Theological Reflection

Wrestling With God
Marc Chagall, Jacob Wrestles with the Angel (and receives a blessing)

Recently, the Lectionary included a familiar reading from Genesis (chapter 32). It describes Jacob’s dilemma concerning his brother, Essau, from whom he is alienated. Alone at night in the wilderness, Jacob lays down on the ground and places his head upon a stone to sleep. In the darkness, Jacob then contends with an angel in what becomes a wrestling match that lasts through much of the night.

In parsing the elements of this deeply symbolic story, we must remember that in much of the Old Testament, angels appear and act as divine representatives. They also function as a literary device where the angelic figure is a stand-in for God. This is why it is appropriate to read this passage as a story about Jacob wrestling with God, as well as the more literal reading of it as an account of his wrestling with an angelic being. In either case, we are right to understand that the story portrays Jacob’s struggle to discern, and then accept, God’s will for him and for his future.

We are told that Jacob is fearful about meeting Esau, who is traveling with a large band of men. For, as we may remember, Jacob has wronged his brother by ‘stealing’ Esau’s birthright blessing, which Esau was to have received from their father, Isaac. As recorded in a well-known earlier story, Jacob had deceived their aged father by masquerading as his twin brother, who was only-minutes-older than him, thus receiving the blessing that Isaac had intended for Esau.

Now, with our modern understanding of psychology, contemporary readers of the nighttime angelic wrestling story may prefer to understand it as simply a symbolic portrayal of Jacob’s wrestling with his conscience. Though partly true, accepting such a univocal reading of the story comes at the expense of a profound dimension of the narrative. For this episode is what students of the Bible call a ‘theophany,’ a story about divine self-revelation, as Jacob himself (as well as the narrator) understood it to be.

So how might we appreciate this story of a nighttime struggle, involving unresolved aspects of a particular person’s history having to do with family relationships, as well as recording a pivotal moment within his long term quest for divine guidance?

I find it helpful to read the story within the following interpretive framework. When we refer to ‘struggling with God,’ I believe that what we often mean is our struggle to accept what we perceive to be (or suspect is) God’s will for us. As such, it has much to do with our understanding of prayer.

Jacob Wrestling With the Angel (attribution uncertain)

As I noted in a recent post, our Prayer Book teaches us that prayer is first of all a matter of responding to God. Responding to God, and responding to our perception of God’s will for us, are not often automatic or straightforward activities. Our natural disposition may be to fall back into thinking of prayer as enacting our desire to bring God’s will into accord with our own wants and hopes. For our prayers may often take this form. Yet, prayer is most holy when prayer is pursued in a way where we give ourselves up to an acceptance of our real need, not our wants. This is to accept our basic need for our wills to be brought into accord with the divine will. When this comes to be our more usual pattern of response to God, we are less likely to find ourselves having the feeling that we are struggling with God, and more likely to experience the peace of living harmoniously with God’s hopes and plans for us.

Alexander Louis Leloir, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel

When the Genesis story refers to Jacob’s having prevailed we will do better than to settle for the conclusion that he has ‘won’ or achieved a goal. Jacob hung on to the angel; he did not let go. And in the process he came to have a limp, the struggle having dislocated aspects of his prior way of being. The limp was therefore less a sign of an injury and more a sign of a deep change within him, and within his mode of engaging the world that lay before him. Jacob could then utter his famous words: “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” Encountering God’s awesome and holy presence did not consume him as fire would dry tinder. Instead, Jacob was transformed, and received a new name, Israel.

Responding to God – and God’s will for us – with acceptance, will likely disrupt aspects of our present ways of living. And we may feel that some important parts of our lives, even of ourselves, have been dislocated in the process. But if we cling to God, even through the feeling of struggle, with the aim of coming to be more fully in accord with God, and God’s ways, we will be blessed, just as Jacob was.

Note: among the many symbolic elements in Chagall’s painting, shown at the top, you might see if you can discern elements of the larger context of Jacob’s story, including those related to Joseph, in Genesis.

Nature & Grace, and What We May Learn About Beauty
Found Beauty: a colorful palette in front of a local garden store

I continue to be grateful for things I have learned from my former teaching colleague, Ralph McMichael. Among the insights I have gained from him is one way to sum up some basic understandings that people have of the relationship between Nature and Grace. Whether by these names or not, we all seem to have a concept of this relationship. Nature, an all embracing category, is the common term widely used to refer to what Jews and Christians call Creation. Grace is a term that some use to refer to the presence of the supernatural realm, as it may touch upon or be found in Nature.

