Here, if the extraordinary truth is the Resurrection, then all the other details that surround it, and that seem to be precipitated by it, or to find their origin in it, are what we might call mundane truths.
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I mentioned a few entries ago “truths both mundane and extraordinary,” and here is something else about that. Sometimes a mundane truth can be just as important as an extraordinary truth, insofar as, when they appear in the same context, it is often the inclusion of the former that helps to convince us of the reality of the latter. For example, look at John’s account of the morning of the Resurrection. “Early in the morning on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb, and found the stone moved away from the tomb door. So she came running to Simon Peter, and that other disciple, whom Jesus loved; They have carried the Lord away from the tomb, she said to them, and we cannot tell where they have taken him. Upon this, Peter and the other disciple both set out, and made their way to the tomb; they began running side by side, but the other disciple outran Peter, and reached the tomb first. He looked in and saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Simon Peter, coming up after him, went into the tomb and saw the linen cloths lying there, and also the veil which had been put over Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths, but still wrapped round and round in a place by itself.”
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And so, when I think of that verse I mentioned earlier, when Jesus, on the cross, addresses his mother and the ‘beloved’ disciple, who are standing together nearby, in attitudes of mourning, and suggests to them that they become for each other, from that moment forward, as mother and son, in lieu of his own continued presence in the world, I imagine certain gestures, and movements, and even certain pauses between words, each of them varying in duration, as well as certain inflections that are given to the words, none of which is there in the text, in the scripture, but that can be intuited, or felt, and then reproduced by the imagination, so that what I see, as I read, is not unlike a dream or a movie that is unique to my own soul, since my imagination belongs to me alone, and yet is connected in oneness to anyone else who reads that verse, and likewise produces, in their own imagination, the particularities of the scene as the entirety of their person tells them those things would be.
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No mention is made of the size of the cross, how heavy it was, or what kind of wood was used in its making. We are not told whether Jesus fell under its weight, as he shouldered it, or of the logistics involved in nailing him to it and raising it from where it must have lain, on the ground, until it was standing in some fixed position. We are not told what Jesus looked like, or in what way the agony registered on his face, or if it registered at all. We are not told whether a fly alighted on him, while he hung there, or if a bird might have flown by, in the air, merely because it happened to have been in the vicinity at the time. We are not told of the precise coloring and shape of the rocks and the pebbles that might have been strewn here and there in the landscape. We are not told if there were bushes and vegetation. But we can dwell on these questions, and, by doing so, come to know, by way of our imagination, something more than we otherwise might about the friendship of God for us, because these questions are valid, arriving as they do out of a curiosity that is native to our condition, and helpful to our capacity for devotion, even if their answers cannot be known to us, and might be only incidental if they could.
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Here, for example, is all that the Gospel of John tells us of the moments between Pilate’s sentencing of Jesus, and the actual crucifixion.
“So Jesus went out, carrying his own cross, to the place named after a skull; its Hebrew name is Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on each side with Jesus in the midst.”
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For instance, if, as you read the gospels, you allow your imagination to be guided by the Holy Spirit, you will find that the scenes that you envision, at first limited to what is there only skeletally, on the page, will be colored by the singularity of your own experience and personhood, and will fill themselves in with truths both mundane and extraordinary.
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There are many such moments that aren’t mentioned in the gospels but whose presence and reality you can intuit, or feel, from the style of the writing, which I think is best described as reportage, or journalism, at least in those parts concerned with actions or events, and instances of dialogue, though it is true that the gospels are meant to function as evangelical documents. What I mean is that, even though much of what is described in the gospels is supernatural, it is recorded or communicated without sentimentality, but rather with a kind of coolness or detachment, and with the journalistic principle that one should refrain from editorializing, and instead allow events to speak for themselves. This remains true, I think, even if one doubts the veracity or historicity of the events described.
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There is even a tradition in the history of Western art known by the name of its subject, Mater Dolorosa, or Sorrowful Mother, which refers to Mary in relation to the sorrows in her life. An example of this would be Michelangelo’s Pietà, the sculpture in St. Peter’s Basilica, in Vatican City, that depicts a moment not mentioned in the gospels, but that we can imagine occurred, when the body of Jesus, after it has been taken down from the cross, is cradled by his mother as she beholds him.
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In Catholicism, in fact, tradition has given us four groups of ‘mysteries’ that refer to events in the life of Christ, and in the life of his mother, Mary, upon which any person who is reciting the Rosary is encouraged to meditate, or dwell, as they make their way through that prayer. One of these groups of mysteries is called the ‘Sorrowful Mysteries’. (The other three are the ‘Joyful,’ the ‘Glorious,’ and the ‘Luminous’).
