It’s odd how a painting can be an answer to prayer.
I’d been dreading the prospect of Holy Week. The story of the last week of Jesus’ life is so sad to contemplate. Thirty-three is too young to die. Crucifixion is a horrendously painful death. But more than anything, cutting closest to the heart for me was thinking of how Jesus had to face rejection.
Knowing how something is going to come out doesn’t make it any easier to bear. I can barely tolerate having a great dinner idea rejected (“Honey, there’s this great new restaurant …”). How would I take it if everything I believed in seemed to be destroyed before my eyes?
I felt like a wayward disciple, asking myself, “How am I going to get through Holy Week?” As a prayer, it was one of those grumbling kinds.
This weekend I was down in Philadelphia to see an exhibition of paintings by the American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner. One painting in particular helped me with my Holy Week dread, a painting of that saddest moment of all on Good Friday, when Mary and John are coming back from the Crucifixion. The day has ended. All seems lost. Despair is written on their faces. And yet the painting is beautiful.
Here’s what the artist said about it: “It has often seemed to me that when bowed by some sorrow, nature seemed more radiant than ever …”
Sorrow can shake me, devastate me, rattle me unspeakably, make me feel lost. And then like a piece of foil catching the light, it can startle me with some truth. If I can only hold on. Standing in front of that painting, I wanted to tell Mary and John, “Things will be better than you can ever guess in just a few days. Just hold on.”
The Resurrection was around the corner, its beauty inherent. In that moment I could tell myself the same thing about any of my sorrows: “Hold on. Trust. Love. Life will change soon, soon, soon.”