There are many ways of thinking about the relationship between these terms, and what they represent. Among them are four basic concepts or models of the interaction between them, which Ralph McMichael often presented in his teaching at the seminary. His articulation of these four ways can be summed up with four words: Compatible; Opposition; Identification; and Fusion. The most common understanding of the interaction between the supernatural realm and the natural world is represented by the first two terms. I will explain.

Many of us were raised in social environments where this interaction was seen as one in which the supernatural, or Grace, only episodically touches aspects of the natural world, or Nature. Based on the first model, some of us tend to see this interaction as involving the compatible yet occasional way that Grace touches Nature. It touches Nature here and there, unpredictably ‘gracing’ the natural realm in which we find ourselves. In this first model, Grace is a friendly presence to and upon those beings or things that it visits, making up for something of value that we seek or yearn for. 

In the second model of the relationship between Nature and Grace, the latter is once again seen as episodic, touching Nature just as unpredictably. But, in this case, Grace – although sometimes also friendly – can appear to be incompatible with some things it touches. In this view, while Grace may be friendly to Nature, aspects of Nature may be unfriendly to Grace, and opposed to it!

Found Beauty: Boat rudder in clear northern water

The third model for understanding the relationship between Nature and Grace might not be as familiar to many of us, and it may represent a reaction to the perceived inadequacy of the first two models. This third view has affinities with what is called pantheism, the view that Nature and Grace are so intertwined that they are indistinguishable. In this view, there is no separation between sacred and profane, or between God and the world, for – despite appearances and sometimes contrary experience – the two ideas or things are really one. Hence, according to this third mode of approaching the question, Nature is Grace.

McMichael referred to the fourth model as the Fusion model, one that he and many ‘catholic-minded’ thinkers commend. In this model, rather than seeing Nature and Grace identified as one entity, Nature is best seen as infused by Grace. With this understanding, we can see Nature and Grace as distinguishable but also as inseparable. Nature is graced. A theological extension of this idea is for us to say that ‘there is no place where God is not.’

In offering McMichael’s four models for understanding the relationship between Nature and Grace, I realize that I have presented a conceptually-dense set of ideas. Yet, I encourage you to consider them – and muse about them – for I believe you will come to recognize how you – like me – often assume one or more of them. Sometimes we think with these four models in overlapping ways, or at other times inconsistently when viewing one set of circumstances followed by another.

Found Beauty: A rainbow breaks through a late evening storm

These four models, because they so fundamentally shape our world-view, continue to play a role in my reflection upon Art, Beauty, and the theme of Transcendence. I invite you to join me in reflecting on how these models for understanding the relationship between Nature and Grace might inform our thinking about Beauty, its presence in the world around us, and how Beauty is a fundamental aspect of our experience of the natural realm in which we find ourselves every day.

Here is one way to apply McMichael’s four models to how we think about Beauty:

  • Beauty graces Nature episodically, in a compatible way.
  • Beauty appears in Nature episodically, and challenges that which is other than beautiful.
  • Nature is identified with Beauty.
  • Nature is infused with Beauty, and thoroughly permeated by it.

If we identify with the fourth view, as presented here, we of course need to do some thinking about those circumstances when we are confronted by an encounter with ugliness, as well as with evil. We must then try to explain our experiences of these latter real aspects of what we encounter. Here, both-and thinking will serve us in a way that either/or thinking will prove unsatisfactory. And, hence, we must be sure to distinguish the Identification model (which tends toward pantheism) from the Fusion model (which can be consistent with traditional theism).

Found Beauty: A quiet early morning at the same marina

Additional note: the photos included in this post were taken in Charlevoix, Michigan, in the summer of 2025

God’s Handiwork Inspires Ours
Stones found on a northern Lake Michigan beach

Labor Day is around the corner and some of us may receive and enjoy a day off from work. What we call retirement, a stage in life I am presently enjoying, tends to represent leaving work behind. Yet these and related ideas rest upon a common assumption, that work is different from, and in some ways inimical to, enjoying fulfillment in life.

I find a biblically based theological insight helpful when thinking about work. As with many matters that can be looked at from the perspective of Christian moral theology, our view of work can be enhanced by making reference to four specific reference points. These are, first, what we have learned about God’s purposes in Creation for this or that aspect of our lives; then, what impact sin associated with our Fall has had upon what we are thinking about; third, how God’s ongoing work of Redemption has restored and or transformed the matter presently under consideration; and fourth, to ask what future – if any – does this aspect of our lives have in Christ. 

