Thoughts on Holy Week

The wounded surgeon plies the steel

That questions the distempered part;

Beneath the bleeding hands we feel

The sharp compassion of the healer’s art

Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease

If we obey the dying nurse

Whose constant care is not to please

But to remind of our and Adam’s curse

And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital

Endowed by the ruined millionaire,

Wherein, if we do well, we shall,

Die of that absolute paternal care

That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,

The fever sings in mental wires.

If to be warmed, then I must freeze

And quake in frigid purgatorial fires

Of which the flame is roses and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,

The bloody flesh our only food:

In spite of this we like to think

That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—

Again, in spite of that we call this Friday good.

-T.S. Eliot, from East Coker

I love Eliot’s take on Holy Week, the reason for it, and our response. 

Last Thursday, Lee and I went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  I wanted to see the work of a German artist named Gerhard Richter, who I had read about in the most recent issue of Image Journal.  His work is incredible, much of it is so realistic, it looks like a photograph.  But the piece that struck me the most, was a piece called Blood Red Mirror.  This painting was created by applying red paint to the back of a piece of glass and the result is a colored yet highly reflective surface.  When you stand in front of it, you see yourself and your entire world tinted blood red.  For me, it was a great gift to be reminded on Maundy Thursday of the way that Christ’s death color’s my life.

And somehow, “in spite of that we call this Friday good.”

Spiegel, blutrot, 1991 by Gerhard Richter.

Photo Credit: http://www.gerhard-richter.com/art/paintings/other/detail.php?6876