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I say it “gives hope,” and I believe that, but I do not mean to suggest that it has no melancholy aspect, for to do so would be to deny what is perhaps most evident in that moment — that the fullness of the drama of the incarnation must include the depths of sorrow, as well as the heights of joy, otherwise God has not plunged himself, in the person of the Son, completely into the human condition, through which he completes the work of atonement that makes possible our salvation.
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And yet still he finds something he can do for her, the only thing he can do for her, something that, to me, when I think of it, seems at once obvious and yet amazingly hidden, as if only a person whose entire will has disappeared inside the love of which they are made, which is what Christ was, could think to do it, could see that it was necessary, in that moment, in those particular circumstances. And could effect it in such a way that it draws no attention to his plight, but instead gives hope to those who would sorrow over his plight.
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Here is a man who is in excruciating pain, who has been humiliated and mocked, abandoned by his friends, scourged, stripped of his clothes, so that he is naked except, perhaps, for a loincloth, and who is probably now gasping for the smallest amount of air, given the method of his execution, and the nature of the instrument of that execution (which would cause each instant of his straining to put pressure on his wounds, and increase his agony); and upon him is foisted the knowledge not only of his own sorry state, but also the fact that his mother, who gave birth to him and who loves him as a mother loves her child, and is now witnessing his torture, helpless to do anything for him but stand there, and be present for him, is experiencing unspeakable grief. And that he, too, is helpless to do anything for her.
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There is so much beauty in this moment, and in the phrasing and the ordering of the words that Jesus chooses in this moment, that I find it difficult to know how to begin to speak of it.
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When I say that he made arrangements for the welfare of his mother, I’m referring to this passage from the Gospel of John:
“When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, ‘Woman, behold thy son!’ Then saith he to the disciple, ‘Behold thy mother!’ And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.”
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I think again of Christ’s ‘passion,’ of how there was nothing tepid about his existence, how he lived life all the way up, even in the way he died, refusing the wine that had been mixed with gall (for its anesthetic properties) and exhausting himself so thoroughly, while he hung on the cross (and from the beating and scourging he endured on the way to the cross), that he was brought to the brink of death with relative swiftness (only six hours elapsed before he yielded his spirit). And yet it cannot be said, I don’t think, that he was overcome by this passion, or that he allowed himself to be possessed by it. For he had the wherewithal, or the presence of mind (I suppose I should say love) to make arrangements for the welfare of his mother, who, with one of his disciples, stood at the foot of the cross, and to ask his Father to forgive his executioners. Even when he cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me,” he was quoting the first line of Psalm 22, from the Hebrew scriptures, which begins in hopelessness but which ends with the speaker’s rescue, by God. So that even though this line, when spoken by Christ as he neared death, was an expression of his loneliness and abandonment, it also directed those who would hear it, and understand it, to recognize his suffering and death as things that had been divinely appointed, and to see in his situation the fullness of his purpose, or mission.
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Of course, ‘goodness’ is real, and a soul that yields itself entirely to passion will smother itself with the materiality of creation, and with the principles of nothingness and disorder that regard this materiality as an end in itself.
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When I was talking about dying young, and burning up one’s talent with verve, and without inhibition, I meant also to say this — that there is, if one wanted it, even a religious justification for this kind of life, insofar as what is wanted of a soul is not so much that it be ‘good,’ in some moralistic sense, as that it be fervent, and that it live life all the way up, and not vanish into some tepid existence, where comfort and avoidance of conflict, or pain, are all that seem to matter.
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For even if one is chaste in a literal sense, one does not diminish or abolish one’s sexuality. It is still there, as an energy, and in fact becomes more powerful to the degree that one cherishes it. Which is the entire point of chastity, to a person who has made a religious vow. A monk or a nun does not squander their sexual energy, but sacrifices the pleasure that would come from exercising it, in a conventional way, so that it can be directed or channeled toward a higher form of love — toward God, and toward humankind through God.
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Also, when I said that an artist should “safeguard” their talent, as a nun safeguards her chastity, I did not mean that they should not use it (for that is what talent exists for, to be used), but rather that they should build around it, through their conduct, and the way they orient themselves to life, a kind of wall or shield, so that the energy of which their talent is composed is there when they need it, and does not become degraded by an attitude that treats reality too casually, and with nonchalance.
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I should also say that I do not equate those artists who die young, and burn through their talent explosively, with those who would waste or destroy their talent through dissipation, for there is a difference between living hard, which is sometimes pleasurable (but not necessarily easy), and living indulgently, where ease and pleasure are the goal, and where the body and the ego are always protected, so that nothing in the person is made vulnerable, or endangered, though of course then the soul disappears under layers of self-deception.