Work provides a wonderful topic for engaging in this fourfold inquiry. Based on our common way of thinking about work, it may be hard for us to consider the meaning of work from any other vantage point than of attributing its role in our lives to the Fall and to the ongoing effects of human sin. Yet, we can also learn from many who have come before us who have distinguished work from toil. This can help us see how forms of labor, and pejorative associations the word may have for us, are surely due to our proclivity to link such activity with burdensome unpleasant duties.

For what we may overlook is the biblical view of how God has shared stewardship responsibility for aspects of Creation with us, as beings created in God’s image and likeness. This was symbolized by the way that our mythic forebears (Adam and Eve) were given their ‘work’ of naming the animals as a path toward fulfillment. It was not until their expulsion from the Garden that the first human beings are described as prone to acts characteristic of sin. Thereupon, in biblical theology, our heavenly ‘work’ of praise, and of divinely-invited participation in God’s Creation stewardship, ceased to be pleasingly ready pathways toward human fulfillment, and became energy draining and spirit-diminishing activities – such as we tend to find them to be now.

A growing segment of the wider Christian community shows signs of acknowledging how God’s work of Redemption is ongoing, quite aside from its ‘once and for all time’ episodic saving events. The pattern and purpose remains the same – nothing fundamentally new is added, nothing old of lasting value taken away. Preeminent remains God’s abiding purpose for us to become and be God-like in God-intended ways. For, as Athanasius taught us, the Son of God became the Son of Man, so that the children of men and women could become the children of God. Work – not toil nor burdensome labor but creative and fulfilling work – remains a vital part of our holy path toward wholeness.

And to remind us of this abiding truth, the loving Creator has spread around us an uncountable abundance. These are the signs of outpoured and participatory grace, some of them very small, like stepped-upon seashore pebbles and tiny blossoms among hurried-by roadside weeds.

Too quickly we dismiss the significance of our our small acts of selfless giving, not to be counted by us, but adding up to so much more than we imagine in the life-growth of others. This is our holy ‘work,’ overlooked but important stepping stones on our path toward living into the godly fullness with which Christ fills us.

If on our daily course our mind

Be set, to hallow all we find,

New treasures still, of countless price,

God will provide for sacrifice.

Old friends, old scenes, will lovelier be,

As more of heaven in each we see:

Some softening gleam of love and prayer

Shall dawn on every cross and care.

[John Keble, “Morning,” from The Christian Year]

Beauty: Found, Received, and Made
A photo from Èze, France (by my brother)

While undertaking my studies in ethics and moral theology, I discerned a significant parallel that has continued to shape my world-view. The parallel I have in mind connects how we understand law with how we understand ethics. In turn, I have come to see how this discernment applies also to how we appreciate beauty. 

First, about where law comes from. As I understand it, there are three principal theories about our source or sources for law, formally termed theories of jurisprudence. They are not mutually exclusive, and may function for us in overlapping ways. 

A common understanding regarding the source of law views the concept of law as fundamental to and discernible within the structure of reality. Law in this first sense is something we find, written into the patterns of the world, and of its many aspects. This idea gives rise to, but is not the same thing as, the so-called ‘laws of nature,’ or the principles that order the function of many things from the most basic particles within matter, and the function of waves like light and energy, the functions we discern within complex biological organisms however malleable they may seem to be over time, as well as within the structure of rationality. 

A well-known expression of this first concept of law is latent within the familiar phrasing regarding what it means to be a human being: “we hold these truths to be self-evident…” That is, certain truths or principles are there to be found, by those who exercise our capacity for reason and discernment. A simple but sometimes misleading label for this first concept of law is ‘natural law,’ which some skeptics might argue is neither!

The second most commonly recognized theory of the source of law can be articulated by observing those principles and ‘rules’ long-rooted in the history of our communities, which we receive from those who have come before us. British Common Law, which undergirds much of our tradition of law in the United States, is a prime example. ‘Received from history,’ and long relied upon by communities, are two basic ways to label and identify this concept of law. The familiar refrain, ‘we have always done it in this way,’ provides a ready example. 

The third way of understanding the source and character of law perceives law to be comprised of those principles and or rules that have been decided by individuals and communities. It is commonly called ‘positive law,’ a label that refers to the law that we posit, or put into place. The existence of law in this third category represents the assertion of will and of choice, for law in this sense arises from us as something we make, and is dependent upon our projection of what we wish or believe to be true. Many examples, from neighborhood clubhouse rules to Louisiana’s state constitution (resting upon the French Napoleonic legal tradition), are expressions of this approach. 

