“We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world”
Spending time with my God daughter the other day I was reminded of what true adoration is. She ran up to me and put her two hand around my face holding it. Together we made that connection like that of a child to a parent. Not having a child of my own this was very special. What I related it to was the experience of euckirestic adoration, that prelude to the summit to come in the beatific vision. I might be making this simple moment sound too dramatic but I think God works very big in little things.
My favorite painting at the Museum of fine Arts Boston is a painting by Rosso Fiorentino, Dead Christ with Angels. When I worked at the museum as a gallery guard I would sit in front of the painting analyzing the details. Then I’d stop and in my mind I would proclaim with sublime joy “ecce homo” behold the man. Right there in the art museum I adored Christ. Over five hundred years later, after Fiorentino was move by the Holy spirit I reach across time to pray.
In the painting Christ is shown in the center almost braking the boarders. The angels props His dead body up as to percent Christ to the world. Jesus sits on His tomb as a thrown of glory. A corpse is limp, it’s head would fall with the direction of the body but if you look at Christ’s head in the painting it act as if he maybe sleeping suggesting the resurrection that is soon to come. The tools of Christ’s passion and death are shown beneath his feet because of Jesus’ concord over death. At this the alter of the slain lamb the angles flanked him on either side holding two candles. There are two angels in the shadows behind Christ. One of those angels on the right side of Jesus, moves its hand to the side wound of our Lord. The first thought we may have is the story of Doubting Thomas which is a common narrative displaying the straggle man has with faith in God’s Word and true presence in the Holy Eucharist. To go even deeper contemplatively, I believe this invokes the longing intimacy we have for Jesus, because the angel has an almost determined yet gentle looking in his eyes to be one with the divine. There is a term in art “figura serpentinata” which describes the twisting undulations of the forms that gives the figure a dynamic feel. This drama hides as well as reveals the body intensifying our longing for Jesus.
As adorers of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament we should keep in mind Matthew 9:14 "Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven." We must first go to Jesus as little children and then as Church and as individuals, enter into an intimacy with the Bridegroom. Holy Father Saint Francis once said “I beg you to show the greatest possible reverence for the Eucharist through whom all things have been brought to peace and reconciled with Almighty God”
Written in January 2012
