Thursday, March 13
Esther’s prayer before she speaks with King Ahasuerus is impressive in its boldness.
It’s not bold in that she asks big things of God, but it is her directness that is striking. She places herself (a “desolate woman”) before God and speaks to him, and expects an answer. Her fasting and rags are a stripping away—she wants nothing to obscure her approach to God.
She makes a direct appeal deeply rooted in trust: she approaches God in her poverty, and trusts she will not be turned away.
We can have a tendency, perhaps when all is not going well with us spiritually, to not pray with openness and poverty to God. We can shy away from a face-to-face encounter.
The irony of course is that, like a child who won’t show their wounded hand to be healed, it is in coming face to face with God that we rediscover that our woundedness isn’t repulsive to our God who loves us.
Deliberately placing myself before God is a central part of my spiritual life as an artist. In my first year of wholeheartedly pursuing art, I decided to start each day with Eucharistic adoration. I’ve been blessed that throughout that nomadic first year, and then my more stable years that have followed, it’s been possible to begin almost every working day with our Eucharistic Lord. It wasn’t always easy, but I quickly came to realize that my fruitfulness was deeply connected to my time spent with the Blessed Sacrament.
I took St Veronica as my patron saint that first year. In contemplating her story, I came to regard her as an icon of an artist: she drew so close to Jesus that she came away with an image.
But now in relation to Esther, I can see how apt it was that Veronica drew close to Jesus not at the height of his popularity, or with magnificent gifts to give him, but in his suffering, and in her poverty.
She met Christ carrying his cross, and drew close with a simple cloth seeking to give him comfort. If she had water, you could imagine him saying to her as he did to the Samaritan woman: “Give me a drink”—which of course meant her love.
And when she was pulled away from him by either the crucifixion procession moving on, or the soldiers, or bystanders, Veronica’s efforts to get face-to-face with Jesus left her with the gift of the image of his face, drawn in suffering and love for her.
I wonder if she kept it for a long time, perhaps in her home, contemplating the face that so rewarded her boldness in drawing close to him.
Naomi Leach is an artist and writer living in Sydney, Australia. When she's not painting, scribbling lines of poetry or coming up with a greeting card concept, she can be found drinking coffee or walking someone else's dog.
You can find out more about her here.