These three theoretical understandings of the source of law are relevant for my own field of ethics. For in ethics, there are three principal bases for our concept of the Good, and upon which our notion of the Good rests, which correspond to three principal forms of jurisprudence or theories of the source of law. 

Moonrise off the harbor breakwater in Antibes (photo also by Gregory Holmgren)

If this is correct, and I believe it is, then surely we can reason appropriately toward the same conclusion regarding Beauty as well as for Truth. For Beauty and Truth as Transcendentals play the same foundational role in our thinking as the Good, which functions as a principal reference point for ethics in human reasoning and experience.

This leads me to recognize how there are three principal ways of accounting for the source or sources of beauty. With regard to Beauty, positivists will contend that ideas regarding beauty are projections of those who hold them, whether by individuals or by communities. Historicists, in parallel with the common law tradition of jurisprudence, will say that notions of beauty are rooted in the histories of communities and the traditions, and are to this extent reliable guides for thinking about things. And – as follows from the preceding, those who accept the natural law tradition in jurisprudence are those most likely to view beauty as a given feature of reality, here and there for us to encounter, regardless of our shared traditions and personal aspirations. 

In closing, I want to restate a point I made above. Whether we are accounting for the source or sources of Beauty, Goodness, and or Truth, we may prefer one or more of three ways I have articulated based on the three principal approaches to the sources of law. Yet, all three approaches are likely to figure into and be a part of our thinking. For example, we may think that notions of beauty are rooted in nature, while valuing how our Western tradition of art has shaped our thoughts and those of our community, while still also recognizing how we may be somewhat arbitrary regarding the forms or standards of beauty that we prefer to value and pursue! Especially because the first or second of these three approaches may serve as a corrective to and perhaps as also a check against the potential liabilities associated with the third.

What Distinguishing Religion, Science, Magic, and Technology, Might Teach Us About Beauty
A book of essays by Peter Kreeft

Peter Kreeft has written an illuminating essay on the use of indirect communication by CS Lewis and Walker Percy. In it, and in a humorous recording of its content, he explores how both Lewis and Percy present the predicament of the modern person. We live as upside-down persons. And we are not among the first people in history to suspect this. (See St. Augustine, d. 430 AD)

As a way into the heart of his theme, Kreeft invites us to consider a hypothetical challenge posed to a child: take four common objects and sort them into two boxes. The four items are a baseball, a basketball, a baseball bat, and a basketball net. The two most obvious solutions to this challenge, based on the categories of being and doing, nicely set up a thought experiment that Kreeft intends for his audience to engage. He invites us to sort the following four things into two (undefined) categories: Religion, Science, Magic, and Technology. Try it. 

In taking up this simple quiz question, we discover one way that our contemporary thinking habits depart from those of our ancient forebears. Our common assumption that science and technology are sister fields, reliably distinguished by their empirical methodology from both religion and magic, reflects a misunderstanding. For what we may overlook in this supposition of an affinity between science and technology, as well as between the second pair of terms, is how our categorization of these four terms demonstates our understanding of what we consider to be real. And the key variable governing our typical way of sorting these four conceptual categories centers less on what is ‘real,’ and more on the significance of how we conceptualize our encounter with ‘reality.’

A theme that has surfaced from time time in this space, and which plays a large role in structuring my understanding of Beauty, rests upon my appreciation for the distinction between the meaning of the words ‘objective’ and ‘subjective.’ I credit my graduate research in ethics and moral theology for raising my awareness of what these terms can and do mean. With regard to Beauty, and more broadly about what is real versus what is presently actual in our awareness of things, ‘objective’ best refers to the objects of perception, and ‘subjective’ in a corollary way best refers to the subject of perception (I.e., to me, the observer, the knower).

CS Lewis in his Oxford study

Kreeft makes the case that both CS Lewis and Walker Percy shared a conceptual understanding with many philosophers and writers from the pre-modern era. In making the point, Kreeft quotes what he says are the three most illuminating sentences he has ever read about our civilization:

“There is something which unites magic and applied science [i.e., technology] while separating both from the “wisdom” of earlier ages. For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike, the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique.”

And if we have not guessed where Kreeft is headed with all this, he puts the matter succinctly: “Technology is more like magic than like science.” It follows that he commends thinking of religion as being like science by also involving a search for what is real and true, even if differing in its methodology and content.  

