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No. 1, July 2003
A Head
of Christ by Cornelis van Haarlem (1562-1638)
Sister
Wendy Beckett
We shall never know what
Jesus looked like. Those who wrote about Him, the Evangelists, were not
interested in how He looked but in what He was, what He meant. But from early
times, artists have imagined that face, usually seeng Jesus as a dark-haired
man with a short beard and dark expressive eyes. It is a majestic face they
imagine, and they nearly always show Jesus in His relationship with us. It is
Jesus the judge, or the teacher, or the healer. He is grave, tender, stern,
turning on us the full force of that divine regard. What I find so moving
about this picture is that this Jesus is not addressing us. He is addressing
His Father. Of course, to show Jesus concentrating the fullness of His
attention on those around Him is profoundly theological. He came to give
Himself to us. He died giving Himself to us: that was His purpose. “For
this was I born, for this did I come into the world”. But this human
relationship was the expression of that infinitely deeper relationship with
His Father. It was that oneness, (the Father and I are one) that all
pervading closeness, that sustained Him. He tells us that He never did His
own will, only the will of the One Who had sent him. The Father’s will
was His will. Only a few times in the gospels do we catch a precious glimpse
of Jesus speaking to this totally loved Father. Usually the communications
would have been wordless, so much a part of His being that it needed no
visible outlet. Here Cornelis van Haarlem has caught Jesus in a moment of
conflict. We tend to think of Him as always certain, in command, emotionally
invulnerable. But this is not true. There were times when He was confused,
uncertain. “Now is my soul troubled…” Jesus was fully man,
living as we all do in uncertainties, seeking the best way forward. In this
touching picture, He looks upwards, not in anguish, as in that supreme moment
of need, in the Garden of Gethsemane, but all the same, in need. He attends,
with all the force of His being, on the complete support that is His God and
Father, not in anxiety, but in trust, with love, with hope. This is what
prayer is, a turning to God with the absoluteness that we see here. And this
too, His capacity for prayer, Jesus has given us in His self-surrender. In
His relationship with us He has given us, in the Holy Spirit, His
relationship with His Father.
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