Together for the Journey
“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.”
The contemporary Catholic artist Daniel Bonnell evidently has a special fascination with the Emmaus Road encounter. It is the subject of several of his paintings — indeed, I have identified at least seven browsing through his gallery. In most of them, three figures walk together, small and muted before a vast, swirling, and colorful cosmos. In this depiction, we have a similar abstract and minimalist scene, but in this case, the figures loom larger, and the figure of Christ is entirely obscured. Yet the three figures are connected by a single white line, a thread that joins them together and integrates them as the center and subject of the image, against the austere golden sunset.
While I have not been able to locate any of the artist’s commentary on this particular piece — or his fascination with the Emmaus Road — some of his general comments about his philosophy and approach to art give evocative clues to what he means to communicate. OF the communicative power of art that he is trying to leverage, he writes,
There is an inexpressible reality beyond words that comes from the divine, a unified field, a holy river, a reality paradoxically found in the beauty of unknowing. It reveals a grounded truth, that the mystery of seeing is seeing the mystery. When we receive a glimpse of this mystery, we have glimpsed eternity, and even the inverted Kingdom of God itself.
Like Jesus’s enigmatic appearance to the Disciples on the road, Bonnell wants to invite us into a new way of seeing, wherein new dimensions unfold from things that we thought that we had understood. A meal, a stranger, some Bible stories, even the journey itself received new meaning when the Disciples caught their momentary glimpse of Christ. Perhaps, then, Christ can only be portrayed obscured, and appears only in the momentary glimpse when we see all things new.
Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?
— The Friends along the Emmaus Road (Luke 24:32)
Third Sunday of Easter
Texts for Today
Prayer
Almighty God, you gave your only Son to be for us both a sacrifice for sin and an example of godly living: Give us grace thankfully to receive his inestimable benefits, and daily to follow the blessed steps of his most holy life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Enigma Variations
I’ve been sitting this week with the “Enigma Variations” penned by the early 20th C British composer, Sir Edward Elgar. The “Enigma” is the melodic idea that persists through the fourteen variations; the variations themselves are something of a sketch of various impressions and emotions that the composer had of his friends, family, and close associates. Christ is to us this sort of “enigma:” an ever-present — if at times, subsumed — theme, whose life and love is known to us in the presence of dear fellowship with those whom we are bound together with in being bound to him.
Featured here is the most famous and most dramatic of the variations: Variation IX (Adagio), “Nimrod.” Elgar’s inspiration for this piece came from his friend and musical editor, Augustus Jaeger — the title a rather convoluted allusion to Jaeger’s surname (“Jaeger” means “hunter” in German, and “Nimrod” is remembered in the Scriptures as “a mighty hunter before the Lord” (Gen 10:9)).
This variation is a slow and gracious swell: the melodic idea slowly deepens and builds to a majestic, soaring, full and rich orchestral melancholy, evoking deep and noble passions. It is a melodic picture of the presence and encouragement of a friend, taking root and opening up; settling, on a fresh and hopeful dawn.
This rich and somber piece has gained a life of its own on solemn occasions in the Anglosphere: from royal funerals to days of remembrance (it is always played at the Cenotaph). It served as the valediction of the Greek National Philharmonic when it was dissolved due to budgetary cuts, and the Lux Aeterna from the requiem has been set to the score.