Walker Percy at home in Covington, LA

A challenge related to Kreeft’s theme, regarding how we approach beauty, faces us as modern people. It stems from how – through the influence of our culture – we are inclined to think of art and architecture as being more akin to magic and technology, than to science and religion. For we tend to assume that artists and architects manipulate materials and space to stimulate certain responses from those who interact with their work. And, of course, they do. But is this all that these crafters of beautiful things accomplish? Are they not also among those who seek and make available to others instantiations of what is real, and more particularly of the beauty that is there for us also to perceive and come to know? I believe that they are. 

Artists and architects approach the world in a way that has an affinity with those who work in religion and science, while what they do may seem to be like the work of those who ‘practice’ technology or magic. For like all genuine seekers of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, scientists (especially theoretical physicists) as well as religionists include dedicated persons who want to know these real aspects of the world that may be apprehended by those who look for them.

I continue to learn by reflecting on these themes.

Note: Kreeft develops at greater length than I have scope here to address the significance of these and related distinctions. He does this in his essay, “Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos: The Abolition of Man in Late Night Comedy Format.” I commend an entertaining recording of Kreeft’s presentation of the essay’s content, which can be found on his website (by clicking this link).

Our Doorway Into God’s Trinitarian Being
William Holman Hunt, The Shadow of Death (1870-73)

When we as Christians pray, we don’t simply pray to God. With faithful assurance, we pray with and through God! As Paul tells us, “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit…” This is because, when we pray “to the Father,” we also pray with and through the Son. We are enabled to pray with and through the Son following our Baptism. For after Baptism, we are assured that we pray in the Holy Spirit. We therefore pray to God not ‘from the outside,’ but ‘from the inside’ of God’s own being and nature!

Well, how can this be? As we can easily discover, every Eucharistic Prayer in The Book of Common Prayer has a common shape. For all of our Eucharistic Prayers are prayed to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. This is not an accident. Jesus modeled this in his own life, and particularly at the Last Supper.

When we repeat Jesus’ pattern, offered at that supper, we stand with him around the same table. And by his graceful invitation, we join his prayer to the One he called, ‘Our Father.’ Our prayer with him, to the Father, is in the power of the Spirit, the same Spirit he spoke about at that table. He modeled at that supper what grace means in practice.

Through the grace of the Holy Spirit, Jesus shares with us his own particular intimacy with the Father. Inviting us to stand with him as he prays, he offers the whole world back to the Father-Creator. By this, Jesus – and us with him – fulfills the divinely intended-but-failed stewardship vocation of the mythical Adam and Eve. And so, this is also our vocation, to offer up to our Father all that truly belongs to the Creator. Sharing with Jesus the grace of the Holy Spirit allows us to join him, the Son, in his ongoing Eucharistic vocation.

A good way we can live into the saving implications of God’s Trinitarian nature, is to engage in some creative imagining. Imagine that, in this moment, Jesus reaches out his hands to us. In reaching out his hands, he does not simply extend his greeting. Extending his embrace, he invites us to join him by standing with him, closely at his side. By his invitation, and our acceptance of it, he shares with us his own intimate and particular relationship with our Father.

And with this invitation, he gives us the power of the Spirit, making it a reality in our lives. Because the invitation comes from him, the power of the Spirit he shares with us is God’s grace-filled power. Jesus makes all this actual and true, whether we feel it or not.

This Trinitarian shape of prayer is different from how we usually imagine prayer. Commonly, we think of prayer as our communication to God. When we feel aware of God and close to God, we speak to God of what is good and well and of that for which we feel thankful. And we often ask for help. But, when there seems to be a veil between us and God, we speak to God with lament or we complain, sometimes in anger. This concept and experience of prayer is ‘subjective,’ and therefore narrow. That is, it is a concept of prayer based primarily upon our personal, interior, experience. It reflects our experience of being the subjects of perception and action. Yet, as the Prayer Book Catechism teaches us, prayer is first of all responding to God.

As we learn from Jesus, and by the Holy Spirit, true prayer is not something we do, which we somehow manage to achieve through our faithfulness, devotion, or energy. True prayer is something we allow God to do within us. True prayer is the kind of praying that we find God already making real within us through the indwelling Grace of the Holy Spirit. The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are constantly engaged with one another, in what the Eastern Christian tradition calls ‘a dance,’ a perichoresis. Prayer involves being drawn into this dance. Prayer is sharing in the Trinitarian relational being of God. Prayer is participation in the community of fellowship that exists within God’s own being.

