The Sacred Heart of Jesus
I first saw
the statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in France, I think. Soon I was to see
many of them; almost any Catholic church I went into would have one. Although I
perceived that image as somewhat weird (for an Eastern Orthodox), with a
three-dimensional heart sitting on the chest, I was drawn to it somehow.
An Eastern Orthodox
typically objects the devotion to the Sacred Heart on the grounds that a heart
is a part of the body and we are devoted to the whole Christ (to venerate a
bodily part is a kind of heresy some say). I must say the objection made a
sense to me, although not for the theological reason but because the heart of Jesus,
being venerated separately from Him, did not work for me psychologically. My
attitude changed when I read the words of Christ addressed to St. Margaret Mary
Alacoque (1647-1690, France) in a vision of Him with His heart being visible:
“Behold
the Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting
and consuming Itself, in order to testify Its love; and in return, I receive
from the greater part only ingratitude, by their irreverence and sacrilege, and
by the coldness and contempt they have for Me in the Eucharist.”
Then I
understood that the Heart depicted outside of the body, pierced and squeezed by
the Crown of Thorns, with the Cross on the top of it aflame and with the rays
of light coming from it is simply a symbolic expression of the emotional
suffering of the Son of Man caused by His love for us and not just that – it
is an invitation to the painfully (for the human with a heart) real relationship
with Him. It is a symbolic expression of the Love of God Who suffers
because His Sacrifice, made out of His burning love for the humanity, has been
rejected, mocked, ignored or otherwise abused by most. It is an utmost
expression of the vulnerability of God, God Who can be vulnerable only
in Incarnation.[2]
Precisely
because in the Person of Christ both Man and God are vulnerable it is so
important for the statue of the Sacred Heart not to be sweetly sentimental, I
think. Far from conveying “sweetness”, it is supposed to convey the pain of the
Man and the pain of God Who has exhausted all means for winning the love of His
creatures and yet is still being denied by so many. There is nothing left; God
died so that men could live and nothing can be added to that fact. One
can detect an anger in the words of Christ to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque –
again, very understandable anger at the loss of the souls and possible
relationships – all that despite the bloody Sacrifice.
I would
like to highlight a very human aspect of the message given by the Son of Man to
the French mystic. It is entirely normal, for a human psyche, to love and to desire
reciprocal love; it is normal, when one loves someone, to wish for them all
possible good and to try to save them from a mortal danger; it is normal to be
beside oneself if one sees that the other is turning his back on the sacrifice
which is also the means of their salvation from the eternal death. Finally, it is
normal, for a normal man, to reveal his vulnerability, to risk, stating his
love and revealing his pain at the loss. Yes, Jesus as He is depicted on the image
of the Sacred Heart is risking to bring even more mockery and spite upon
Himself – if He is God how can He be like that? Isn’t God is supposed to be far
above, not “needing” anything, not heartbroken or at least not exposing Himself
like that?
Yet if one wants a true relationship, one he must be true to who he is. To enter into the relationship with Jesus Christ means to know about His pain as well as about His majesty and omnipotence. And not just that: one must also repent and change within themself that what causes Him pain. Such repentance and reparation have nothing legalistic about that – it is simply a necessary ground or condition for the real relationship (to insist that the true relationship does not need such a ground is, according to human psychology, a hallmark of emotional abuse). In this respect God is not different from us. It would be impossible to be in a true, meaningful relationship with someone who repeatedly and deliberately offends us and does not even think of repenting and repairing the damage to the relationship. It would be impossible because if we can do that then one of the following is true: either we do not care about our own pain and dignity (typically covering it by the thought that we are very compassionate or “above” such things) or the other person does not care about our pain and dignity, or both.
Whatever it
is, there is no real relationship there but a pretense, a fake, not a meeting
of two persons. Fundamentally, it is a denial of one’s personhood and that of
the other, always perpetuated for the purpose of obtaining some benefit. While such
a shell of a relationship is possible between humans, it is impossible between
a human and Christ. First, because Christ can deny neither His own Personhood
nor the personhood of the other. Second, Christ does not just give some
benefits = some good to humans, he Himself is the ultimate Good. He is the Way
to eternal life and He is that Life Himself hence no one can get anything out
of Him while not seeing Him as a Person. Here God checkmates humans with their
inclination to care about the benefits of the relationship much more than about
their source, to the point of forgetting about the source’s existence. “You
want a true good – then you have to relate to Me, the only source of all true
good i.e., to face Me and see yourselves as you are in the light of that Truth”
– says God in Christ.
And, if in the
case of two people a fake of a relationship means “only” the loss of a true human
connection, in the case of Jesus Christ a fake of a relationship with Him means
a loss of literally everything including the possibility of theosis, because
that transformative process into likeness to God is only possible via a relationship
with the Person of Christ Who, via a relationship with Him, transforms the
human psyche, re-creating the person as he was supposed to be.
To sum it
up, the denial of personhood (one’s own and of the other) via refusal to feel and
acknowledge the hurt (one’s own and of the other including Christ) and to deal
with the evil that caused the hurt is effectively a refusal of true theosis and
instead, an acquirement of its oblique imitation, a nice substitute, something
that has some seemingly higher qualities (or even “god-like” as some think) like
being “above” the hurt, being “forgiving”, being nice benefactors of those who
clearly want only the benefits and do not care about the benefactors even to
the point of abusing them and so on. God after all is supposed to be benevolent
and nice; he distributes the goods from above without asking anything in return
hence the unconscious superiority and entitlement of a “nice” person
that grows out of the sense of vague affinity with the imaginary “higher” or
“divine” qualities.
