I considered the image on the screen. It showed a picture of Christ with both arms upraised in a gesture of triumphant majesty. The face has an intense expression of determination that could easily be interpreted as anger, and I remember my reaction when I first saw it in a booklet: “I wouldn’t want to spend eternity with HIM!”
In my recent articles, Bruised Reed and Dimly Burning Wicks, and Upjection, I have shown that, to live fully the faith that we believe, we need to be lifted up by the grace and power of Jesus Christ. We cannot reach communion with God, or indeed, with anyone else, by our own efforts. We need to be carried to it and the only one who can carry us is Jesus.
But what if we shrink from Him? The image of Christ that I mentioned causes such aversion in me that the very thought of heaven becomes distasteful. If an image of Him causes me to draw back, how can I come close enough to Him to let Him lift me up?
I remember what St. Therese of Lisieux wrote of herself: “My nature is such that fear makes me draw back; with love I not only go forward, but I fly…”[1] I see myself in this description.
With Therese’s injunction in mind, I consider the image that I see before me. The explanation on the screen speaks of “Byzantine” as being the art style of the church which houses this image, but I know enough of Byzantine art to realize that this image is conceived less in the style of Byzantine iconography than according to the Western variation of a certain Byzantine theme. Eastern Christianity had developed the Pantocrator theme in iconography, the presentation of Christ enthroned as the ruler of all creation. “Pantocrator” is usually translated as “Almighty” or “all powerful”. The Pantocrator images show Him with a mild, yet stern expression in a position of serene confidence. It is one of the oldest forms of Christian art, with the earliest surviving image dating from the 6th or 7th century.
In the Western Church, the Pantocrator theme developed into the Christ in Majesty image, showing Him usually with both arms upraised as triumphant ruler over all creation. A further development showed Him as judge of the living and the dead at the Final Judgment. The image described above was made in this Western style.
With my family background from southern Italy, I am more at home with the Eastern Pantocrator icons than with the Christ in Majesty images. The Pantocrator icons usually show Christ with one hand uplifted and the other hand holding a book, while his face presents a dual expression, one of sternness together with mildness or melancholy. They radiate a calm and regal assurance.
It must be difficult for an artist to portray sternness and mildness in the same image. The oldest icon of Christ Pantocrator that we know is the one in St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mt. Sinai (shown at the top of this page). It shows Christ with one hand uplifted in blessing and the other hand holding the book of the Gospels. What is noteworthy is the face: each side of it shows a different facial form and a different expression. In this article on The Russian Icon Collection, we see, side by side, the full depiction of both expressions. This dual depiction is usually said to show Christ’s two natures as both God and man.
Yet mildness and sternness, in themselves, do not denote natures so much as they denote attitudes: an attitude of warmth and gentleness, and another attitude of seriousness and severity. How can the two attitudes be reconciled? Can a person show both attitudes together, at the same time?
The challenge of accepting apparent contradictions is inherent in Christianity: we believe in a God who is one and three; we acknowledge a savior who is God and man; we belong to a Church that is holy yet in need of reform. The Church identifies four Gospels as presenting the “good news” of Jesus Christ and she insists that the four Gospels remain distinct. She has rejected any attempt to blend them into a single portrait of Jesus. This forces us to see Him with a “stereoscopic vision” as it were: just as our two eyes see two slightly different views of the same object and unite those two views to produce a three-dimensional vision of reality, so the four Gospels force us to see Jesus in a multiform vision that can’t be reduced to a static concept. We see Him sharing our weaknesses in Mark’s Gospel, yet serenely all-powerful in John’s. Matthew shows Him as the long-awaited Messiah of the Jews, while Luke presents Him to the Gentiles as the Savior of the nations. He is too rich to be reduced to any one facet of His being.
So how can we see Him as simultaneously mild and stern, as He is shown in the Sinai Pantocrator icon?
The Christ in Majesty images of the Western Church and the Pantocrator icons of the Eastern Churches both present Christ as ruler of all creation. This status of ruler gives Him the right to judge, and frequently in the West He is portrayed as presiding at the Last Judgement. He Himself insists that He has this role: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats…”[2]
We are familiar with this passage. Jesus judges each person according to how they have helped others. As St. John of the Cross wrote, “When evening comes, you will be examined in love.”[3] We will not be judged on how devout we are, or how efficient, or how well known, or how many people have read our articles. We will be judged on how we have treated other people: have we tried to love them and help them? There are many definitions of love. The one I like is: love is that gift of self that makes the other more perfectly themself. Love builds up the other, it makes the other person more whole. It helps the other person to see themself as worthy of appreciation and dignity. It is a mirror in which they can see themself as they truly are: a unique being created in the image and likeness of God who is infinite Love.
This is how we are called to treat others because this is how God in Jesus treats us: as a lover. Such love is demanding. It is demanding both in the giving and in the receiving because it challenges me to go out of myself, out of my comfort zone, out of my preferences and likes and dislikes, to open myself to someone who is different. This mutual encounter introduces each of us into a reality that neither of us can control: the mystery of another person.
In an earlier article, The Opposite of Alone, we have seen what it means to be fully in the state of grace. Adam and Eve before the Fall, Mary from the first moment of her existence, were fully whole, sinless, without the slightest distortion of their being. They were “naked”, that is, without any interior defenses, totally open to God and to each other. Mary cooperated with the graces she received and grew in this wholeness. Adam and Eve chose to give it up. We are called to receive it again, to become not just what our race was in its first creation, but to become more than that: to become sharers in the intimacy of God. This demands the total openness and total receptivity of infinite love. The three Persons of the Trinity give themselves totally to each other and receive each other in total reciprocity. We were made to do the same.
“You will be examined in love.” To be examined in love means to be examined in how we have loved others, but it also means to be examined in how we have let ourselves be loved. I think that this is what we really fear when we fear judgment: we are afraid of being loved, of being vulnerable, of trusting God and opening ourselves to Him. Yet this is how He loves us. He makes Himself vulnerable to us on the cross and He continues to be vulnerable to us as He gives Himself totally to us in the Eucharist.
“Only love knows what the refusal to love means.”[4] If we are to be examined in love, then only a lover has the right to examine us. Only a lover has the right to judge us in that tribunal. The question is not “Judge or Lover?” for Judge and Lover are the same person. The question is, do we believe that enough to let ourselves be loved?
Notes
[1] St. Therese of Lisieux, Manuscript A, Folio 80, verso (“Story of a Soul”)
[2] Matt. 25, 31ff
[3] John of the Cross, Sayings #60
[4] Sr. Madeleine of St. Joseph, OCD, “En Esprit et en Vérité avec Thérèse d’Avila”
Sr. Gabriela of the Incarnation, O.C.D. (Sr. Gabriela Hicks) was born in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in the Gold Rush country of California, which she remembers as heaven on earth for a child! She lived a number of years in Europe, and then entered the Discalced Carmelite Monastery in Flemington, New Jersey, where she has been a member for forty years. www.flemingtoncarmel.org.
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