The Trinitarian pattern of our lives rests upon the Trinitarian shape of our prayers. We can accept Jesus’ invitation to stand with him. We then experience his own fellowship with the Father, in the grace-filled power of the Holy Spirit. This enables us to live truly. To live truly, is to live to the Father. It is to live with and through the Son. And true prayer is to live in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And so, we seek to live in the way that we pray: to the Father, with and through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.

Note: This post is based on the Western Church’s observance of Trinity Sunday, on June 15, 2025. My title is based on a well-known metaphor found in John’s Gospel. The text here is based on my homily for that occasion, which may be accessed by clicking here.

My goal is to commend the assurance of hope that lies within the Gospel. And while being aware of concerns about the so-called ’scandal of particularity’ associated with Christianity and Judaism, we should be aware that God is free to offer a similarly positive spiritual experience to those of other religious traditions, or of no particular tradition with which they may identify. I hope to address Hunt’s evocative painting, featured above, in a subsequent post.

Beauty & “The God of Wes Anderson”

This is a reprint of a review article by Germẚn Saucedo, titled “The God of Wes Anderson.” It is reprinted here with permission from the author, and from the publisher of the journal, First Things, where it first appeared.

A scene from Wes Anderson’s new film, The Phoenician Scheme

The God of Francis Thompson is a stubborn God. In his seminal poem “The Hound of Heaven,” a soul is on the run from God: “I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; / I fled Him, down the arches of the years.” The “hound” is persistent, however, and is always pursuing with “unhurrying chase, / And unperturbèd pace, / Deliberate speed, majestic instancy.” Who is this God whose love for us is so passionate and resolute, who will forgive even the gravest of sins and chase us to the ends of the world?

The God of Francis Thompson is the God that operates in Wes Anderson’s latest feature, The Phoenician Scheme. The film follows Anatole “Zsa-Zsa” Korda (Benicio del Toro), an industrialist and morally bankrupt magnate in the style of J. Paul Getty or Aristotle Onassis who, after surviving yet another mysterious assassination attempt, decides to call upon his estranged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton), a novice “sister of the cloth.” He intends not only to bequeath his vast fortune to her, but also to enlist her in completing the “most important project of [his] lifetime,” the “Korda Land and Sea Phoenician Infrastructure Scheme.”

Many films have been accused of being “God-haunted,” hinting at the presence of God through the subtleties of the plot or the visuals. The Phoenician Scheme is more than “God-haunted”; he is very much present in the film. He is, in fact, played by Bill Murray. After a plane crash at the beginning of the movie, Korda briefly finds himself in heaven. There, he runs into his grandmother, who fails to recognize the man he has become. Time and time again, as assassins seek to end his life, Korda finds himself at the pearly gates. Each time, he is found lacking.

In the Confessions, St. Augustine famously recounts his youthful desire for the Lord to “Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.” While amusing, this sentiment is spiritually disordered. Many of us live lives apart from God, hoping we can outmaneuver him at the last second, “lest he come suddenly and find you asleep.” Similarly, Korda realizes that he has delayed repentance and conversion until the last minute.

The “hound” is never far away, however. He manifests himself through Liesl who, despite practically being abandoned by Korda, has managed to become a pious nun. While reluctant to enter her father’s world of opulence and luxury, she nevertheless decides to play the role Korda has set for her, seeing potential spiritual fruits from the venture, and quickly begins the work of saving Korda’s soul. She easily forgives his past injustices toward her, brings love to the lives of Korda’s nine neglected sons, and attempts to humanize his enterprise. Liesl also attempts to evangelize the children’s tutor and her father’s new administrative assistant, Bjørn.

Korda’s journey to save his infrastructure project brings him ever closer to God. Liesl’s influence and example, as well as a confrontation with his past (and some amount of self-interest), leads him—along with his nine sons—to be baptized into the Catholic Church. In a defining act of selflessness, Korda gives up his fortune to cover the funding deficit of his major project and save it.

Wes Anderson’s films are often dismissed as mere aesthetic exercises, lacking narrative substance. His protagonists are usually “bourgeois with bourgeois problems,” while his visuals are frequently labeled as “twee” and “quirky.” Unlike the realism of directors like Ermanno Olmi, whose slow and contemplative style focused on the material reality of the lower classes, Anderson’s work is often seen as overly stylized and detached from reality.