A
superior figure
Ironically,
this phenomenon is trivial and well known to clinical psychology. It is someone
who, from a tender age, has been conditioned by her caregivers to forfeit
herself – the so-called true or real self[3] – together with her own legitimate needs, for
the sake of being pleasing to others and catering to their own emotional needs.
A grown victim of emotional abuse (making a child to give up herself is a form
of the most insidious abuse), taught that being “nice”[4]
is the only acceptable mode of existence, typically does not react in a normal
way to a pain in her adult life. She habitually minimizes or reinterprets emotional
pain (not just her but also other’s) because she was conditioned not to
validate and to express it as it is “not a nice thing to do”. Being “not nice”
that is, a helpless abandoned “outcast”, is her deepest unconscious fear; on
the surface though she lies to herself saying that she is not afraid, she is simply
“above” the pain and the abuser, she is just a very nice person, even God-like perhaps
because she is so selfless, above her own needs.
In reality
though a nice victim derives her sense of self (a fake self) and self-worth
from her non-confronting the abuse so she is not selfless at all. Far from
being above the abuser, she depends on him – “a nice person” depends on the
“evil one” for her (fake) validation and this is why she continues enabling the
abuse. Her feeding her own fake self – not the real self that feels the pain
and wants it to stop – enables the evil to continue.
Very
importantly, “being nice” for such a person is not just a learnt mode of
existence and a source of (perverse, based on a self-delusion)
self-gratification but also a means of manipulation and control of others.
It is a bullet-proof method precisely because it is so “nice”. It is very
difficult, for most people , to confront such a “nice person” who packs her
subtle manipulation in the recognition of one’s grandeur conveyed by
unrestrained admiration and exaggerated phrase.
To expose
the true worth of such a nicety, I invite the reader to consider it in the
light of Jesus Christ:
-
Christ
uses His pain as a tool for the supreme Good, confronting with it the evil in
the believer. A “nice” victim suppresses her pain for the sake of “nicety”.
-
Christ
is direct in His demands. A “nice” victim engages in indirect manipulation.
-
Christ
is painfully clear and realistic about the state of the souls He deals with. The
victim of abuse habitually glosses over the abuser so she would be able to
continue “being nice” to him. In fact, she glosses over just anyone for the
sake of being able to remain “nice”.
-
Christ
goes out of Himself to cause people to relate to Him as He truly is (this is
why He allowed them to kill Him; if, hypothetically speaking, He gave up His
Self He would not be killed). A “nice” victim is desperately trying to hide
behind her fake self.
-
Christ
does not avoid the risk of being seen as “not nice”, for the sake of the good
of the other. The “nice” victim is terrified of being seen as not nice so she
habitually sacrifices the good of the other (and her own good) for the sake of
her “nice” image.
The list
could be very long. It will suffice to say that every vector of a heroic action
of Christ Who is trying to save humans from the deadening fakes and,
ultimately, from the eternal death has its counterfeit, a parody in the action
of a “nice” person. Most important among those opposing vectors, to me, are of Christ
attempting to shake others out of the fakes = their fake selves via bringing
them into His (true) reality for the sake of a true relationship,
attachment, connection while a “nice” person desperately avoids any true reality,
any possibility of being seen as she is and of seeing others as they are –
avoids via “nicely” gliding over their surface.
A seeming
connection, a seeming relationship is a deception, a lie that stands
here in the opposition to the truth, of the inconsiderate and “not nice”
demands of the Lord.
This is why
I think our salvation is not something that can be simply obtained, in baptism
and then via going to the church on “the days of obligation”. That would be too
easy, for us. No, to become grafted into Christ means to suffer the pain of
seeing our own hopeless unsuitability for such a graft and yet to remain there,
in that unbearable true reality where the evil must be confronted and burnt
down in by light of Christ. A human being is saved of course via accepting the
Salvation in Christ yet he must be saved in progression so to speak, via
allowing the Person of Christ to transform his person in a constant and
conscious communion with Him. This process is well-known and described in
detail by many mystics, Catholic and Orthodox, yet it is the path that all must
take I believe. It is a process of removing our stony, numb, “nice” hearts and
replacing them with the living, feeling hearts.
To sum up,
a relationship with Christ is a relationship with Someone Who has a heart
and Who is trying to relate to you while seeing you as you are, despite your
vileness yet not ignoring it. He does love you yet He is desperate for you to
be raised up from your stinky swamp of self-destructive actions and thinking because
to do otherwise would be to abandon you. Yes, paradoxically, a confrontation
of one’s sin is a manifestation of an attachment while the ignoring one’s sin
is a manifestation of an abandonment albeit veiled but precisely because of
that even more destructive. It is, in essence, “too painful to face it”, “not seeing
is more convenient for me” and, of course “I am afraid of not being nice”. It
is thoroughly selfish and the exact opposite of the “non-niceness” of Jesus Christ.
Why am I
writing this? – Because without it as a background it would not be possible to
examine a relatively new phenomenon, a Christ without a heart.
A Christ
without a heart
In a
preparation for the examination, it is important to recall an obvious point, that
the Sacrifice of God for men has been done. It was accomplished,
accepted by some, preached around the world. That very fact, of the death of
the Son of Man and the Son of God on the Cross, killed by humans, has been
depicted exactly as it happened by countless Christian artists. The depiction
of the figure of a man in a crown of thorns nailed to the cross, with his side
being pierced and bloody liquid pouring out is probably the most recognizable
image in the world. It is completely meaningless to the world yet if you ask
anyone what is depicted, most would say “This is a crucifixion of Christ.
Christians believe He is God.” The more educated may add that Christians
somehow see the death of that man on a cross as the salvation of the human
race. He died to save the world. Believe in him and you will be saved. This
thesis makes no sense to non-believers of course but the narrative related by
them is as recognizable to Christians as a regular depiction of the
Crucifixion.
