Statues

I have often spoken about the importance of books in shaping our spiritual experiences, and there can be no doubt about that. I think it is also true that art has great power to form our sensibilities, and influence, on a very deep level, our subsequent behavior and intuition about spiritual reality. Lately I have been thinking about my very own home cathedral, St Patrick’s in Manhattan. I can remember, beginning in high school and continuing into college, of spending quite a lot of time in the magnificent cathedral on Fifth Avenue, its Gothic spires and great bronze doors amidst the skyscrapers a real inspiration.

 

Every single time I would walk into the great church, the view down the nave would take my breath away and make my heart sing, eyes alternating from the great expansive ceiling to the high altar and all around to the magnificent stained glass windows.

But the great power of the cathedral, which was certainly undeniable, was complemented by the many side altars with their various mosaics, paintings and other devotional art. This of course included images and statues of Christ, the Virgin Mary, St Patrick, and other familiar and expected figures. But when I think back to what also fired my imagination, it was primarily the impressive statues in niches along the walls done by the German-American immigrant sculptor Joseph Sibbel, one of the great ecclesiastical artists of the later nineteenth century. What was different about these statues is that they were not just of devotional saints, but of great theologians and “Doctors of the Church”. They included learned and intellectual giants of the Catholic tradition, such as the twelfth century St Anselm of Canterbury, famous both for his philosophical works and prayers and meditations.

Alongside one another sat the thirteenth century Franciscan theologian St Bonaventure and the the eighteenth century moral theologian St Alphonse Liguori.

 

And finally, perhaps the one I loved most of all, the twelfth century Cistercian monk and mystical theologian St Bernard of Clairvaux.

 

There were others, but these made the greatest impressions on me, and when I consider what I have gone on to do and study, all of these thinkers have played a crucial part in my intellectual and devotional life. I have little doubt that my calling to teach about the medieval church and spirituality more generally was partly formed by literally gazing up at these wonderful statues by Sibble.

This leads me to the important point that given how influential and formative imagery can be in a sacred environment, it is so crucial that along with art that is primarily devotional, it is also important to inspire the onlooker by beautiful images that celebrate saints who are also “Doctors of the Church”, men and women who have combined lives of deep spirituality with serious study and intellectual pursuits, uniting heart and mind in the pursuit of holiness. I am thankful for Sibble and those who planned St Patrick’s cathedral for doing this, and for the way the Holy Spirit used these splendid statues to inspire and guide me in my own vocation as a Christian scholar.

 

Memories on this feast of Bernard

I spent a very eventful junior year abroad at Oxford University, and one of the immediate effects of that heady time was my decision to become a Jesuit. Thus when I returned home to Staten Island, I took a volunteer job answering the phones at the lovely Mount Manresa, a Jesuit-run retreat house a few miles from my home. It was the oldest lay retreat house in the the United States, and a lovely oasis of trees and quiet places not far from the Verrazano Bridge. Sadly, it is now closed, but that summer I roamed its grounds, and prayed in its warm but lovely chapel, surrounded by images of Jesuit saints, a tangible sense of holiness and simplicity.

As part of my time there, I underwent a short retreat by a resident Jesuit, who gave me some Psalms to read and pray over. Today I suddenly recalled that today, August 20th, the feast of St Bernard, back in that summer of 1985, I sat on a bench to pray over the Psalms, and had some fairly serious experiences of the presence of the Holy Spirit. Somewhat shaken, I went and told Fr. Maher, expecting him to be dismissive. Instead he became very quiet, and looked at me very seriously, and said how this was indeed very real what I experienced, and although my own tendencies, due to the intensity of it, would be to rationalize and explain it away, and in fact dismiss it because otherwise it would have so many serious implications for the spiritual life and how the world really is, I should never give in to that. He was very wise and experienced, and of course correct.

As time passed I discerned that the Jesuit vocation was not for me, but I have never forgotten that day, and his words to me, or my time on that bench. I have ever since always associated those memories and those perceptions with the feast of St Bernard of Clairvaux, the day on which they happened, the day the Church remembers one of its greatest mystical theologians. Each year like today I am reminded that no matter what conspires to dampen the fires of our inner life and the work of the Spirit within us, like Bernard, we must never give in and let these forces distract us from our moorings as children in the image and likeness of God, as temples of that same Holy Spirit.

El Greco’s St Bernard of Clairvaux.