You Shall Love Your Neighbor As Yourself.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

The second reading from Paul's letter to the Galatians, includes the familiar message: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

It continues, But if you go on biting and devouring one another, beware that you are not consumed by one another. I say then: live by the Spirit...

Paul was in Galatia, working on the original catholicism of the faith- making the teachings of Jesus truly Universal, applicable to people of all origins. He was perhaps one of the greatest Christian Foreign Diplomats, carrying a message of understanding and love.

This message brings to mind two Spaniards, and two very evocative murals, completed a century apart from one another. Take a look at Francisco Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son. It's expressive, dramatic, drenched in folklore. At the time, Goya was near the end of his life. He started the mural, painting directly onto the wall of his house, in 1819, at the age of 72. Distressed by the harrowing Napoleonic Wars, Saturn is one of a series of paintings, called "The Black Paintings," which expressed Goya's fear of insanity, and his deteriorating outlook on the merits of humanity.

Saturn Devouring His Son, by Francisco Goya, circa 1819-1823

The painting itself is nightmarish. The blackness seeps. Saturn, the father of the gods, eats his own children in his desperation to maintain power. The old man's face is psychotic; he has lost paternalistic devotion and has been overtaken by the need for dominance.

Fast-forward 100 years. Pablo Picasso is repeatedly challenging the lexicon of art history and changing the definition of "art." A Spanish citizen living in gay Paris, Picasso hasn't escaped the terrors of war. Franco's Nationalists have incited civil war in Spain, and with the support of both Hitler and Mussolini, work to root out and subvert the fierce Republican sentiment of the Spanish citizens. In a horrifying display of dehumanization, the German Condor Legion sends planes on behalf of Franco into Guernica, a village vivid with culture and spirit, in the middle of the Basque region.

The town of Guernica, after the bombing in April 1937.

It was market day, April 1937. Everyone was in the town square. But when the church bells rang, they rang not for the Glory of God, but in desperate, clanging warning. For 3 hours, German planes dropped over 100,000 lbs. of explosives and incendiary bombs. 70% of the town was raized, and 1600 villagers were killed or wounded. Not a single bridge, railway station, or even nearby small arms factory was hit. Guernica was the testing ground for a new Nazi military technique: blanket bombing of a town in order to break the morale of dissenters.

Picasso painting.

15 days later, 56-year-old Picasso stretched his canvas and began working. A massive 26' x 11.5', the painting was a visual-political invective. Picasso decided against blatant Republican symbolism in favor of the classic depictions of the terrors of war. Think of The Rape of the Sabine Women or The Massacre of the Innocents or The Third of May 1808. We see the animals of the Spanish countryside, the might of the bull, the terror of the wounded horse. We see the woman wailing over her dead child, and the mighty warrior, whose courage could not stand against the evils of modern warfare. See his helpless outstretched hand. We see houses on fire, and citizens fleeing in fright. It is an onslaught of expressive images. The painting is all in black and white- like a wartime bulletin, or as though the evocative meaning of color has been wiped from the canvas, lest the message become too overwhelming.

Guernica, by Pablo Picasso, 1937.

So.

When the message is as uplifting as "Love," why site the gory glories of paintings inspired by fear, by war, by hate, by dissent?

Because, despite our best efforts, we're still missing the original message of St. Paul. Though we strive heavenward, we still get so easily lost. War is perhaps the most blatant example, because it is clear, it is large, it is terrifying, and it effects multitudes all together, all at once.

But there is hope.

Can you find the flower in Picasso's Guernica? A simple flower, growing despite the blood and the horror and the distress. Growing past the shattered sword, beneath the dying horse's hooves. Reaching for the sun, and promising that Beauty will return to the earth, that we will move on, that we will try again, that tomorrow is a brilliant chance, just waiting to be taken.

Guernica, detail, by Pablo Picasso, 1937.

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings."

In the Gospel reading on Sunday, Jesus poses an important question to the disciples: "Who do you say that I am."

Let's paint the scene: Luke tells us that Jesus and the disciples are in a fishing town. If we do some cross-synoptic research, Matthew 16 lets us know that they're in Caesarea Philippi at the foot of Mt. Hermon and the headwaters of the Jordan river. It's modern day Syria.

It's likely that the multi-deism religions of the ancient native civilizations had made their mark on the art of the region; the ruined visages of gods and demi-gods and mighty kings of yore decorating the sandy landscape.

The ruins of Nemrut Dag in modern-day Turkey, of the Kommagene Dynasty, circa 80 BC to 72 AD.

Such a scene calls to mind Percy Bysshe Shelley's 1817 poem, Ozymandias.

Ozymandias is actually another name for Ramses the Great, or Ramses II, of the Egyptian empire.

Statue of Ramses II at the Luxor Palace in Upper Egypt, circa mid-12th Century BC.

In the poem, Shelley depicts the tragedy of human civilization- that the great will inevitably fall, that men who fancy themselves as gods cannot withstand the buffeting of time, that the mighty among mortals will inevitably fall, and crumble to the dust from which they came.

And so it was with the Sumerians,

Sumerian Votive Statue from Ur, circa 2500 BC. Notice the enlarged eyes, an ancient forebear of the importance of the Eyes in the Byzantine art tradition.

And the glorious temple of Persepolis,

Apadana Palace of Perseopolis, in Modern Day Iran. Built by Darius the Great and Xerxes the Great. The palace was used to receive tribute from all the nations of the Achaemenid Empire, circa 500 BC.

And the Akkadian empire.

Victory Stele of Namun-Sim, Akkadian Empire, circa 2230 BC.

All these mighty civilizations left behind monuments of beauty and power and pride, which now offer only a distant echo of what once was great.

Akhenaten, or Amenhotep IV, Egyptian Pharoah circa 1360-1343 BC. Akhenaten was the first Egyptian Pharoah to eschew traditional polytheism and promulgate monotheistic beliefs.

They are beautiful monuments, to be sure. Though the hubris may have been overwhelming, the talent and skill that went into crafting the marble and the granite and the limestone bely the power of art. In this case, these ancient beauties remind us that man's power is sure to fade.

Akhenaten (left) and his wife, Nefertiti (right) with their children. Notice the monotheistic symbolism of the Sun reaching down hands in blessing upon the royal family.

And in this setting in the dry and distant lands of the Middle East, Jesus reminds us, "Do you realize? Though civilizations rise and fall, though great men create themselves and return to ash, who I am and what I offer will not change, and will not fade, and will not ever crumble."

O Beauty Ever Ancient, O Beauty Ever New

St. Augustine of Hippo always believed that the pen was mightier than the sword. A statue in Old St. Augustine's Church in Old City Philadelphia portrays the noble Bishop, brandishing a quill, with his foot planted squarely on a serpent-entwined Satan. Next to that statue stands an acanthus-bedecked ambo, from which the gathered faithful hear words of scripture, of song, of homily.

As he wrote in his Confessions, one of St. Augustine's many epiphanies was the simple fact that Beauty is a gift from God, and a conduit to Him. Whether in religious or secular work, in visual arts or performance arts or literary arts, in mankind's fabrications or Mother Nature's wondrous oeuvre, Beauty directs us to a nobility of heart, to a search for meaning, to a recognition of the Divine. Beauty strikes a chord within our Restless Hearts, speaking to us of a great and eternal restfulness.