And if, as weeks go round, in the dark of the moon
my spirit darkens and goes out, and soft strange gloom
pervades my movements and my thoughts and words
then I shall know that I am walking still
with God, we are close together now the moon's in shadow.
Shadows, D H Lawrence
Pieta, Giovanni Bellini
Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock. He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were sitting there opposite the tomb. Matthew 27:59-61
Divinity had embraced the fullness of human life, its weaknesses, its weariness, its suffering, besides sharing its joys and keeping obedience even to death. Raymond Chapman, Stations of the Cross
A full stop
Knowing how the Passion narrative pans out is an obstacle to empathising with Jesus's followers at this time. They are not spared the emptiness of loss or witnessing the cruelties of a shameful and painful death of a loved one. The lifeless body of Jesus is here laid out across a loving and forlorn lap. It signals a full stop, an end, beyond which no amount of the disciples' imagination could pass. For us, what does this once leaden body signify?
Being present to grief
Kathe Kollwitz, a German artist and sculptor, painted a picture of the dead Christ in the arms of his mother. Tragedy, war and loss were recurring themes for her, and her work often featured a grief stricken mother with her dead son. She lost her 18 year old boy Peter on the Belgian front after the outbreak of the First World War. The last time she visited her 'Mother' sculpture, a memorial to the fallen, she said of facing her: ' I stood before the woman, looked at her—my own face—and I wept and stroked her cheeks.'
Maybe Jesus here offers us, through his limp body, space for our grief, acknowledging and encouraging the need to be present to it.