Catholic Art

I’ve been Catholic as long as I can remember.  My family goes to mass, celebrates Catholic holidays, and lives by Catholic values.  I have had personal struggles with religion, but at this point still consider myself a member of the catholic community.

One of the greatest results of religious devotion is the art work it inspires.  The Pieta, in particular, has always spoken to me.  The Pieta is a statue, carved by Michelangelo, depicting Mary holding Jesus’s limp, dead body across her lap.  Mary is grieving her son, who had just been crucified.  It is deeply moving and it is difficult for the viewer not to feel Mary’s love for her son.

This piece is so important to Catholics because it allows for empathy with religious figures.  At times, I feel as if I can never measure up to saints and other famous religious characters.  They seem so perfect, so unlike me.  I’m fairly confident this feeling is shared by many other Catholics.  The Pieta can help a Catholic to get past this feeling.  Every parent can understand Mary’s love for her son and the amount of sadness she must feel over his death.  They can feel the grief she felt and attain a connection to her which they may not have been able to attain before.  In addition, Mary’s grief shows a lapse in faith.  Though it is completely understandable for Mary to be upset by her son’s death, her faith should have gotten her past that and given her confidence that she would see Jesus again soon.  However, she had doubt.  Every believer has times in which faith fails.  I know that I have felt guilty from these moments.  Seeing Mary in this light, one of doubt and grief instead of faith and hope, can help alleviate this guilt and hopefully come to greater faith.

This statue also makes Jesus look extremely human.  His lifeless, defenseless body is exactly like that of every other dead person. Catholics believe Jesus to be fully God and fully man, and nothing symbolizes humanity better than death. Emphasizing Jesus’s humanity strengthens the notion that we can be like Him.  If Catholics find it hard to relate to Mary, it must be even harder to relate with Jesus- God incarnate.  If we think of Jesus solely as God, which is a fairly common tendency, it is impossible to see how we can emulate Him.  However, seeing Jesus as a lifeless body truly lets a Catholic see that Jesus is a human, and therefore a human can live the life of Jesus.