Christ of
the vision of St Margaret Mary Alacoque did not appear to her dead on a Cross.
He appeared as He is now, after the Resurrection but with the marks of the
Crucifixion on His body, confined by His love and mercy to wait until the time
runs out, offering His Heart = His Love to all. “See Me as I AM, the suffering Person,
I suffer because I have to see my creatures perishing by their own choice. You
could have the fullness of love in eternity with Me, the Source of Life but you
are choosing death because you are choosing yourself, your fake self. This is a
deception of the devil and it is unbearable for Me to see.” It is, in essence,
an offer of an ultimate secure attachment, to the humanity that numbed
itself to its core need, of being attached.
The
Scriptures understand the heart as the spiritual center of each human being. A
heart, good or evil, is who a person is. “For out of the heart proceed evil
thoughts, murders, adulteries…”[6].
Hence the image of the Sacred Heart can also be interpreted as Jesus Christ
offering His very core, Who He Is. There are also other interpretations which
connect the image of the Sacred Heart with His Love that finds its utmost expression
in His establishment of the Sacrament of the Eucharist; the revelations of the
Sacred Heart to the mystics very often have references to the Eucharist and to
its abuse. Christ loved us so much that He left for us not just “remembrance”
of His Last Supper but Himself in the Eucharist, until the end of time. (It is
legitimate albeit very chilling to say that the Love of His Heart made Him
leave His Heart, in the Holy Communion, for us.)
Hence the
image of the Sacred Heart also has the ancient connotation, of the very core of
our faith – of the Eucharist that began even before the Gospels were written
and the Creed formulated. I repeat, the Eucharist is the very core of our faith
because in it we receive Christ Himself. This is possible only because of His Heart
= because He loves us.
This
notion, of Him loving us to the end, has been known from the beginning of the
Christian Church. It is because He loved us, He did all that the Creed outlines.
There was no other reason whatsoever for Him to dwell among us and to die a
violent death.
Various
images of Him – frescos, icons, paintings created over centuries show Him not
as heartless although they do not show His heart. Since He was fully human it
was obvious that He had a heart. St John the Evangelist while leaning on His
breast during the Last Supper even heard that Heart beating in premonition of
the Passion. The tradition of the depiction the Sacred Heart as it is known now
came as a result of the visions of St Margaret Mary Alacoque but the devotion
to the Sacred Heart of Jesus itself was not new and did not proclaim anything theologically
new[7].
It attempted to restore the theological and psychological normality, urging
people to turn to the real God – not a cold and detached God of Jansenism[8]
but suffering, loving and compassionate God, in Christ – especially through the
Eucharist, repentance and reparation. It seems to me that true experiences of
true mystics, if we look at them through the centuries, always try to return
the diverted focus back to Christ the Person, Christ in His Sacred Humanity
(contrary to Gnostic attempts to reap Christ of His Humanity). And, if we have
the fullness of God’s revelation about Himself in Jesus Christ then it is
logical to assume that humans must strive to know more and more intimately that
last revelation, the Word of God = the Person of Christ[9].
Now to the
image of Christ without a heart at last.
This is the
original image[10]
called ‘The Divine Mercy’ as it was revealed in a vision to Sr Faustina in 1930s.
It depicts a Christ-like figure whose body position repeats the iconography of ‘The
Sacred Heart of Jesus’ (on the right). Unlike the Sacred Heart, the Christ-like
figure is lacking all typical attributes of Christ: stigmata (marks left by the
nails) and the shape of the Cross in the halo, a symbol of His Crucifixion[11].
Those attributes allow the viewer to know for sure that the depicted is Christ.[12]
Although
the iconography of the figure on ‘The Divine Mercy’ painting was clearly copied
from the iconography of the ‘Sacred Heart’, the very point of the original
iconography – the Heart – is missing. There is nothing there and from that nothing
two rays are coming out, red and white.
While (assuming
that the depicted is Christ) the rays are a reference to the blood and water which
came from the side of Christ after His death of the Cross when the Roman
soldier pierced His side here, in the context of the alive figure without a
wound the reference looks out of a place. Iconographically, it is as strange as
a depiction of the resurrected Christ not just with the nail marks but with the
blood gushing out of where the nail marks would be. Or even more to the
point of the discussed image of the Divine Mercy: the depiction of the
Resurrected Christ without the marks of nails but with the blood gushing from
the places the marks are supposed to be.
I wrote
this and thought that some may perceive my thoughts as being simplistic – two
rays, red and white, here are the symbols, after all. The problem is that in
Christianity symbols always represent the reality behind them; they cannot be
separated, severed from that reality and placed in a different context without
changing their meaning and even the reality they convey. And the reality is
that the real blood and water were poured out from Our Lord’s side at a
particular time and place. Those facts the early Church has symbolically
interpreted as pointing to the two major sacraments, Baptism and
Eucharist together with the birth of the Church from the side of the Lord[13].
However, no matter how the blood and water poured out of the side of Christ are
interpreted, their interpretations have their source in the fact, primary to
the symbolism and awful in its medical reality: Christ truly died and it was
Crucifixion and ataxia that made his body accommodate a huge amount of water
and this is why blood and water poured in abundance. Blood and water belong to
the moment of His death; they are a confirmation of the reality of His death,
of the real Human, on the Cross, the accomplishment of His mission. This is why
they have never been depicted coming out of the living Christ or “symbolically”
like rays or lines or something else like the Eucharistic Cup and a baptismal
font.
But why the
image of the Divine Mercy must have those two rays? (I will note here in
passing that I do not remember even a single image of Crucifixion where water and
blood were depicted separately. I do not even think such images exist.) From
the diary of Sr Faustina:
“Those
two rays denote Blood and Water. The pale ray stands for the Water which makes
souls righteous. The red ray stands for the Blood which is the life of souls.”
