To see God with the eyes of faith, through art

By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press

Need a spiritual recharge?
How about visiting the Worcester Art Museum?
About 40 people from various parishes in the diocese did that recently for an evening of reflection by Father Leo-Paul LeBlanc, pastor of St. Mary Parish in North Grafton and St. Philip Parish in Grafton. More people were interested, so he plans to offer it again in the summer.
    For now, let’s join Father LeBlanc’s tour.

“You all have been invited by God this evening,” Father LeBlanc says. “God has something for you to know and experience. Art is … a window to God. … In that frame of mind, we enter into the chapter room.”
This limestone room for conducting business, probably from a Cistercian community near Poitiers, France, dates back to about 1150-1190, Father LeBlanc says.  
The walls are bare, but features in the room provide one with points to ponder: two columns for the Old and New Testaments, four columns for the Gospels, which monks tried to memorize, he says. (Bibles were scarce. The printing press hadn’t been invented yet.)
Can you imagine living here, with few distractions? Father LeBlanc recalls a former candidate at the Trappist abbey in Spencer talking about fighting boredom. But, he maintains, only the ego is bored, never the spirit. Monks strove to die to EGO (Easing God Out), he explained.
    And monasticism grew. By the year 1153 there were 343 Cistercian monasteries, by 1200, almost 700. People hungered for God. Would that that was true today, Father LeBlanc laments, then says he thinks people are hungry, but don’t realize it.    


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    After a brief silence, the group moves to a 15th-century Venetian/Lombardic statue, apparently influenced by Pietro Lombardo and styles of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, which Father LeBlanc finds one of the museum’s most beautiful pieces. Mary is adoring the Christ Child asleep on her lap. Emphasizing his safety are her head and arms and the background arch.
    It calls to mind Psalm 131: “Truly I have set my soul in silence and peace. As a child has rest in its mother’s arms, even so my soul. O Israel, hope in the Lord both now and forever.”
    The group sings, “What Child is This?” (and would return to the statue to close the evening with Father LeBlanc singing “Salve Regina.”)

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    The third stop is a 19th-century stained glass window by John LaFarge, which the museum obtained from Mount Vernon Congregational Church in Boston. The window is based on a verse in the King James version of the Bible.  Father LeBlanc found the same verse as a footnote in hisown Catholic Bible: “For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool of Bethesda and troubled (stirred) the waters. Whoever then first after the stirring of the water stepped in was made whole” (Jn 5:4).
    “I would invite you to see … this pool as a metaphor of your soul,” Father LeBlanc says. “Prayer is a place of quiet and stillness inside ourselves. … The Holy Spirit stirs us to do God’s will.”
    The angel’s finger touches the water, and Father LeBlanc talks about familiar visuals of the finger of God: reaching to Adam’s finger in the Sistine Chapel Creation scene, and writing the 10 Commandments on the stone tablets, as recorded in Scripture (EX 31:18).
    “So tonight God has a word for you and he wants to write it on your heart,” Father LeBlanc says.
    “An angel is often a metaphor for God,” he continues, mentioning the Old Testament story of Jacob wrestling (Gn 32:23-32). “So the next time you wrestle with God, enjoy the wrestling. … Don’t get caught up in having to have the answer.”

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    Also from Mount Vernon Congregational is a Tiffany window called the “Angel of the Resurrection,” commissioned by a man in memory of his daughter, unveiled on Easter in 1899. The sermon that Easter was: “They shall walk with me in light.”
    “Since angels … see God’s face, it was appropriate to have (on the window) the quote, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God,’” Father LeBlanc says.
    “Even in heaven we’ll be human, but we will be divinized,” he says. “We are in the process of being divinized now. … I believe God calls us to be … human angels for others. … In Scripture, an angel is a messenger of God.”

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    The group moves to a painting of John the Baptist, which Father LeBlanc says was discovered in a closet – in All Saints Episcopal Church in Worcester.
    “They were going to put it out to a yard sale,” he says. Then someone said, “Let’s have someone at the art museum look at it.”
    The museum discovered that it was an original by Andrea del Sarto, the leading painter in Florence in the early-16th century. From Leonardo da Vinci, del Sarto adopted the “sfumato” (smoky) technique of blending colors so they melt into one another, which Father LaBlanc says gives a sense of mystery.
    The artist’s first large commission was of the life of John the Baptist, from a religious community called the Company of St. John the Baptist.
    John’s beauty in this painting can transport us to reflect on the glorified body that awaits us, Father LeBlanc says, adding that John’s wild hair reminds him of the twists and turns of life.
    The saint wears a crown which alludes to Bacchus, who also lived in the wild and was considered during the Renaissance to be a pagan prototype of Christ. But, Father LeBlanc says, “The crown to me is … the crown of victory: when we embrace Christ crucified, there we die with Christ in order to rise with him.”
    The red garment points to John’s martyrdom, a suffering we likely won’t be called to, “though we need to be prepared if that day comes,” Father LeBlanc says. But, he says, “many of us are called to a daily martyrdom … parents who get up in the middle of the night (to tend to their child) even if they don’t feel like it.”

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     The next stop is “The Calling of St. Matthew,” a painting that Father LeBlanc says is the only example in America of a dramatic narrative by Bernardo Strozzi, a Capuchin monk and one of the greatest early-17th-century Italian painters.
    “At the far right … we see Jesus,” Father LeBlanc says. “With a commanding gesture he bids Matthew to follow him.” The strongest light falls on Matthew, whose eyes are in contact with his Lord. His assistants continue counting money. Inserted into this is Jesus, who sometimes calls us out of our daily lives to follow him.

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    The group moves to a painting of the betrayal of Christ that Giulio Ceasare Procaccini painted between 1612-1620, probably part of a series depicting the Passion, Father LeBlanc says.
    “In the back you see Judas, who places his arm around Christ’s shoulder,” he says. “The vivid colors, the shadow and light, the dramatic movement with a downward pull” – everything seems to be in the control of the mob and Judas. “But Jesus is not focused on being taken away. His focus is where it has always been – looking up toward his Father.”
     Father LeBlanc says this reminded him of when he had atrial fibrillation.
    “I knew at that moment that my life was in God’s hands,” he says. “My life was always in God’s hands.” But he didn’t always recognize that. “By our baptism we no longer belong to ourselves and we no longer belong to the world. … We belong to God.”

    During the visit, an art museum worker notes there is free admission the first Sunday of each month, and Father LeBlanc encourages all to come back, just sit and enjoy.

    But the reasons for doing so go deeper than a good time. Father LeBlanc tells The Catholic Free Press afterwards why he offered the evening of reflection: “It was primarily to give people a spiritual experience … to see God with the eyes of faith, through art.”

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