Franciscan at Home

A beautiful way of learning the faith is through images as well as words. This is what the Church calls - and recent popes have re-called - the via pulchritudina, ‘the way of beauty’, beauty as an attractive and attracting pathway to faith. Nothing is more beautiful in the world than the faith of the Church. Christ the Beautiful Way Christ is both the Image of God and the Word of God incarnate. He is our faith. He, therefore, is in himself the way of beauty and the way of catechesis. The logo of the Catechism, in a few simple lines, provides us with an extraordinary summary of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and at the same time a summary of the Catechism. The logo illustrates superbly what an image can do. Above all, an image can unite, in a single harmonious whole, a range of interconnected truths that would take a great many words to explain. An image can portray, in colour and line, the unity and beauty of truth and the beauty of the unity of truth.

‘Attractiveness’ is one of the keys of the pedagogy of the faith that Petroc Willey, Barbara Morgan and Pierre de Cointet write of in The Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Craft of Catechesis. In this work we are helped to see how essential this characteristic is considered to be by the Church. To encapsulate this point the Catechism of the Catholic Church has, on the front cover of every edition, the image of a shepherd playing panpipes to attract and comfort the sheep at his feet. Let us look at how to be attentive to the importance of this key in practice.

God himself is, of course, completely beautiful, utterly attractive. Catechesis is about God and therefore it is logical to think that in order to be true to the nature of God, beauty should in some way be integral to catechesis. Catechesis should be attractive, should attract. This raises many questions. What attracts people? What is a Catholic understanding of beauty? When we use the word ‘beauty’ in relation to catechesis, we need to be aware of both the physical resources we are using and, also, spiritual beauty, which has an attraction entirely its own. There can be spiritual beauty even in the midst of ugly physical surroundings. In this sense, we say, faith is beautiful, or, trust is beautiful. The beauty of trust in God can appear even in the most dismal and upsetting of surroundings.

This icon can be used for almost any teaching occasion. It is so familiar, so great, so rich and so much has been written about it. Nonetheless, in an ordinary parish situation, there will still be a great number of people, old and young, who haven’t been introduced to its beauty and its depths.

As explained in the art notes, it follows an event in the life of the patriarch Abraham from the Book of Genesis and links this to Christ’s revelation that God is Trinity. It is a perfect example of a biblical event being portrayed literally and, at the same time, with spiritual meaning. It is also a perfect example of the wondrous unity of the Faith.

This painting then is Trinitarian, Christo-centric and Eucharistic in that it depicts the eternal sacrifice of Christ at the Mass; it reveals the Paschal mystery as a beautiful, simple, eternal, Trinitarian act of divine love. Henri Nouwen says, ‘Rublev's icon gives us a glimpse of the house of perfect love’. Once explained it is often, appropriately, used for prayer. Since it was made for a Cathedral, however, its actual purpose is for the sake of enhancing our entrance into and appreciation of the liturgy of the Mass.

Between the birth of Abraham and the birth of Jesus, about eighteen centuries, Israel’s understanding of God underwent considerable development. In only one passage of the Old Testament, however, is there any reference to the idea of God as Trinity. This occurs in one of the most mysterious passages in the Old Testament, which is Abraham’s encounter with the Lord by the oaks of Mamre (Gen 18:1-15). To illustrate this scene, we have chosen what is possibly the best known of all Russian icons. This is The Hospitality of Abraham, by Andrei Rublev (c1360-1430), painted about the year 1411. It is often known simply as Rublev’s Icon of the Holy Trinity.

Icons are not pictures in any ordinary sense of the word. They are ‘written’ in prayer, written in a sense ‘from God’ as windows through which we allow God to look upon us and speak to us. Because of this icons are for prayer, devotion and contemplation rather than for analysis or for teaching. If teaching and analysis do take place, as here in the ‘Teaching through Art’ series, it is only for the sake of insight into divine mystery and thus to deeper devotion.

