How is the dying body given in love? Dying as sign

Melciorre Caffa, St. Rose of Lima dying

From the book:

How is the dying body given in love? Many of the themes of the Theology of the Body we have worked with are relevant here: attending to the present moment, disponibilité, self-abjection, hospitality, love and tenderness are all part of seeing rightly the given sign of dying, of receiving our true identity from God.  This section will employ a “spiritual seeing,” or better yet, a contemplative attitude throughout.  Perhaps more than any other time in a person’s life, the spiritual aspect is visible (or perhaps we attend death so much more closely we are able to perceive the spiritual).  The “ecstatic” reality of dying, of giving one’s life to God in love, is abundantly witnessed when we know how to perceive God’s presence.

It is important to note that a reading of the spiritual sign of dying—a Theology of the Body ars moriendi if you will--is not prescriptive.  Although I do think there are patterns and common themes within the dying process, every spiritual director knows that the Holy Spirit leads the person in a manner most befitting that person’s particular relationship with God.  If you are dying, you need not be troubled by a mocking scrupulosity that some “stage” has happened or not happened.^[1]   For one accompanying the dying, it may be impossible to “plan out” where the person is at: attention to the Holy Spirit in your conversation (or quiet sitting together) is key.  But as Iain Matthew says on John of the Cross: “He gives us the schemas, not to help us predict, but to encourage us to surrender”^[2], as evidence that God is indeed working, there are signs to read in the dying process, and the process itself is not meaningless.  The ars moriendi witnesses the movement of healing in God through dying, and while there are moves to encourage and provide space for, we always must remember that healing cannot be plotted.  Healing is its own mystery, coming from the heart of God.  And it always feels, in some real sense, like a surprise, an explosion of grace into time.  It is sensed as the mercy that it is.

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[1] This is one of the prominent criticisms of Kȕbler-Ross’s stages, that people may be expected to follow a standardized emotional schema and rushed to move through that, contrary to God’s desire for that person. Any person helping anyone to die should remember that at some level, the person dying knows more about dying than you do.  Guenther, Still Listening, citation pg.

[2] Matthew, 88.

How does art help us perceive reality in the light of God?

From the book:

If you look at the Knippers’ Isaiah in the Temple (see right, cropped version), you see the nudity of body and the nudity of spirit expressed through the body.  Isaiah, encountering the spiritual world breaking through within the Temple, is unclothed, arms thrown in a position of charged energy and vulnerability, open to this inbreaking reality.  He is allowing himself to be impaled by a visibly invisible spirit’s coal of fire, pressed to his lips to purify him to speak God’s word.  Meanwhile, incense smoke—a symbol of prayer rising to God as well as sign of God’s presence among us[1]--floats gently in the foreground.  Knippers presents a wholly fleshy Isaiah, body expressing a posture of prayer and amazement before God.  The cubist-inspired ribbons of color and light are his language for the transformative spiritual realm “beyond the veil,” where our eyes (in this case literally) cannot rest and see the Divine: we sees fragments, pieces of a whole, and cannot quite put it together.[2]

John Paul II on Michelangelo and Edward Knippers note two things: that what we see is important, and the posture we take to what we see is critical.  The human artist can see, and help others see, reality in the light of God: as Knippers says:  “I have maintained over the years that art is not merely self-expression but an exploration of a reality greater than the Self. I have also maintained that the artist should be concerned about the most profound parts of that reality, not just play in the shallows.”[3]  John Paul is, if anything, more direct: “Artists are constantly in search of the hidden meaning of things, and their torment is to succeed in expressing the world of the ineffable. How then can we fail to see what a great source of inspiration is offered by that kind of homeland of the soul that is religion?”[4]  Artists, through sign and symbol, are able to help us interpret the deeper reality imbued in what we see.

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Perception is the first move of participation in reality.  To that end, I want to address a very different form of perception by which we encounter the Holy Spirit: Ignatian prayer....

[p.s. great essays on Knippers' art and theology at Theology Forum, populated by Protestant friends in faith: http://theologyforum.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/art-incarnation-%C2%BB-artist-statement-by-edward-knippers/ ]

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[1] For example, smoke as reaching to God, see Psalm 141: 2 “Let my prayer be incense before you”; smoke as presence: the smoke enveloping Mount Tabor signaling the presence of God in Exodus 19:18.

[2] A more philosophical take on this phenomenon—art that trends toward Cubism, an attempt to catch reality the moment it is seen, fractured and without form--see Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s seminal essay “Cezanne’s Doubt” in Sense and Non-Sense, trans. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964).

[3] Edward Knippers, “On Art and Incarnation: on art and ‘not playing in the shallows’,” Theology Forum (blog), Nov. 7, 2008, http://theologyforum.wordpress.com/2008/11/07/edward-knippers-%C2%BB-art-incarnation-5-on-art-and-not-playing-in-the-shallows/ .

[4] John Paul II, Letter to Artists, 1999, #13. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/letters/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_23041999_artists_en.html

What "seeing birth as sign" may tell us about Mary as spiritual mother

From the book:

For Mary, accepting motherhood meant to focus her energy and attention--in her case quite literally and directly--on God.  This was her untarnished experience of motherhood.  So what does this say about the rest of her vocation, as spiritual mother to all humanity?  What does it mean for her to be the spiritual mother?

One of the most famous icons of Madonna and child is the Virgin of Tenderness, the patron of Russia (see image).  The icon, initially written in 12^th century Constantinople, features Mary cradling the baby Jesus near her face as he clings to her.  Jesus gazes lovingly at her eyes while Mary, gesturing to the infant Son of God, gazes serenely at you, the viewer of the icon.  Spiritually, this icon communicates beautifully one of the central tenets of Mariology: everything in Mary’s life was dedicated to leading others to the Son of God.  And that she was given to us, pure gift, as a spiritual mother.  A witness, yes, a sister, yes, a model for Christian discipleship, yes: but the primary relationship between Mary and the people of God is one of motherhood.  Indeed, in this picture, she is holding him up for us to see.  But what a phenomenology of birth shows us is striking: the state of quiet alertness so common to the first hour of birth is the state with which she beholds us.  She looks at us with the mother’s gaze: Mother of God and spiritual mother of you as well.  

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