So indeed,
they are not blood and water but the symbols of the blood and water.
I read and
reread this quote several times. A strange construct “two rays are the symbols
of blood and water and the blood and water are the symbols of the Eucharist and
Baptism” that emerged in my mind as a result of reading and looking at the
image of ‘The Divine Mercy’ sent my mind into stupor. Until the Divine Mercy cult,
we had the dead Christ on the Cross with clearly depicted Blood and Water, not
their symbols, coming out of His side, giving birth to the real Church with
its real Sacraments; the real Blood and Water can be symbolically interpreted
as two Sacraments. Now, according to the Divine Mercy, we have a symbolic
representation of Blood and Water coming out of the living figure and “giving
birth” to the reality (or the unreality?) of the Blood and Water so to speak. Perhaps
it happened because the two Sacraments were not named. Indeed, I assumed that
they were meant. Whatever it is, in the first case (the death of Christ) the
reality is a source of a symbol, in the second case (the Divine Mercy) the
symbol, severed from the reality, seems to be trying to re-create (or create a new)
reality, at least on the painting.
In an attempt to pin down something oblique that I perceived there, something that keeps changing its shape and impossible to pin down without placing it in a context of something solid and definite, I brought the discourse almost to the level of free associations. The question remains, why the symbols of Blood and Water, what is the need to use them? In Christian art the clothes of Christ are conventionally given blue and red colours out of the need to convey the dogma of His two natures, human and divine. It is impossible to convey this dogma otherwise than via symbolism, in this case the symbolism of colours. Yet it is perfectly possible to paint blood and water without implementation of the symbols. Blood and water can be depicted not necessary very realistically yet in a way that they remain such and not being transformed into something ethereal like rays.
I wrote
this paragraph and realized that the source of the absurd construct “two rays
are the symbols of blood and water and the blood and water are the symbols of
the Eucharist and Baptism” was the image of ‘The Divine Mercy’ itself. Even
though the passage “Those two rays denote Blood and Water. The pale ray stands
for the Water which makes souls righteous. The red ray stands for the Blood
which is the life of souls.” is murky, there are at least the words, Blood and Water
are there, however interpreted. On the painting there is nothing, the last
reference to their reality disappears.
It appears
that my intuition was correct. To check the explanation of the rays again, I
read the whole entry from Sr Faustina’s ‘Diary’:
“Jesus
said in the first line, the rays symbolize His Blood and Water. “The pale ray
stands for the Water which makes souls righteous. The red ray stands for the
Blood which is the life of souls. These two rays issued forth from the
depths of My tender mercy when My agonized Heart was opened by a lance on
the Cross. Happy is the one who will dwell in their shelter, for the just hand
of God shall not lay hold of him.”
Hence two
rays, red and white, appear to be the only reality – during the death of the
speaker and after it. Not the Sacraments which the rays “denote” but the rays
which “makes souls righteous” and “the life of souls”. It is
tempting to comment that the statement which seems to say that those who dwell within
those rays will not be judged by God, but I will refrain from it for several
reasons, one of them is that the passages are constructed so skillfully and
murkily that it is perfectly possible to claim that by the two rays the
Eucharist and Baptism were meant – although not being judged by God has never
been promised to those who are baptized and receive the Eucharist.
Instead of
engaging in a theological argument I would like to invite the reader to compare
the murky passage with the real words of Christ. Take the statement “The pale
ray stands for the Water which makes souls righteous. The red ray stands for
the Blood which is the life of souls.” and try to understand how it may relate
to your spiritual life, your personal relationship with God. Then, after
labouring for a while, take the words of Christ: “Truly, truly, I say to you,
unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no
life in you.”[14]
Here, being exposed against the true words of the Lord, the words “the red ray
stands for the Blood which is the life of souls” somehow look as… totally
unnecessary, being separated from the gross reality which made the majority of
the followers of Christ leave Him. They would not leave Him if He extracted
some mana or “energy” from heaven and said “partake it and be saved”. What I am
trying to convey here is the extremely direct and personal character of the
words of Our Lord Who names things as they are. Furthermore, His words reflect
Him to the extreme. He is real in His words. It is the concrete and personal
character of His words (and Himself) in the Gospels that make the words related
by Sr Faustina impersonal and unconvincing.
“But”,
someone could remind me, “it is simply an explanation of the symbolism of the
two rays on ‘The Divine Mercy’ image.” To which I answer, “Very well, but what
relevance has it to us, to our relationship with the Lord? Do the vision, the
image and the words give us anything we lack?
* * *
Before I
looked into the explanation of two rays on the painting, I somehow thought they
would have something unique to do with the Divine Mercy. Those who practice
that devotion say that 3.00pm, the time of the death of Christ on the Cross, is
the hour of the extreme outpouring of the Divine Mercy. Then it appears that
those rays are simply an indicator of the death of Christ on the Cross. His
death is the utmost expression of the Divine Mercy thus the attribute of that
death. This is not what I read in the materials of the Divine Mercy cult but my
attempt to explain the iconography logically.
However,
why in this particular moment is the Divine Mercy at its pinnacle? The
Incarnation of Christ in our world was the action of the utmost mercy so as His
whole life with us in its totality – His ministry, His Passion and Crucifixion
which culminated in His death. And even if someone insisted that it is not so,
it was still Him = the divine mercy incarnated, dwelling with us because He chose
to be born to sacrifice Himself for us; He has spent His earthly life knowing
and willingly choosing that end.
