The Cerasi Chapel (July 10)
July 10
I didn’t visit the Caravaggios yesterday — I went to the Latin Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, where Peter’s bones are supposedly buried. If so, the hand bones, the foot bones, must be shattered by the stakes that were driven through them. When it comes to faith I’m a doubting Thomas — I’ll believe anything, but I also want proof. Coming out of the church — which overwhelmed me, made me sad — I noticed everyone on the square was looking up at a window from which a maroon banner hung. The papal apartments. After some time, the curtains parted. Pope Francis appeared. Cheers from the crowd bearing flags, messages. A sports-like atmosphere, like when Lebron steps onto the court. He began, immediately, to speak. I tried getting various translation apps to work — one produced the translation, “Ay ay ay…” I gave up, just watched. I like the Pope. If I were to meet him, I’d give him a fist bump, ask him if he’s read much Merton.
Why did I get sad in the church? It was beautiful, of course. The largest church on earth. Michelangelo’s Pieta, completed when he was 23 (I was completing undergrad). A little side chapel where I sat for a long time, looking at the light on the wall. Beautiful wallpaper, yellow, like Gilman’s. Statues of angels sitting high, high up on ledges, their legs dangling as if into the blue water of a pool, the dizzying delight of feeling they were on the verge of falling in. And that central altar, with its four black pillars — I remember it from last time. The grandiosity of it all. But certainly this wasn’t what Christ intended. I imagine him coming back and driving everyone out of the Basilica the way he drove the moneychangers out of the temple. Catholicism is like a boy who, wanting to make material his love for his father, gives him gifts he doesn’t especially want. James Dean in East of Eden. Also, Sundays have always made me sad. When I was a boy I used to worry about what the priest would do through the long Sunday afternoon. Also, the Mass itself. There was a scrum to get a good seat to watch the cannibalism. It’s all deeply weird. Catholicism — a beautiful poet, but with no sense of humor. Merton had a sense of humor. O’Connor certainly did. Caravaggio? I think so, yes. Weil? No. No Weil (ha). But she remained outside the church, which is funny. I can’t take anything — people, institutions — that takes itself too seriously. Is there any humor in the Gospels? Maybe everyone was laughing their asses off, but it didn’t get set down that way.
But at one point, everyone around me laughed. Pope Francis had said something funny. I remember once, in Dharmasala, watching the Dalai Lama talk, surrounded by old Tibetan women passing around some sort of yak milk tea (aptly named — it made you want to yack). And he was busting them the fuck up. They were fairly rolling with laughter.
This morning, when I get to the church, Mass is just ending. The way to the paintings is roped off. An assistant opens it all up, and I walk up to the dark chapel alone. Pay two euro. Light up Peter. Christ said he was the rock upon which he would build his church, a word which, last night, reading Schmemann on the eucharist, I learned originally meant congregation. A church was not conceived of as physical. Wherever two or three are gathered, there I am. Christianity a slow calcifying of believers into buildings, with all their attendant needs — lighting, plumbing, upkeep. The name Peter actually means “rock.” And indeed there is a big-ass rock on the ground in the painting, surrounded by little stones — the church and its congregants? It seems to me this rock has been unearthed from the hole in which the bottom of the cross will be set. They’ve dug it up with that shovel. Maybe the posthole digger had yet to be invented. As with everything in a painting, why put it there if you don’t mean it to mean something? Especially in the foreground. I’m reading fiction manuscripts right now. They’re full of things they don’t need to be full of, which leaves no room for the things they need to be full of.
Another thing I notice this morning — the likeness between the dirty sole of the first man’s left foot and Peter’s right foot, creased around the stake. No blood though, the only unrealistic detail (or lack of realistic detail) in the painting. Maybe he knew he couldn’t get away with that here. This painting isn’t gory, though he absolutely had that capacity (he loved a good beheading). Also, Peter’s left hand seems to hold the stake it is held by. I love this detail. Of course, it may be pure pain that makes him seem to grasp it, but it reminds me of that tender way in which, in the late rounds, two boxers who’ve pummeled one another hold one another. Maybe the way to deal with pain is to hold onto it so tightly that we merge with it — it ceases to be something that is being done to us and becomes part of us. I’ve felt this in the last miles of a marathon. Suddenly (well, it’s gradual, but one realizes it suddenly), one is no longer in pain. One is pain. The acceptance of this is a great relief. There’s that beautiful Rilke poem called “Fall,” in which he admits that we’re all falling but falling while held in a great hand that is also falling. To die is to fall while being held. People going down in a plane in their seats.
It’s clear to me, looking at the painting this morning, that Christ was lonelier than Peter. What saves Christianity for me is that moment no one ever seems to talk about, that moment in the Garden when he says, unbelievably, “Father, why have you forsaken me?” Translation: “Mah dude, this is kinda fucked up.” He seems not quite certain that it’s all going to work out. And what keeps it all vital for me is that maybe it didn’t. Maybe he was just a really good guy, great storyteller, definitely on the beam, who got killed by the state. Guess what? It happened yesterday somewhere in America. Maybe none of this is real — maybe we just really need to believe that it is. Peter, on the other hand (no pun intended) knew something Christ didn’t - he knew that Christ had been crucified right-side up, so he asked to be crucified upside-down. A way had been established that gave Peter agency. “I am the way and the life.” Jesus beat back the brambles. The way is clear, but it’s possible he had no idea where the hell he was going.
Again, this idea of Catholicism as calcifying around a numinous emptiness. Weil writes beautifully about how, to paraphrase her badly, we must empty ourselves of the “I” in order to make room for God’s absence. We absent ourselves of ourselves so as to be filled by…nothing. This nothing is God if anything is. Like the koan that asks what sound is made by one hand clapping, we can’t do it. And because it is impossible, it is the only thing worth doing. Don’t misunderstand me — it isn’t enough to try. One actually has to do what is impossible, or else all is lost. Otherwise, as O’Connor said about the eucharist if it wasn’t actually the body of Christ, “To hell with it.”