March 25th, 2024
Mary took a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair; the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil. – Jn. 12, 3.
Mary of Bethany, Mary the contemplative who took the better part, who sat at the feet of Jesus and listened – it is Mary to whom John the Evangelist attributes this mad, beautiful, extreme act. Not every contemplative is an artist, nor is every artist a contemplative, but this moment in John – alongside the transcendent imagery in his own writing – testifies to an affinity.
Some years ago, I took part in founding an association called Sacred Beauty. This is our charism: Allowing the beauty and holiness of God to be made present in the world, first through Eucharistic contemplation, then through artistic and intellectual creativity and receptivity informed by and dedicated to Jesus in the Eucharist.
While only John attributes the anointing to Mary of Bethany, the extravagance of the act is unforgettable; the Synoptics recount the same act in a different context: A woman came with an alabaster jar of perfumed oil, costly genuine spikenard. She broke the alabaster jar and poured it on his head. (Mk. 14, 3) And from our very beginnings, this has been a shining image for Sacred Beauty: Breaking the jar, lavishing upon the Beloved Jesus (above all in the Eucharist) the best of what we have in beauty and dignity, reverence and artistry, cleanliness, silence and the delicacy which love calls forth. Sometimes, this means art; sometimes, it has a different meaning altogether.
In The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton writes that “the integrity of an artist lifts a man above the level of the world without delivering him from it.” Put another way: being an artist does not in itself make you holy, but it can make it much harder to live, without being holy.
It is said in Luke of the woman with the jar that her many sins have been forgiven. How so? She has shown great love. In the end, all of us, artists or not, must realize that the jar to be broken is the heart itself. Love comes with acknowledgment of sin, with suffering and sacrifice. As St. Augustine writes: “Search within your heart for what is pleasing to God. Your heart must be crushed.” Anything less is craft, artifice, a poor substitute. For from the Cross, Christ gave us the example for all time and eternity: his beauty found not in harmony or proportion, but in the utmost pitch of extremity; not couched in adornment but naked in surrender, in fathomless vulnerability. Beauty that does not pause to charm the eye, but rends the soul to its core. Beauty that does not shrink from blood, from pain, from wounds, from death. Too much beauty – beauty that makes us turn away our eyes. Beauty that hangs from a Cross – and from His wounded heart pours forth love, life, healing, peace.
Paul Chu is a writer, philosopher, poet, musician and co-founder of Sacred Beauty, an Association of the Faithful in the Diocese of Bridgeport. We write regularly at https://questionsdisputedandotherwise.substack.com/.