What I mean
is that Christ is the divine mercy incarnated, its personification. And not
just mercy – Love first and foremost, Love that includes mercy and its many
other aspects like justice, the Love of God the Father. If it is so, the red
and white rays can add nothing to His Person because any true icon of Him is
the icon of the divine mercy as well, in His Person. In fact, we even have the
icons called ‘Christ the Merciful’ and ‘Christ All-Merciful’.
Suddenly,
looking at the icon ‘Christ the Merciful’ I understood. Indeed, Christ the
merciful is the merciful Person, not “the Mercy”. Mercy is lesser than
Love, than God who is Love. This is why you cannot paint Christ and call the
image ‘The Divine Mercy’[15].
To do that is to reduce the real Christ, God to one aspect and even more so –
an aspect processed through the fallen human psyche. It is, in essence, making
out of God someone one-dimensional, a tool for some purpose instead the
Purpose. And this is what ‘The Divine Mercy’ appears to do.
And even if
I am wrong in my line of thoughts the confusion remains: if 3.00pm was a
particular moment of the outpouring of the Divine Mercy why do we need a new, quite
questionable, image if we already have the iconography of the Divine Mercy
known since the birth of Christianity that shows the very moment of the
death of Christ at 3.00pm, with the stream of blood and water being poured out
of Christ’s side?
How is the
picture of Christ-like figure standing in the darkness superior to the
depictions of the death of Our Lord (does it add anything to them)? Or to the image
‘Christ’s Descent into Hell’ on which Christ breaks into Sheol and releases the
imprisoned since the Fall humans out of it?
But this is
not all. Apart from painted images of the Divine Mercy, we also have a three
dimensional moving image, two streams, water and wine being poured now during
every Eucharist as a clear reference to the coming Golgotha. I wrote it and had
a sudden thought: what if we need that new strange image precisely because one
cannot avoid the true death of the Lord on the images of the Crucifixion or
during the Mass. Or, comparing ‘The Divine Mercy’ with the iconography of the Sacred
Heart, perhaps we simply need now a less involved, non-suffering and
consequentially non-demanding Christ, a “nice” Christ. This is why we need an
image which shows only the fruits of death, two Sacraments severed from the bleeding
Body of Christ and grafted onto some strange Christ-like figure. Or, more
correctly, two “symbols”, the rays of something. No pain, the figure is “nice”
and all that is required is to trust in the depicted.
I cannot
prove my point with the words but I will try to prove it with the picture. I
had a sudden idea to paint two rays on the image of the Crucifixion. Here it
is.
The rays
here of course look out of a style yet they do not render the figure of the
Crucified “a non-Christ” and do not make Crucifixion “unreal”. Furthermore, they
are immediately read by Christians as blood and water. It is the real Christ on
the Cross i.e., not Gnostic Christ but the real Christ Who make the two rays
blood and water. So as usual it is all about the presence of the real
Christ.
A double
When I was
studying the material related to the revelation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to
St Mary Margaret Alacoque one painting immediately stood out to me [first
below], not because of its artistic merits (although it is impressive in its
very corporal force) but because it reminded me of another image [second below]
well known in both Western and Eastern traditions.
This is the
image ‘Doubting Thomas’ or ‘The Assurance of St Thomas’ as it is called in the
Eastern tradition.
I am not
sure how I made that association. The postures of Christ are very similar
indeed. On the first image He is showing to St Margaret Mary His suffering
Heart; on the second He offers St Thomas to put his fingers into His wound (from
which the Blood and Water were issued) and to verify that it is Him in flesh
and blood and not just the spirit. I have never thought by the way of St Thomas
as “unfaithful” – quite contrary, he stands to me as one who said when others
were scared of Jesus’s determination to go to Jerusalem where He would be
killed “Let us go and die with Him”. St Thomas was not present in the room when
Jesus appeared to the apostles after His resurrection so his doubts are understandable,
I think[16].
An icon
‘The Assurance of St Thomas’, in the context of the many Gnostic heresies[17]
which flooded the Church almost immediately after its birth, is for me the most
anti-Gnostic icon. Here is Christ, in flesh and blood, with His stigmata and
halo with the Cross looking at St Thomas and commanding him to make sure it is
Him. And here is St Thomas, trembling but doing what the Lord told him to do.
There are also witnesses.
The
painting shows St Margaret Mary Alacoque looking at the Sacred Heart of Jesus,
a very corporal Jesus is psychologically also very anti-Gnostic, to me. “It is
me, with the wound in My side and not just that – apart from being wounded on
the Cross I have also been wounded by the indifference by those for whose sake
I got those wounds. Look at my very humane heart, as well as divine”. St
Margaret Mary looks very much like St Thomas. The body and face of both have an
expression of recognition and awe. The Lord was merciful to show to St Margaret
Mary (and to us, via her) His suffering Heart just like He was merciful to show
His wounds to the doubting St Thomas. In essence, it is the depictions of the
meetings with the Resurrected Lord in flesh and blood.
