Reading, waiting for the others to finish, admiring the artwork, so sat I in St Peter’s. Then I realized something new. The statue right behind me had more carving work than first meets the eye.
Before I tell you what I discovered, let’s go back a step. I had been asked to serve a minor ceremony in St Peter’s Basilica and we were in acolyte practice. The problem with being the tallest is that the master of ceremonies immediately says “cross” when he sees me. I have to do weightlifting for a few minutes then I sit there for most of the ceremony. Where we sit tourists can’t usually get close.
I looked at the feet of the sculptures where I sat, and I saw some punks had carved their names all over the feet and lower legs. Some even left the date of their vandalism – 1753 or 1888 (really). The funniest was one person who wrote the date without the century (2-10-12) so you can’t tell when he was there. How ugly! Then I took two steps back and I couldn’t read anything; the feet looked like they were worn but you couldn’t even tell that they had anything but the artist’s original image.
Then I thought this is like our errors. When we look up close, they look absolutely horrendous, but when we step back, the beauty of the image God made us in shines through. Christ renews us at Easter to become fully in his image: he doesn’t just cover our errors by stepping back, he forms the marble that we have maliciously carved out back to his beautiful plan.
