Letter to Artists by John Paul II
And Michaelangelo's Pietà
Two years before I boarded my first transatlantic flight, I began taking Italian classes in preparation for a dreamy semester abroad in Rome.
When I finally arrived in the Eternal City, my language skills started paying off right away. I ordered lunch for my friends the first time we were on our own for a meal. At the visa office, I rescued a fellow American college student who I had never seen before from a tense conversation with a government official. Perhaps most importantly, I developed a friendly relationship with my elderly host parents who spoke no English.
Even though my Italian skills made me feel empowered most of the time, the truth is I spoke like a three-year-old. I had enough Italian to get around, but when I wanted to express my feelings or desires or experiences, I often couldn’t find the words that I needed.
As a lover of words, this drove me crazy. I hated using simplistic terms for the big feelings I was experiencing as I explored a city I had dreamed about for so long and encountered God and His saints in very real, tangible ways.
In his letter to artists, John Paul II talks about “the unbridgeable gap” between experience and expression. In Rome, I felt this acutely. I wanted to communicate, especially with my host parents, about the wondrous things God was doing in this city and in my heart, but I just didn’t have the words. I was up against a hard brick wall in almost every conversation, longing to scale it but not knowing how.
When humans reach the unbridgeable gap, we often turn to art. An encounter with Beauty – whether in a mountain vista or the monstrance or the dusty cobblestone streets of an ancient city – stirs in us a natural desire to communicate. Come and taste and see this goodness! We are compelled to share what we heard or saw or felt, especially with those we love, motivated by a desire that they might experience it, too. When a simple explanation won’t do, we try other means of expression like poetry, or music, or dance, or visual media.
You might call it inspiration: a momentary glimpse of something more that points beyond the everyday brokenness of this world and launches us in search of the perfect way to capture it.
John Paul II puts it this way: “Every genuine artistic intuition goes beyond what the senses perceive and, reaching beneath reality’s surface, strives to interpret its hidden mystery. The intuition itself springs from the depths of the human soul, where the desire to give meaning to one’s own life is joined by the fleeting vision of beauty and of the mysterious unity of things.” Yet, he continues, the artist knows that what she creates “is no more than a glimmer of the splendor which flared for a moment before the eyes of their spirit.”1
One afternoon in Rome, I stood before Michaelangelo’s famous Pietà. My friend Bridget and I had made a special trip to St. Peter’s Basilica just to admire the sculpture, which I love but somehow missed the first time I visited.
If you look closely at the sculpture, you’ll see that Mary’s body is way too big. That’s because she’s cradling her son in death in the same way she cradled him just after his birth. Her motherhood looms large in the sculpture because her motherhood looms large in real life: Catholics believe that Mary isn’t just Jesus’ mother, but our mother, adopting us all, caring for us all, worrying about us all and guiding us all to her son. Look even closer and you’ll see that Mary is actually cradling her adult son with only one arm. That’s because her other hand is outstretched on her knee, open to receiving whatever else God has in store for her, trusting and believing in God’s good plan despite all of the evidence to the contrary in her lap.
Even before I became a mother, these visual metaphors touched me in a deep way. My relationship with Mary has always been hard to explain. Yet, this statue starts to articulate some of the things that I love about her. In a religion that is so masculine, here is a woman acting as a main character. Her motherhood is unapologetic and valuable: it makes her powerful and strong. The strength of her femininity allows her to open her hand in trust, revealing the faith she demonstrated throughout her life and confirming her promise to beckon us forward toward her son. I’ve always been able to trust Mary innately, like the way you might naturally trust a sibling, and if she can trust God even when the worst possible thing has happened to her, I feel like maybe I could trust God a little more, too.
As Bridget and I admired the statue, my eyes fell on the short description of the artwork posted in front of it. Some quick mental math revealed to me that Michaelangelo was only 23 years old when he created it – just three years older than I was as I stood before it. I leaned over to Bridget to whisper this unbelievable and intimidating fact in her ear. She turned to look at me, and in the middle of this holy place, surrounded by some of the most valuable pieces of art in the world, she deadpanned, “Dude. We gotta get some marble.”
Her joke made me laugh, and earned us a few stern looks from fellow pilgrims, but this moment continues to stand out in my memory as one of profound grace. While it might be fun or thrilling to create a magnificent work of art that people admire long after my death, John Paul II reminds us that “all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece.”2
Whether we see God in nature or visual art or literature or the people in our lives, John Paul II reminds us of what matters most: make your life the work of art. Use your gifts and talents to add compassion, justice, and beauty to the world so that others may be inspired to do the same. The personal effort that this takes – and the community that it can create – is surely a way to bridge the gap between what we desire to see in the broken world around us and what we know to be true about God’s goodness in the depths of our hearts and imaginations.
If you liked this essay, would you forward it to a friend? Thanks for your kindness!
What I’ve been reading and writing lately:
Whether you are still celebrating spooky season or practicing gratitude this week, you might like this article I wrote about my obsession with dystopian novels for Grotto Network.
Writing an Ignatian-style poem about All Saint’s Day was so good for my mind and heart. Read it here on Instagram if you missed it!
I recently read In Pieces by Rhonda Ortiz and absolutely loved it. I’m already halfway through its sequel Adrift and I really don’t want my time with these characters to end! Read more of my thoughts here.
Coming up…
I’ll be writing about my favorite incarnational art form just in time for Advent and Christmas. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss it!
Letter to Artists, paragraph 6.
Letter to Artists, paragraph 2.
Catherine- I couldn’t agree more with this: “While it might be fun or thrilling to create a magnificent work of art that people admire long after my death, John Paul II reminds us that “all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece.” John Paul had a point. And it’s a great one. I appreciate you sharing.