But this surface-level reading could not be further from the truth. For Anderson, it seems, beauty is reality. To borrow Keats’s famous verse, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”; and it is through beauty that God makes himself known to us. When Liesl attempts to exit her father’s opulent world and take her vows as a nun, her mother superior declines, pointing to her love of lavishness—including a bejeweled pipe and diamond-encrusted rosary gifted by Korda, which Anderson commissioned from Dunhill and Cartier—as evidence of her lack of religious vocation. But she does not scold her for loving beautiful things. In fact, she comforts Liesl by saying that God glorifies himself with the lavish and palatial, as not everyone was meant to live in poverty.

In a Q&A at a New York screening of the film, Wes Anderson reflected briefly on the ability of rich magnates to do good, especially in today’s world. The artist has a similar potential. In Thompson’s poem, the “hound” claims that “[N]one but I makes much of naught.” While our riches and our art may amount to nothing, once offered up to God, they can become instruments of his love and mercy. God will never stop his pursuit of us in part because he, unlike the world, knows our full potential. Korda—like us—is thrown lifeline after lifeline, which can only be taken on God’s terms, not ours.

Unlike Korda, we should not wait for brushes with death and brief visits to the pearly gates to turn around and deliver the “hound” from his incessant chase. Every moment is an opportunity to do so. The curious and wonderful thing about the God of Francis Thompson, the God of Wes Anderson, is that he’s real, and he is always seeking us.

A promotional poster for Anderson’s new film

Note: Germẚn Saucedo serves as a Junior Fellow at First Things. I requested permission to reprint his review article because it seems so fitting to the material I explore on this website. I am grateful for this fine piece. I particularly appreciate Saucedo’s statement, based on a quote from Keats: “For Anderson, it seems, beauty is reality… and it is through beauty that God makes himself known to us.”

The Challenge Posed by Eric Gill

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Eric Gill, Christ Crowned

 

To my mind, some of the most beautiful work in the area of graphic art was created by the British artist and craftsman, Eric Gill. The intractable problem posed by Eric Gill is not a legacy of his artistic output, but of his personal life. Largely unknown to those outside his family until about 50 years after his death, Eric Gill – by admission in his own unpublished writings – had engaged in personal behavior of a kind that most people would find not only abhorrent but, increasingly, as also criminal.

This is related to the larger problem posed by the work of artists, musicians, and architects whose work is seen as having been collaborative with tyrannical regimes (eg., the Third Reich, the Soviet Union). How do we view beauty in art that either depicts or is simply associated in some way with sin or with evil? (This is a matter I have previously tried to understand in relation to Picasso’s great painting, Guernica.)

To cite Scripture to the effect that “all have sinned,” may help us begin to locate the terrain upon which we need to address the problems stemming from Eric Gill’s biography, but it is not in any way to excuse his conduct. Though all sin is bad, and equally problematic in the eyes of God, not all sin is equal in its damaging effect upon others, and upon ourselves. The traditional distinction in moral theology between mortal and venial sins provides one way to try to parse some of these differences, while not excusing any forms or examples of sin, whether in ourselves or among others.

My purpose here is to invite reflection upon how we might appreciate Eric Gill’s religious art, as many did for several generations, without having our view of the merit of his work diminished by our moral evaluation of troubling ethical choices he made, and the lapses from good moral judgment they represent. In other words, and as an amateur student of the arts while also being a retired parish priest and former professor of moral theology, I wish to present some examples of Eric Gill’s art, letting his work speak for itself apart from ethical consideration of his personal life, and without ignoring the problems associated with the latter.

Perhaps my theme here can be summed up in this way: I invite you to benefit from the beauty of what Eric Gill created without asking you to overlook what we have learned about his private life. And I offer this invitation aware that some will not find it possible to accept.

A sculpted carving by Eric Gill above the altar of the Chapel of St George and the English Martyrs, Westminster Cathedral, London
Eric Gill, Crucifixion
Eric Gill, sculpted relief panel from a series of the Stations of the Cross, Westminster Cathedral, London

As we consider some of his art, we should not overlook Eric Gill’s impact, at least indirectly, upon much of the daily life of the population of Great Britain (and elsewhere), in the form of three type faces he created. The most well-known is Gill Sans, named after its designer, and evident at almost every Tube stop in London. An effort to erase his work from the public eye, and replace it with alternatives, would require removing virtually every train station sign in Britain. It could be done. Should it?

Three fonts designed by Eric Gill

To put the problem I have raised here most bluntly, how can we appreciate the beauty in the holy art created by someone who behaved in a way most people would describe as sinful? I do not have a ready answer to this question. Note that, in what I have written above about Gill’s behavior, I have not gone into detail. Would that make a difference? If so, in what way?

