in the souls of those who see his artwork.
Mena achieves one final parallel between the Man of Sorrows and Our Lady of Sorrows with the resin tears that gently roll down our Lady’s face, matching the blood that streams down the face of her divine Son.
In this Lenten season may we fix our gaze intently upon Christ Crucified, that united with Him in His sufferings, we may someday be united with Him in His eternal glory.
