Pick up your cross
Illustration: Crosses (c. 1981-1982),
Andy Warhol (1928-1987),
Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, USA.
Text: Fr. Michael Morris, O.P.
MAGNIFICAT Holy Week 2011
 |
Two of the most important Christian images in iconography:
the Last Supper and the cross. |
THE SEEDS OF FAITH, when planted early, can yield a late but rich harvest in the most unusual places. Andy Warhol, the King of Pop Art, the enfant terrible of Manhattan night life, a passive yet cunning recorder of all those clamouring for glamour, fame and fortune in this vale of tears, had a spiritual side that was largely unknown to the public. While the secular press would never admit that piety can still flourish among world-weary sophisticates, it is known that Warhol regularly visited his parish church in New York. St. Vincent Ferrer, that he sat there praying in the shadows, frequently worked for the poor at a soup kitchen, financed a nephew's seminary education, and cherished the Ruthenian Catholic memories of his childhood in Pittsburg. After nearly dying from gunshot wounds inflicted by a deranged member of his creative circle, Warhol embarked on a new quest in the last years of his life, reinterpreting for a contemporary audience two of the most important Christian images in iconography: the Last Supper and the cross. It is that latter symbol on which one might appropriately reflect during this Holy Week, for in all its simplicity it holds within it a multitude of sublime meanings.
In ancient times, before Christ, the cross was already imbued with a holy symbolism that permeated art and ritual. The Egyptians saw it as an emblem of the Four Elements (Earth, Fire, Water and Air). It was also a symbol of well-being and the life to come. In pre-Christian Scandinavia, the cross was seen as a symbol of worship and nothing less than the hammer of the sky god Thor. Druidic sanctuaries were often built in the form of a cross. The long base signified the path of life for the living; the three short arms radiating from it represented the three states of the spirit world, a pre-Christian equivalent of heaven, hell, and purgatory. The Hebrews took the blood of the paschal lamb and sprinkled it upon their lintels and doorposts in the form of a cross so that the Angel of Death would pass them by on that first Passover in Egypt. When the blood of a sacrificial animal was sprinkled on objects or people it was likewise done in the form of a cross. Some of these prefigurative gestures were instituted more than a thousand years before the Lamb of God, both priest and victim, was offered up for our redemption on Calvary. As the late Jesuit historian Cardinal Danielou explains it, Christ came not to abolish these ancient practices, but rather to purify them and bring them to the perfection of truth.
In art, a bold red cross on a field of white marks the Banner of the Resurrection. Christ is depicted holding it as he rises from the tomb or liberates those souls held captive in the underworld. From Constantine to the Crusades, the cross has also been used as a symbol of conquest. The glorious cross of the Second Coming is the sign of the Son of Man, the Risen Christ. As part of the "Arma Christi" it is ensign of the Saviour, the trophy of his redemptive passion and death. The cross was invented as an instrument of torture. But through Christ that suffering was transformed into the promise of resurrection. Through Christ the gibbet of death was transformed into a sceptre of dominion. When depicted as the Salvador Mundi, Christ raises his right hand in blessing and in his left he holds an orb surmounted by the cross.
An old belief held that the wood of the cross could restore the dead to life, as it had been traced to a seedling taken from the Tree of Life in Eden. Wood itself has salvific associations. The Tree of Life was wood. Noah's Ark was made of wood. The rod from which Moses parted the sea and struck water from the rock was wood. The pole on which the brazen serpent hung was wood.
In Byzantine legend the cross was a bridge or ladder by which human souls could climb toward God. Saint Irenaeus saw the cross as the purpose for the Incarnation:
"He was made flesh and nailed to the cross in a manner whereby he took the universe to himself." Likewise, Saint Cyril of Jerusalem wrote: "God stretched out his arms upon the cross to embrace the furthest bounds of the world, making Golgotha the true pole of the earth." In his Apologia, Saint Justin Martyr listed all the things he could think of that are shaped like a cross, reflections of the divine sign, from flying birds to the mast of a ship, from ploughs to anchors.
The cross contains a sacred geometry that can symbolise the Two Great Commandments. Its vertical beam reminds us to love God wholeheartedly while the horizontal beam bids us to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. The cross can also reflect the three theological virtues. In the earth the foot of the cross was well lodged. That signifies the firm foundation of Faith. The upper end of the cross represents Hope rising heavenward. The crossbeam is Love, for it embraces all, even one's enemies. This "axis mundi" becomes a sacred pole enveloping the three realms of creation:
Heaven, Earth and Hell. It has also been called the umbilical cord of the cosmos, representing intervention, mediation and communication between God and man.
Warhol's composition looks penitential with its blue crosses spread haphazardly on a black plane. Its randomness can represent the variety of trials each one of us must bear in life. Every life is filled with crosses, and if one wishes to obey the mandate given by the Saviour, we will pick one up and follow him.