And even if we refuse to give any amount of attention to Eric Gill’s artwork, we must still grapple with a timeless question: are there any unforgivable sins? Is anyone, because of his or her behavior, beyond the power of God’s redeeming love? Is it not likely that someone having Gill’s religious inclination also possesses a glimmer of moral awareness such that he or she might be open to repentance when – at the end of life – the person faces the awesome and undiminished light of God’s truth-seeking love?

Here is one thing that we can do: pray for the repose of the soul of Eric Gill, and for God’s Providential mercy.

In beginning to approach the questions I have raised here, I would start with some of the distinctions I shared above. I do not think we can deny this reality – that we, as people who are created in the image and likeness of God, and who have lost that likeness through the Fall and human sin, still bear God’s image however marred it may be by the corruption resulting from our sins. And, that we are still capable while in this life of acts and works of uplifting beauty.

Leo XIV: The Beauty of Possibility

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Pope Leo XIV, upon his election

As an Anglican, I join other non-Roman Catholics in hoping and praying that the new Bishop of Rome will live fully into the beautiful opportunity he has been given. His new office brings with it a symbolic role for all Christians, to be a principled unifier and peacemaker. In this era, that will surely be a challenge.

People of good will seek truth where it is to be found. We want all persons to live in harmony with one another, and with the beautiful world in which we find ourselves. We see this spirit of inquiry and discernment exemplified in many Christian leaders, as well as in non-Christian leaders like the Dalai Lama.

At heart, we seek and desire to serve what Christians and Jews hold to be true regarding all human beings. For we believe that all persons were and are created in the image of God, and that despite the woeful effects of our sin, we all still bear that image, however much we may have lost likeness with God. This was the central insight that some Roman Catholic Christian thinkers, along with fellow spiritual travelers from other traditions, brought to the creation of the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

Principal documents from the Second Vatican Council display this theme in abundance. These texts continue to inform and guide wise souls who are genuinely concerned about the numerous lingering and emerging problems within the worldwide Church, and in the many societies and cultures where Christians seek to serve Christ in all persons, and respect the dignity of every human being.

Pope Leo has in large measure the same opportunity that we all have. May he have grace to live and serve well, and may we remember the importance of our own often overlooked roles in seeking to do the same. Every day brings new opportunities to seek and serve what is true, especially as we come to know the source of all Beauty, Goodness, and Truth, in Christ.

As St. Richard, the 13th century pre-Reformation Bishop of Chichester (England), taught us to pray: “Dear Lord, of thee three things [we] pray: to see thee more clearly, to love thee more dearly, and to follow thee more nearly, day by day.” (text from The Hymnal 1982, yet familiar to many from the musical, Godspell)

We find the same words as part of a prayer found in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church:

MOST merciful Redeemer,
who gavest to thy Bishop Richard a love of learning,
a zeal for souls, and a devotion to the poor:
grant that, encouraged by his example,
and aided by his prayers,
we may know thee more clearly,
love thee more dearly,
and follow thee more nearly,
day by day;
who livest and reignest with the Father
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, ever one God,
world without end. Amen.

A stained glass window commemorating St. Richard of Chichester, found in the church of St. Saviour, Eastbourne, East Sussex, England

Entering The Easter Joy of Our Lord

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Peter Farago, The Resurrection

 

A prayer appointed for the closing moments of the Good Friday liturgy provides words with which we commit ourselves to God, and pray for the grace of a holy life. We pray this prayer “with all who have departed this world and have died in the peace of Christ.” The liturgy provides this prayer so that, having made our commitment, and request for grace, “we may be accounted worthy to enter into the fullness of the joy of our Lord.”

Through Baptism, through dying and rising again in Christ, we have already entered into the joy of our Lord. This is the joy that our Lord so freely shares with all who are open to receiving it. A notable aspect of the first disciples’ response to encountering the Risen Lord, was joy. He brought joy to those who had despaired, or doubted, or even had given up hope. He brought joy to Peter who had denied him three times. He brings the same joy to us.

To experience the joy of the Lord, we don’t need to wait until we pass beyond this life, through the veil, into what lies before us. What we await is the fullness of joy when, finally, we behold him, unburdened from the cares and allure of this world as these occupy our attention now. In Jesus’ Resurrection, and through our participation in his Risen Life, we see further dimensions of the New Creation that already is.

Through Grace, joy is now ours. Rightly, and by faith, we anticipate entering the fullness of the joy of the Lord. As a Robert Lentz icon of Thomas Aquinas reminds us, joy is more than a feeling; for “joy is the noblest human act.”