When
analyzing ‘The Divine Mercy’ image I was not planning to write about the
liturgical change caused by that image and the cult, namely, the decision of John
Paul II to insert it into the last day of the Easter Octave calling it ‘The Divine
Mercy Sunday’. The Octave is celebrated as one long festive day of the
Resurrection of Christ. The eighth day of that period is called “Antipascha”
(“opposite Easter”) or “The Sunday of St Thomas” in the Eastern Orthodox
tradition; in the Roman Catholic tradition it is called ‘Low Sunday’. In both
Churches, Orthodox and Catholic, the liturgical readings are about the event of
the assurance of St Thomas. This is entirely logical and the massage is
fundamental to our faith: He is risen, we saw Him and touched Him. The
experience of St Thomas is probably the most corporal and graphic among such in
the Gospels and this is why it is so fitting for the conclusion of the Easter
Octave so as the words of Christ “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have
believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
A change of
St Thomas Sunday into The Divine Mercy Sunday caused strange oblique
incoherencies. The most obvious and discussed by many is the fact that now the
faithful have the Divine Mercy Novena, the nine days prayer which starts on
Passion Saturday. And so those who pray it (not so many yet) participate,
without knowing it, in a parallel something, a parallel to more than
twenty centuries of liturgical focus, of both Western and Eastern Churches, on
the real Easter events. Onto very corporal events of the death, Resurrection
and, most importantly, onto various accounts of those events by the witnesses
including very personal and emotionally charged interactions with the Risen
Lord in a particular place and time is being superimposed something oblique, a
solitary Christ-like figure with the “symbols” of blood and water, self-absorbed,
without the marks of Passion or the Cross or witnesses. Somehow that clean, lifeless
figure is called “The Divine Mercy” and now this image is swopped with the
image of Thomas putting his fingers into the flesh of the risen Christ or the
image of the Resurrection.
And, since
the image called ‘The Divine Mercy’ is actively distributed in the churches
during the time of the new novena (which begins on Passion Saturday and continues
for the whole Easter Octave), first on the novena cards and then, finally,
solemnly erected in front of an altar on the last day of the Octave, it is naturally
being perceived as an image of the Resurrected Lord. That means, the image
of the ‘Divine Mercy’ has somehow pushed away not just the Sunday of St Thomas
but the Resurrection of Christ as it was known to the Church for more than twenty
centuries.
By no means
am I saying “look, faithful, there is a deliberate conscious swap here, of a
true image of Our Lord with something very questionable, a kind of an
imposter”. No, what I am saying is that with the approval of the Divine Mercy
cult and especially with the changes within the most important period of the
liturgical year, its heart as well as the heart of our faith, some oblique,
shadowy area was created – a space for a double perhaps – where until recently
has been only the assuring bright light of the Resurrection. I say “oblique”
because it is so hard to pin it down with words. If I say (as some Roman
Catholics do, expressing their surprise with the change) that it is not really
a good idea to insert the Feast of the Divine Mercy into the Easter Octave the
answer would be “But it is not new, isn’t God merciful and the Easter is a time
of great mercy?” If I say “St Thomas’s Sunday is obliterated in effect” the
answer would be “It is not, we still have the readings”. Yes, we still do but
we also have something else now and the most important, to my mind, is that something
else or “someone else” does not fit the Octave. He is too superficial
and “nice” – the qualities which become apparent only when being compared with
the real Christ and His Church’s treatment of Him.
It is not the “sweetness” that makes the image of the Divine Mercy questionable
– the original is not particularly sweet and we have plentiful overly sweet
images of Christ produced in 19-20cc. in the West, especially of the Sacred Heart.
However sweet and tasteless those images are, they are never impersonal or
empty. It is, I insist, the sense of emptiness and unreality, of a meaningless
addition. The Christ-like figure of the original painting of the Divine Mercy does
not have a core hence it looks unreal. It is anything, it is ready to please,
to compliment, to praise excessively. It is ready to be anything the viewer
wants. The image of the divine mercy then is a reduction, not even a reduction
of Christ to “mercy” but a reduction of “mercy” to “niceness” so even two rays,
the “symbols” of Christ’s Blood and Water, cannot save the situation and make
out of that figure the real Lord. This is precisely why, to match “a symbolic
Christ”, its author had to make “symbolic blood and water”. Indeed, they can
never be seen as real, unlike highly stylized drops on some medieval paintings –
although they are stylized, they are real blood and water and are perceived as
such.
To make a total, the Church has had first St Thomas putting his fingers into the real wound in the side of the Lord Who is looking at him, then – St Margaret Mary Alacoque contemplating the real Heart of the Lord who is looking at her and now we have a Christ-like heartless and woundless figure looking into himself; from the middle of the figure’s chest two rays, red and white are issuing into the dark space. I leave it to the reader to figure out what this change may signify.
Now let us consider
the fruits which are ripening in the oblique domain of the double.
Into her own image
I have no idea of how the original image of the Divine Mercy came into the world meaning that I have no way of knowing what exactly moved Sr Faustina. It is not important for an evaluation of the image. What important however is that the image of the Divine Mercy somehow fits into the modern phenomenon, of the urge to do something with the depiction of the Crucifixion until the Cross disappears or Christ is no longer nailed to it, creating some kind of a bloodless or “as if” sacrifice instead of the real thing. “As if” sacrifice probably describe that phenomenon best. True depictions of the Crucifixion do not leave the grey areas which can be filled with something – something that a human psyche desires or that a fleeting moment dictates.
We know
from the Church history that the denial of the reality of the Crucifixion of
Jesus Christ is a hallmark of Gnosticism. I am quite convinced that we are
living in a time when Gnosticism, being a counter-Christianity, has shed all its
pseudo-theological clothes and became a naked expression of a human psyche
which is unable to accept God as He is, on His terms, together with His demands
to be transformed into His likeness. This psychological Gnosticism does not
openly reject Him but attempts to smother, control and melt Him down, slowly transforming
Him into her (human psyche) likeness. Simply speaking, she is trying to make
out of the Ultimate Goodness a mere nicety.
Thus, unlike
the Christ of the Sacred Heart, the Christ-like figure of the Divine Mercy is neither
engaging not demanding. He even does not look at the viewer. He is simply
there, pouring graces onto whoever accepts him, being nice. That’s it. Somehow
the image reminded me the description of “something there” in my essay
‘Metaphysical double bind’:
“The
faith in “something there”, new age ideas and so on appear to be very
infantile, intellectually extremely undemanding and very much on “consumerist
end” meaning that a human being receives without giving anything back.