This is the second of a new series of Learning through Art articles based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church for the Year of Faith. The first of the series looked at the logo that should be, and usually can be, found on the front cover of the Catechism. The next four articles will be looking at the four images that are included to introduce each of the four parts of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.[i]

We are beginning with the image used to introduce Part four, the Part on Christian Prayer.[ii] We begin with Part four, rather than part one, for various reasons:

1) All catechesis is to begin with prayer and is for prayer, that is, it is for that encounter with Christ that changes one’s life for ever, for that longed-for filial relationship with One’s heavenly Father.
2) The picture teaches us the Trinitarian nature of the prayer of a Christian which is with Christ, in the Holy Spirit, to the Father, by which we can cry out Abba!
3) This part introduces us to the Lord’s Prayer which is called a summary of the gospel. We start, therefore, with this image, that sums up prayerfully the whole of the Good News.[iii]

Fresco of woman with HaemorrhageThis fresco image is very simply drawn and easily passed over because of this simplicity. It is, however, worth pausing to look at the few details for these details illustrate extraordinary messages the Church has found in this event told in the Scriptures.

This fresco can be seen in the catacombs of Sts Marcellinus and Peter in Rome, dating from the beginning of the fourth century. Catacomb art reveals truths about the faith of these earliest Christians that are valuable for us to consider. For example, much of the fresco art is found in the cubicles made for Christian family burials. The art, rather than indicating the identity of the family, frequently turns the viewer towards the message of Christ and his Church, so much so that the family name is unknown. It is as if fresco art were saying, ‘For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God’ (Col.3:3).

his sarcophagus, from around 330-350 AD is proclaiming the Christian faith and hope in an extraordinarily powerful manner. In catechesis it can best be used, perhaps, for demonstrating that the Christians of the fourth century lived and believed the very same faith we teach today. In the fourth century they could finally proclaim freely and openly what had been lived and believed during the first centuries of persecution.

In this piece of carving one can see faith in the Trinity, in the Incarnation, in Jesus as God the Son, in resurrection from the dead, in new life in Baptism, in the Eucharist, and in the Church led by St Peter. The carved front uses symmetry to display its beliefs, using the upper tier and the lower tier together in its proclamation.

This is the first time that these art pages have focused on stone carving and the stone carving being examined here is of a very particular type: the carving of stone tombs, big stone chests called sarcophagi, which was a tradition of the richer Roman families around the Empire, particularly in Rome.

In the last 150 years of the Roman Empire - ending in the year 410AD when the city of Rome was sacked by the Visigoths, led by Alaric - Christians of these richer families, gradually free from persecution, were able to have tombs carved that included scenes proclaiming their Christian belief and, especially, their hope in the resurrection from the dead brought about by Christ.

Pagan examples of these tombs tend to have hunting scenes and scenes of the Roman gods. The earliest Christian examples portray Christian scenes and symbols in a hidden manner that could be interpreted as Christian only by Christians but otherwise looked like typical pastoral scenes with vines and shepherds. The symbol of the fish was a very important indicator that the person entombed meant the scenes to be interpreted as Christian.

Pietro Perugino: The Handing of the Keys to St Peter painting.

The origins and role of the Papacy is a subject covered all too infrequently in catechesis. Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to England proved a stimulus for much debate over the Petrine Office and speaking ‘heart to heart’ the Holy Father demonstrated that this humble Vicar of Christ has much to teach all sections of society, believers and non believers alike. In the Sistine Chapel the fresco ‘the handing of the keys to St Peter’ was painted and through this masterpiece we can come to a better understanding of the origin and role of the Petrine Office.

Pietro di Cristoforo Vannuncci, better known as Pietro Perugino (1450-1523), was an Umbrian painter of the High Renaissance who realised the exceptional fresco entitled The Handing of the Keys to St Peter between 1481/2 in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican City, Rome. The fresco forms part of a series of mural decorations that gave the Sistine Chapel its original appearance. The frescoes, realised on the lateral walls of the Chapel, depict the story of salvation through the events in the Old Testament relating to the life of Moses and on the opposite wall the New Testament showing the major events in Christ’s life.

This series is commenting on the images used in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, images which are chosen for their significance and relevance for catechesis.

The series has already covered the miniature from the Monastery of Dionysius on Mount Athos that was chosen to introduce Part four on ‘Prayer’. It has also covered the oldest image of Our Lady found in the Catacombs of Priscilla.

This issue focuses on another image from the early Church, that is, the central section from the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus which was chosen to be at the beginning of Part three, ‘Life in Christ’.