In 1883, the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen received a commission to create a sculpture of Christ for the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The completed work is carved from white Carrara marble.
Early pencil sketches and three plaster models depict Christ with his arms raised above his head in a gesture of blessing.
However, the form of the final sculpture is very different.
The story is told that Thorvaldsen prepared a clay model with Christ’s arms outstretched above his head. During the night, the framework supporting the clay failed, and the arms slumped from the blessing position down to the waist.
When Thorvaldsen arrived the next day and saw the changed posture, he immediately recognised its power and made it permanent.
Today, the finished statue’s open and inviting arms offer a striking image for us to reflect upon as we celebrate the feast of Christ the King.
The statue stands on a plinth in the church, inscribed with the words: “Come to me, all you who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matt 11:28)
I was sitting in the High Court, watching proceedings as Wellington businessman John Barlow was tried for the murders of father-and-son financiers Eugene and Gene Thomas in 1995. I was amazed at the amount of paper each legal team had in front of them.
On the tables of both the prosecution and the defence was an accumulated pile of paper. Some papers were stored in what was known as a WS lever-arch file, with little coloured tabs directing the user to the appropriate section. More papers were simply stacked on top of each other. Others were kept in archive boxes under the table.
A significant amount of time was spent finding the correct page, indicating it to the judge, a court official locating and presenting it, and, on occasion, if the page involved a photograph, distributing copies to members of the jury.
Today’s trial lawyers can even purchase a bespoke trolley bag, made from waterproof leather. These go by the fancy name of “wheeled litigation bags.”
Obviously, few, if any, had taken the time to read the Gospel we have today (Lk 21:5–19). We hear Jesus saying, “So, make up your minds not to prepare your defence in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict” (vv. 14–16).
Imagine being a trial lawyer and arriving in court empty-handed!
Perhaps, when on trial for my/our faith, it is not my words so much as my person that is the irrefutable evidence.
The image shows a lawyer wheeling files into a courthouse for the fraud trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange. Bankman-Fried was found guilty on 2 November 2023.
This Sunday, the Church celebrates a church—though not just any church. Situated on the outskirts of ancient Rome along the still-visible Aurelian Walls is the Archbasilica of St John Lateran, the cathedral of Rome.
Dedicated to Christ the Saviour in 324, St John Lateran was later placed under the additional patronage of St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist. Its formal name is the Papal Archbasilica of the Most Holy Saviour and Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist at the Lateran. (“Lateran” refers to its location on a hill that was formerly the Roman estate of the Laterani family.)
St John Lateran was the site of the pope’s residence for nearly 1,000 years, five of the Church’s ecumenical councils, and the signing of the pivotal 1929 treaty between Italy and the Holy See.
On either side of the central nave stand colossal sculptures of the twelve apostles. The statue of St Matthew shows him with one foot on a fallen bag of coins—almost a stance of rejecting what once gave him status, in favour of something new.
Halfway down the nave is the statue of St Thomas, his finger protruding from the niche and pointing to the altar. The placement is strategic: from one angle, all you see is a finger pointing. On our pilgrim journey there can be moments of doubt and disillusion; and there is St Thomas, with the most famous finger in the Gospels, pointing us in the right direction.
This Sunday our Church celebrates a feast known as All Souls Day. In the Ordo (the daily Mass Calendar) the day is named as ‘Commemoration of the Faithful Departed.’It is a day when we remember with devotion those who have died.
It is common for us to remember family members and close friends.
Many include a visit to the grave side of the person(s) being remembered.
“Human beings have always cared for their dead and sought to give them a sort of second life through attention, care and affection, In a way, we want to preserve their experience of life; and paradoxically by looking at their graves, before which countless memories return, we remember how they lived, what they loved, what they feared, what they hoped for and what they hated, They are almost a mirror of their world.” —Pope Benedict XVI. All Souls Day 2011
The first burial at Karori Cemetery in Wellington, NZ was a month-old infant, Frederic William Fish who died on 3 August 1891 and it was another six months before the next burial.
Margaret Alington in her book Unquiet Earth evokes the barrenness of the Karori Cemetery at that time. “In the midst of the vast acres of rough hillside, the ground was first broken to receive the tiny body. [His remains] lay in isolation on the windy slopes for six months before the next burial.” There was no marker or headstone on Fish’s grave until a plaque was placed at the centenary of the cemetery in 1991.
In the Eucharistic Prayer used by the presider at our Eucharist there is a prayer remembering the dead.
The presider prays, “Remember also our brothers and sisters who have fallen asleep in the hope of the resurrection and all who have died in your mercy: welcome them into the light of your face.”
While the presider prays the pray aloud and alone, the Eucharistic Prayer is, in fact, the prayer of the community.
As the presider I am frequently caught up by the phrase, “And all who have died in your mercy.”
Interiorly, I find myself asking, ‘who doesn’t die in the mercy of our God? Whom would God exclude?
The choice to include or exclude belongs to God!
It can be worth recalling the ‘names’ we have for our God; all loving, all merciful, all compassionate, all forgiving, all redemptive.
Would this all loving, merciful, compassionate, forgiving, redemptive God exclude anyone? The exclusion is of our doing not, I suggest, of God’s doing!
Here is a suggestion: if you visit the cemetery this All Souls Day, take a moment to stop in front of an old, well worn grave, a grave that maybe somewhat overgrown by grass, brambles, or other sort of vegetation and pause for a moment and offer a prayer for the person whose remains lie there and whose grave is a memory of a life lived, of a life lived and died in the merciful embrace of God.