“Something there” does not demand that a believer would learn about “it”. It is
like someone would stand under a nice, warm shower being miraculously poured
upon him without a slightest desire to learn where it comes, why, and what all
that is about. Hence here is the second self-construct, of a love of some
benevolent mother-like “thing”, an impersonal mother principal whose
“outpouring” a believer simply accepts, just like a baby accepts the love of
his mother.”
There I
spoke of the modern believers in “something” – for example mother Earth or
another principal, typically female. A term “female” is apt from a
psychological point of view; “mother earth” or “mother goddess” correspond to the
stage of a human development when a baby is being fused with his mother. It is
a stage of an infantile narcissism.
Psychological
Gnosticism represents a new stage, of a thwarted development – a person who,
for whatever reason, was formed to believe that being “nice” is the major
virtue and anything can be sacrificed for that virtue, even being genuinely
good. As it was mentioned before, it is often a victim of subtle emotional abuse
who has learnt that only via being “nice” i.e., sacrificing her real self to
the unreasonable demands of her parents she may get what she wants. Thus being
“nice” is an unconscious manipulation absorbed with her mother’s milk so to
speak. The problem there is that, if a child constantly suppresses the legitimate
needs of the real self out of a fear to be punished for being who she is, she
eventually will lose a touch with her real self = with herself, she becomes a
shell of herself. And so she lives in the superficial world initially constructed
by just as broken parents and later perpetuated by her. The further it shrinks from
the real pain and real life, the bigger is self-deception and the further she
is from the hope to ever discover a true relationship including with the real
Christ.
The real
Christ and a “nice” person dwell in the parallel realms so to speak; to bring a
person to Himself Christ must break into her real self. However, If the real
Christ on the true icons can look demanding, hurt and even disapproving, how can
the soul who has spent all her life avoiding those emotions relate to such not
nice images? She may say (to be nice) that they are “beautiful” yet she quietly
prefers her own, “nice” Christ, made in her own likeness.[18]
A pleasant
cult
The
superficiality of “being nice” as a mode of a life in the world can pass
unnoticed and even make a person superficially happy (while leaving her
miserable deep inside). The same mode of a life, being transferred into a
metaphysical realm (the Church), looks much more out of a place and brings much
more harm, to a soul and to the Church.
First of
all, the very criteria of what is good and what is evil is twisted by such a
soul. To be nice is more important than to be good thus the lesser and determined
by the others subjective value is somehow higher than the bigger and objective
value, the good determined by God. If God is the Ultimate Good than it can be
interpreted as “a subjective fleeting human niceness that is higher than the
objective eternal goodness of God”. That means that the world/the lens through
which such a person sees others are literally reversed, being the anti-world
and anti-lens.
Second, the
relational realm of such a person is hugely a fake. It is impossible to truly
relate to her because there is no guarantee that her response (typically praise
and flattery) has anything to with the reality and with what she really thinks.
In a sense, it is not so different from a relationship with an abuser who
undermines (i.e., lies) non-stop because he is lying as well. Paradoxically, it
is easier to break away from the abuser because one feels a pain while dealing
with him and the pain signals that something is wrong. While dealing with a
“nice” people pleaser one may first experience elation of “being validated”[19]
which eventually will give a way to a murky sense of unreality and dismay, of
even being tricked. “What is this? Maybe I am a very mean, suspicious person
and she is very good, a saint really?” In the context of God and the Church
such doubts are particularly damaging because the Church is supposed to be a
place of truth and a true healing. Since God demands sincerity from the
faithful, it is natural to expect some basic sincerity from them and to give an
advance of trust, especially to priests or religious. The Church also teaches
that we must love others so it is easy to attribute the excessive niceness to the
excess of love.
Yet there
is a huge difference between the two. A true love sees and reflects the other
as he is (this is what Christ did), good and bad, with love that is seeking the
true good of the other. In the context of the Church, the true good is to be
with God and to be with God means getting rid of all that is an obstacle to it,
own sinfulness. A true Christian love then seeks to turn a person away from bad
and to usher him towards God; this is impossible without acknowledging the
existence of that bad and confronting it when it is needed. That means risking
to be perceived as “not nice”.
Contrary to
love, “niceness” does not reflect the other at all. It reflects a convenient for
a “nice” person construct of the other. The more inflated the construct is the
nicer is the “nice” person. To phrase excessively someone’s less than mediocre
work (I am not speaking about the cases when it is necessary because of the true
charity like with a handicapped or depressed person) means that the pleaser is
“generous”. However, her “generosity” benefits only her.
The effect
of such an attitude, among the likeminded, is that the realm of rosy magnified reflections,
mutual tickling of the inflated fake selves and elation caused by that tickling
is being spun, essentially the realm of worshiping “the goodness of the circle”
which is taking its members further and further away from the sober realm of
Christ, the realm of real relationships and real selves. But, because
Christians cannot do without Christ, a new, “a nice, smothered Christ” is
typically being reconstructed within such a circle out of the real, melted and
deconstructed Christ – one who can contribute to the elation and other pleasant
feelings. Thus, Christ becomes a tool for a spiritual self-gratification –
something the true Christ abhors as we learn from the mystics.
Considering
that only a true self can recognize the truth and relate to Christ Who is the Truth,
the deliberate feeding the fake self and creating an addictive spiritual “high”
means ripping a person off the possibility of relating to Christ and an ability
to develop a sober discernment necessary for spiritual life. That means that in
coming to the Church damaged persons, “nice” and not nice – abused, broken, in
a desperate need for a validation and healing – are being fooled by the
self-seeking nicety of those who exploit their need and will lose their only
possibility of a true healing left, in the relationship with the real Christ
because the need for such healing was highjacked within the Church. Within and
yet without – because the circle, for its member, while being within the Church
effectively swaps the Church with itself, in a strange similarity with ‘the
Divine Mercy’ image during the Easter Octave superimposed over the real Christ.
