By Deacon Scott Dodge–
(Eric Gill, 1882 – 1940)
Too often we are sentimental about our faith, about what it really means at its deepest level. Our sentimentality spells dire consequences for how we use our faith to engage with the world. The problem with being overly sentimental is that it leads to being shallow.
For instance, it is often nice and comforting to believe that Jesus Christ, by his death on the cross, took away our sins and the sins of the whole world. How wonderful, we sometimes think, that God will forgive me for the last time I got angry and said some regrettable things to the person at whom I was angry, or forgive the impure thought I entertained, etc. Yet, in the very next instant we might encounter something on the television news, or in the newspaper, about yet another horrible thing one person did to another: a murder, a rape, a drug addict punching and robbing an old woman on her way to church, an off-duty police officer mercilessly beating a petite woman in a drunken rage, or another act of genocide by a stronger group of people against a weaker group, etc., etc. In other words, the kind of things that happen in the world which caused Malcolm Muggeridge to accurately observe that original sin is perhaps the most empirically verifiable fact in the world. It is often the case that after witnessing such depravities, we give lie to our faith, by condemning, not the merely the actions, which are deserving of condemnation, but the people who perpetrate them. One significant proof of this, in the United States anyway, is that two-thirds of people still support the death penalty. How does our reaction to evil often betray our profession of faith in Christ? Our reaction betrays it because a person’s dignity as a human being created in the divine image is not forfeited by sin, even heinous sin.
More than 10 years ago, Monsignor Mark Langham, who was serving as the administrator of Westminster Cathedral in London at the time, wrote a piece he entitled “Praying the Gill Stations” [here’s the link- http://westminstercathedral.blogspot.com/2007/03/praying-gill-stations.html]. What are the Gill Stations? They are the Stations of the Cross created for Westminster Cathedral by a famous artist named Eric Gill. In a 1989 biography by Fiona MacCarthy, it was divulged that Gill, a celebrated artistic genius and a devout believer all his life, who converted to the Catholic Church as an adult from the Church of England, was quite sexually depraved. After the publication of MacCarthy’s Gill biography, wrote Langham, “we have had to come to terms with the fact that our greatest Cathedral artwork is the product of a man who was in many ways detestable” (See “Written in Stone”- https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2006/jul/22/art.art). He went on to note that many people called for the Cathedral to get rid of Gill’s Stations of the Cross. Thankfully, to borrow Monsignor’s words, “the redemptive quality of art” won the day. “As so often in the Church’s history,” Langham wrote:
“works of great beauty and inspiration have come from those who seem less than worthy of their talents. God uses vessels of clay to perform his great works, and sometimes it is shocking to us how weak those vessels are – yet his grace shines through, and even mediated by sinful hands, allows others to experience his presence.”
Given his faith, his depravity, and much of his art, including the Stations of the Cross he created, it seems that Eric Gill knew he was a man in need of redemption. A story related by Langham indicates this much: “As [the Stations] were being installed in the Cathedral, a woman came up to Gill to say that she did not think they were very nice carvings, to which he snapped back that it was not a very nice subject!”
Without romanticizing evil, or the deep harm it causes others, situations, like the one provoked by the Gill Stations, help us overcome our tendency to domesticate and sentimentalize the deep love of God. The depth of God’ s love as revealed in the cross of Christ is something worth meditating on as Passiontide approaches. Passiontide, which refers to the last two weeks of Lent, is the time each year when we see God’s love in the sacrificial suffering and emptying out of his Son for our sakes.
Christians believe that all sinners, no matter how heinous their sins, can be washed clean by the blood of the Lamb. The effect of our recognition of this scandalous reality should lead us to have a deeper compassion for others as well as put us in awe of our awesome God, who is rich in mercy. We certainly need to be compassionate towards those victims whose suffering is caused by others. We need to also recognize that it is often the case – though by no means always – that those who victimize others were themselves victimized. So, they simply perpetuate a deadly cycle. It is this deadly cycle that Christ came to break. How it is broken is by forgiveness, not punishment. So, seeking to imitate Christ, our compassion should extend to those who cause suffering.
In his Prayer/Meditation for the Eleventh Station of the Cross, written for the Stations he commissioned for the 1993 renovation of The Cathedral of the Madeleine, which he oversaw as Rector, Monsignor M. Francis Mannion, wrote:
“Lord Jesus Christ, forgiving the repentant thief, look with love on every man and woman who is despised, rejected and counted as unworthy in human eyes. Forgive the sins of the world and the weaknesses of Adam’s children. Bring to life everlasting all who have made the world a place of misery. Let the power of your love be stronger than human failure and let no one be without redemption.“ (emboldening and italicized emphasis mine)
Most of us have experienced the dysfunctions of Adam’s race quite profoundly. These are dealt with in a surprising way in the ancient hymn called the Exsultet, which is to be sung by the deacon at the Easter Vigil: “O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!” Are these sentimental words? In light of the depth of our human faults, hardly!
Deacon Scott Dodge also blogs at:
http://scottdodge.blogspot.com/
