A Lenten Gaze (…with Old and New Eyes)

This is a picture of a cross adorned for Lent outside the Iglesia de San Francisco in Antigua, Guatemala.

At first I truly looked at the image with what I call “new eyes.”  I saw a child’s raggedy dress, workers’ crudely wrought hand tools, a sword pointed away from potential victims, a ladder offering elevation, dice totaling a “lucky” number and possibly future good fortune. Of course, I also noticed the thorny crown and trio of nails but saw them within the context of the other objects as symbols of profound suffering – acknowledged and grieved, yes – but ultimately surmounted.

Was that what is called the “feminine gaze”?  The view of the other-gendered?  And if so, what did this reaction mean?

When I looked more closely a second and third time, however, the ancient Catholic teachings and symbols embedded in me for so long took over, and I could see only with “old eyes”. The artifacts attached to the cross, I realized, were just part of the fossilized Lenten story. The huge sledge hammer to anchor the cross, the pick and chains to inflect torture, the large hammer to pound in the nails, the sword tipped in Christ’s blood, the ladder to reach the suffering Jesus to give him vinegar or pierce his side, the dice the soldiers cast for his cloak, and again, the crown of thorns and nails. 

Only the tiny dress did not make sense. It is the only feminine object there. Was it a symbolic reminder of the child his mother had brought forth and who had now met this horrific end? Or am I just casting a “feminine gaze” again and, if so, is that bringing forth anything new to the story, some new way of seeing we perhaps desperately need? And, if that is so, what does that say about the old way?

In the March 4 Global Sisters Report Dominican Sister, Quincy Howard, described the excruciating process downsizing of her order’s home in a sprawling and amazingly beautiful rural setting in Wisconsin. To watch the dismantling of buildings, to sort through treasured possessions, and to help in the relocation of frail residents from spaces they loved did take new eyes and deeper way of seeing and understanding transitions:

Accommodating change inherently requires choosing what to carry forward and what to let go of. Navigating this pivotal moment in religious life during a global era of constant and accelerating change adds layers of complexity to that discernment.… Sisters in leadership and newer members like myself also long to claim and protect the aspects of our life that matter most deeply.

Sister Howard gains insight from the discernment process recommended by the Rule of St. Benedict which Sr. Joan Chittister modernizes in her book Radical Spirit:

"Preserve tradition and learn from community. Preserving tradition is about our legacy to the next generation and how we link the past to the present. Learning from the community is about the collective memory, the deep story that is an essential component for weathering change.”

These wise words are essential for those of us who are trying both to preserve and radically change our own Church. Sister Howard accents another part of the Rule:

In this painstaking discernment, the Rule of Saint Benedict equally cautions us from making yesterday a guide for tomorrow. Progress grows out of separating the essence of what should be preserved from the trappings that we are attached to. These attachments often act as barriers, looking to repeat the past or justify preserving what exists, even when it no longer serves. It can lead us to cling to familiarity for comfort, particularly when change is undesired or compelled. The tradition we want to maintain is not so much about what gets guarded or preserved through generations; it is about the passing along of what matters between and across generations. (Emphasis mine.)

In light of these challenges, what then do we do with the above pictured cross and how it represents our Lenten journey? What does matter? What does need guarding and preserving and what are just trappings?

Bruce T. Morrill, S.J. in a March 02, 2022 article in America reminded us of what the Second Vatican Council’s “Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy” (1963) said about Lent:

“Rather than simple self-improvement or singular self-denial for all that Jesus suffered for me, the council’s restorative vision for Lent is of an ‘inner’ conversion to following more faithfully the Christ into whose death we are baptized so as to participate in his risen life, life in the Spirit. Such renewal is not individualistic but for the life of the world. The constitution thus calls for Lenten penance that is ‘not only internal and individual but also external and social,’ recognizing and committing to counter ‘the social consequences of sin.’  (My emphasis again.)

The Constitution is recommending looking with some old, but definitely also with “new eyes”. The mostly, if not exclusively, men of Vatican II started us off on a journey, and all genders have been enriching the vision along the way.

Maybe my “female gaze” and interpretation of the cross in the picture does have merit after all, even if it is not traditional. Yet I do want us to preserve and take with us what we have long been taught, too: that suffering has great magnitude for all of us, and that, mercifully, we are accompanied and nourished by the Spirit along the way. At the same time, I want to keep adding and stressing the modern day symbols of our struggles and suffering and the symbols of how they can be addressed and remedied.

Today I would add the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag to that cross. I would also add a prayer and a plea for peace.