Idea for a novel: a woman visits a museum one afternoon, and sees on a wall in one of the many rooms, a painting done in oils of a person who looks exactly like her, though the subject or model that the artist had in mind, when completing the work, couldn’t have been her, for the artist lived several centuries before, in a different country, and never could’ve known this woman, the one viewing the painting now, so that she, the heroine of the novel, experiences a series of emotions that begins to disrupt the pattern of her life, and that causes her to return to the museum each day, to sit in front of the painting, until finally she is old, without friends or family, and yet not what she would call alone.
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To be pure is not to be unintelligent, or even unknowing, but to have buried one’s intelligence and knowingness in a docility or obedience before God, not man.
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I think you have to be pure, like a child, for Our Lady to appear to you. Juan Diego and Bernadette Soubirous, for example, I can imagine both being that way, like children. That is just a certain kind of saintliness. There are other kinds of saintliness, also.
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If I could only lose myself in charity, and forget everything else, and yet still conduct my daily business, or affairs, or what-have-you…
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Thomas Aquinas described charity as “the friendship of man for God” and “the most excellent of the virtues.”
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Ah, charity. The virtue that eludes me more than any other.
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There are still people who impress me, and still persons I look up to and love, though mostly I’ve had it with everything and everyone, myself included.
I know that statement is wanting in charity.
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Flannery O’Connor once said, “The Catholic novelist believes you destroy your freedom by sin; the modern reader believes, I think, that you gain it in that way.”
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Now, the words of scripture are sufficient in themselves; they need no illustration in order to achieve their aim, which in the New Testament is evangelical. And yet there is a long tradition of scriptural illustration. And that is not surprising. And I know for certain that some of the drawings and paintings I’ve encountered at different points in my life, and that depict Biblical scenes, have allowed me, through the beauty of their witness, to enter into a contemplation of their subjects.
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But to return to John, and my reasons for illustrating his gospel. There is also something about his way of telling the story, something about his cadences and rhythms, and his sense of metaphysics (which is unique among the evangelists) that appeals to me on an artistic level. I felt attracted to the idea of representing his gospel visually.
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At the same time, just because a text is non-canonical does not mean it cannot have theological value, or even personal spiritual value. I became interested in the gnostic gospels, especially the Gospel of Thomas, when I was in my twenties, and the effect was not pernicious, but rather heightened my interest in scripture, and deepened my understanding of faith.
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Or maybe I will say only one thing about it, which is this: the resurrection of Christ is central to the Catholic faith. Therefore, any account of the life of Jesus that omits this event, or avoids addressing it, or, in emphasis, does not locate it as the climax of the Jesus story, but instead suggests that his mission or purpose can be regarded without presenting the resurrection as an actual, historical occurrence, and the divine part of his nature as fact, cannot be included among the canonical gospels, though such accounts might be viewed differently by those who belong to other faiths.
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There are, of course, non-canonical gospels, such as those that comprise what is known as the Nag Hammadi library. There is much to be said about this subject, and maybe I will say some things about it.
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The word synoptic comes from the Greek, meaning seeing or viewing together.
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I’ll say this. The Gospel of John is, to a Christian, no more or less important than any other book in the Bible, insofar as the Bible is scripture, and therefore holy in its entirety. Why then choose this particular book to illustrate, rather than a different one? I suppose I wanted to do one of the four gospels. The other three — Matthew, Mark and Luke — are known as the ‘synoptic gospels,’ meaning the three of them together are recounted in much the same way. This does not make them less important, or essential, as accounts of the life of Jesus, for they do have variations here and there, and even without their variations they represent multiple testimonies. But choosing one of them to illustrate would’ve introduced me to an additional dilemma. Which of the three to choose, if all three of them are similar? By choosing John I was able to avoid that question.
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I’d thought I might have something to say about this illustration project, this work I’ve been doing on the Gospel of John, but to speak of it unprompted is difficult. It has become so much a part of my life that there could be thousands of ways to begin talking about it. And yet, on the other hand, maybe there is nothing to say about it. It proceeds, is all. And I am there to make sure it goes along.
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That I can ever complete the journey from my chair to the door of my apartment, having decided to get up and go to it, does not bear out logically. And yet it seems to happen.
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This puts me in mind of Zeno’s paradox against motion, wherein an arrow that is shot from a bow can never reach its target, for it must first traverse half the distance, and, before that, half of half the distance, and, before that, half of half of half the distance, and so on, ad infinitum. Mathematically, the arrow’s journey should be impossible to complete.
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Although, of course, the ruins one sees in the countryside, for example, were not always ruins, but at one time were complete and finished cities, or castles, or what-have-you. Or, anyway, were as complete and as finished as any architectural work can be. Completion is something of an illusion. There is always a brick whose mortar could use a little retouching, or a cobblestone that doesn’t quite fit, and that could have been replaced before the workers packed their tools and their equipment, and went away.
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I remember reading somewhere about an artist or a writer who insisted on the fragmentary nature of their work, meaning, I think, that they viewed their own aesthetic as a means by which to foreground the unfinished, like the ruins one sees in the landscape of a country whose history is visible in glimpses.