"Every beauty which is seen here by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come.” (Michelangelo)
A lovely film depicting Catholic art is the, “The Face: Jesus in Art,” which displays masterpieces that are definitely pleasing to the eye and embrace the beautiful; the Divine. The most captivating piece is the La Pieta, sculpted by Michelangelo. The La Pieta struck me the most because how can the Blessed Mother holding her Beloved Son not bring one to tears? A sword truly pierced through her heart, and the suffering she must have felt in indescribable. The loss of a child to a mother is such a horrible event that there is no word in the English language for a mother who loses her son.
How can we expect to be exempt from suffering when God, Himself was not spared, and neither was His own Mother. To be truly united to Christ we must suffer immensely in our lives, and for me the greatest suffering is knowing that we know who Jesus is, that He is the Son of God, and yet we sin anyway. How horrible is it that we know who Jesus is and that he died to save us from our sins, and yet we still sin? We are still horribly affected by concupiscence. We cannot erase the fall, but we do know that despite our sins Jesus still has opened His heart to us and He wants and His utmost desire is for us to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and to be able to spend eternity with Him. We cannot escape suffering, no matter how hard we try to run from it. It is not possible to be free of suffering since because there is sin in the world there must be suffering. The world is no longer in harmony because of the first sin, and as a result we all must suffer just as the Son of God suffered for us. I think we all at times wish we could take the heavy cross off our back, and perhaps even times it feels like the cross may have become a bit lighter, but the truth of the matter is the cross will always be there. And we should want it to be there because it more closely unites us with our Beloved Lord.
© "The Face: Jesus in Art" - Educational Broadcasting Corporation