* * *
The
phenomenon that is hinted by the image of the Divine Mercy is not yet openly
antichristian or better to say counter-Christian. It looks as if someone is
trying to recreate something while missing that which is most important
in that something, that holds it all together. It is a soul that does not “get”
Jesus Christ in flesh and blood with ever-changing expressions on His Face, who
does not wish to face a pain and to relate in truth or perhaps she does not
even know what it means. It is a soul that is not perturbed by the words of the
supposed Christ to Sr Faustina, like “tell the Superior General to count
on you as the most faithful daughter in the Order” or “My daughter, if you wish, I will this
instant create a new world, more beautiful than this one, and you will live
there for the rest of your life”[20]
so she takes them on board and lavishes similar hyper flattery on others
thinking that this is “love” and “validation”.
Wow!
I was
thinking about how Christ would deal with a community of the religious who live
according to one rule only, “being nice”, substituting a true love with
niceness, true reflection of who the person is with a narcissistic magnifying
rosy mirror calling it “validation”, taking turns to look into it and to glow
in an inflated reflection.
I imagined
Christ back in a time saying to the crowed any of His maxima, for example
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, the kingdom of heaven is theirs.” I tried to
imagine the most hostile reaction like “What an idiot! Obviously, he has never
been poor” or “This man is delirious”. You know what? – Now it does not sound
bad at all because it still holds a potential. Christ could say “Why do think I
am not poor? – I am” or “you missed the point, “poor in spirit” or whatever but
what would He say to – let us repeat:
Jesus Christ:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, the Kingdom of heaven is theirs.”
The people:
“Wow! It is brilliant! Wow!!”
That would
be a masterful way to shut Christ up with “a validation” I think – unlike that
other one who will make a slight bow, smile and say to himself “I am being
appreciated at last”.
[1] A reconstruction of the likeness of
Christ and His the damage caused by Passion, based on the Shroud of Turin.
[2] This thesis can be easily proven,
theologically and psychologically. Vulnerability of God is a part of being
human; Christ is fully human as much as He is fully divine hence, he is
vulnerable not only to physical but also to emotional hurt as the Gospels
reveal on a number of occasions, for example in Gethsemane when his closest
disciples failed to stay awake and keep Him company in the darkest hour of his
emotional abandonment. His words “Are you still sleeping and resting?” are
nothing else but the expression of a very human hurt. The Apostles did not
think of Him and that hurt.
[3] In
psychology, a real or a true self is understood as a healthy core of a person.
An acting true self is experienced by a person as “feeling fully alive”, “being
real”, “living in a moment fully” and so on. A fake or a false self is
typically formed by a child as a survival system, out of a need to please her
parents who were using a child as a tool for self-gratification moulding her
into what they wanted regardless of her objective good. As a result, a child
loses touch with her true self mostly or, in the cases of narcissism,
completely and comes to identify herself with a fake, to the point of
dissociating when someone confronts the fakeness of her fake self.
[4] By
being “nice” I mean an insincere people pleasing behaviour learnt for survival
purposes, not a good behaviour of a kind person that is a natural expression of
their inner goodness.
[5] St. Catherine of Siena Exchanges
Hearts with Jesus.
[6] Mathew 15:19
[7] Various saints and mystics of the
Church, before and after St Margaret Mary Alacoque, paid a special attention to
the Heart of Christ; some received visions centered on His Heart.
[8] The heresy of Jansenism attempted to
twist Christianity into something hopeless and anxious; it also favoured rare communion.
In essence, Jansenism undermined the reality of an attachment of God to humans.
[9] “We must then dig deeply in Christ. He is like a rich mine with many pockets containing treasures: however deep we dig we will never find their end or their limit. Indeed, in every pocket new seams of fresh riches are discovered on all sides. For this reason the apostle Paul said of Christ: In him are hidden all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God.” (St John of Cross, ‘Spiritual Canticle’).
[10] In this paper I consider only the
original image because its description was a part of the vision of Sr Faustina.
The orders received by her in her communications were about that exact image. “By
means of this Image I shall be granting many graces to souls; so, let every
soul have access to it.” (‘Diary’).
[11] The halo with a cross in it is a
unique attribute of Christ in both Western and Eastern sacred art, no one else
can be depicted with it.
[12] Sometimes, on some images (typically
on the Eastern icons of Christ Pantocrator, “the Almighty”), one can see Christ
without stigmata however He always retains His peculiar halo with the Cross. On
the majority of the images though and definitely on those that have a reference
to His Passion and death, He has stigmata as well as the Cross.
[14] John
6:53.
[15] One can paint The Good Samaritan
though and it will be a symbolic representation of Christ’s mercy; here the
lesser signifies the bigger.
[16] It
seems to me also that his words “Unless I see in His hands the print of the
nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His
side, I will not believe.” are more the words of someone who is afraid to
believe and be disappointed, after the shock of Crucifixion.
[17] Among other things like claiming to
have some “sacred knowledge” Gnostics denied the reality of Crucifixion and
denigrated the Humanity of Jesus. See the works of St Irenaeus of Lyon for further information.
[18] This I think may partially explain
the numbness of so many Western believers to the icons or other “complex”
depictions of Christ. They are too “unfriendly” or “painful” as I was told.
[19] Especially if a person suffered an
emotional trauma like abuse, neglect etc. earlier in life.
[20] ‘Diary’ of Sr Faustina. In a Christian mystical tradition communications which inflate a sense of one’s own exclusivity/superiority/pride are considered to be suspicious, the source of which is unlikely to be divine.
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