Several years ago I
came across the infamous ‘Ecce Homo’ from the
church in a formerly obscure Spanish village
while looking for the real image of ‘Ecce Homo’,
material which I needed for my own art work.
The Spanish ‘Esse Homo’ was mutilated as a
result of the attempt, by a local elderly woman,
to restore it.
Now it is endless reproductions of her “work”
and not the ‘Ecce Homo’ by Titian, El Greco and
countless others that pop up in the Google
Images search first when one types the words,
‘Ecce Homo’, (behold the Man). Instead of the
suffering face of Christ (bruises, blood, pain,
humiliation, and yet the nobility of the Son of
Man despite all that) now one is compelled to
see the round-monkey-like-face with the
indescribable expression of – what? –
Self-importance? – Solemn idiocy? However it may
be described, it is a very successful work of
comic art, something as catching as it is
stupid. Perhaps that solemn idiotism (something
reminiscent of Mr Bean with his ‘Whistler’s
Mother’ adventure) is precisely why the
mutilated ‘Ecce Homo’ has become viral, swapped
with the faces in almost any well-known work
like ‘The Last Supper’ by Leonardo or
‘Disrobement of Christ’ by El Greco. What is
interesting about this story is that the
“restored” ‘Ecce Homo’ seems to be a very
effective tool for devaluing the originals, many
of which are very good works, which depict
Christ.
The whole story is
bizarre. Very well, someone spoiled the decent
fresco and now there is an idiotic face, so
what? Even if that face is funny why to bother
to travel afar to see it if one can easily see
its numerous photos in the Internet? – It is not
a Vermeer masterpiece (for example) which is
preferable to see face to face. Why put this
image onto mugs, t-shirts etc? Why produce a
wine named ‘Ecce Homo’, with the obvious
upsetting associations? Why write the farcical
opera based on that story and play it, three
years after the event? Finally, why not simply
reconstruct the original face?
Actually, those
questions are the answers. All this is taking
place because it is the new “icon”, new
“pilgrimage”, new “relics”, new “sacred wine”,
new “passion play”, new cult of the parody of
Christ. It is all that and yet nothing because
the majority would deny that they mock Christ
(many may even go to the Church, some to the
church where the fresco is) because “it is no
longer Christ there
in the Sanctuary of Mercy Church but a monkey”
(still referred to as ‘Ecce Homo’ though);
because the wine ‘Ecce Homo’ is just a tourist
item, nothing to do with Christ on the balcony
wearing the crown of thorns, thoroughly lashed
and about to be crucified; because “it is a
modern miracle of how God brought revival to the
declining village”; because…
Enough. I could ask
the most important question, why the local
church left the mockery of Christ to remain in
the church, but I know the answers already. It
is all about segregating the phenomena from
their names, times from places, meanings from
words: the Mass is segregated from “the monkey
face” on the church wall – it is still called
‘Ecce Homo’ but it is a different ‘Ecce Homo’,
not Our Lord but the monkey… and we speak about
another Ecce Homo during the Eucharist, and it
is God’s miracle anyway – not the Mass that is
God’s miracle but the image of that, not our
‘Ecce Homo’, the monkey.” And so on. I am sick
of the postmodernism which keeps popping up
every time I write about Putin, Bowie, Patriarch
Kirill, Russian politics, modern art, borderline
personality disorder and so on. It is becoming
progressively more and more difficult to analyse
anything without having to deal with it. So many
times I have written about the collage of
meanings, each of them has no meaning or
ever-changing meaning, meaningful only in a
relation to a particular neighbouring meaning or
obliterated by it etc. It is boring and tiring
to write about nothing, emptiness, an empty
bubble. In this particular case, an empty bubble
that is alive only because it parasitises the
real ‘Ecce Homo’. Remove the story behind the
mutilation and the real, noble and suffering
Face of the Ecce Homo as what the
“self-important solemn and stupid face of the
monkey” mocks, and the whole thing will
immediately wilt and die. No one would wish to
see the mockery without the reference to the
prototype; the grander is the subject and
grosser the mutilation the more the interest. So
the Christ of postmodernists is just a
reference, a bleak hyperlink, white font on the
yellow background.
By some strange
association I recalled the story about “God’s
miracle”, the mutilated ‘Ecce Homo’ when I
watched the meeting of Pope Francis and
Patriarch Kirill in Havana airport and later
read their “joint declaration”. There is
something comical in the italic text I think,
and this touch of parody sets the general mood.
There was the regular Patriarch Kirill i.e.
looking like a member of the politburo or some
similar organization dressed as presbyter,
openly happy about himself. There were two rows
of high-standing representatives of two
Churches, noticeably more relaxed and animated
Catholics on the left and very soldier-like and
uniform Orthodox on the right; the former looked
somewhat excited, facing the Orthodox while the
latter was not interested in the former
whatsoever. And there was Pope Francis – and
there was no Pope Francis. The whole scene was
unnatural and absurd like a bad dream – perhaps
the Pope had no choice but to attempt not to be
present? Later, after a period of time, the
shell of an individual appeared and then the
individual himself seemed to return at last.
There is a saying in Russian, “walking through
the water” meaning that it is a very heavy walk,
spiritually, and there is also a saying “lead
waters”, that is even heavier and this is how
the sitting-at-the-table Pope appeared to be:
sitting motionlessly and yet walking through the
lead waters. Many waters. Later I heard his
words about his sense of the presence of the
Holy Spirit during the private meeting, a
statement which one can interpret in quite
different ways. If it is interpreted as “the
Holy Spirit” arranged this meeting it appears to
be at odds with what the Pope conveyed by his
body language.
So what was all that
about? The signed-by-the-two declaration appears
to be unremarkable and yet remarkable in a
peculiar way, just as the body language of the
participants on the video. Both have the
similarity of mismatched parts, the sense of
something being cut out and placed in the wrong
position and time. Let us consider the
declaration as a symphony or a fugue with
various tunes repeating and converging. Below is
the declaration distilled to its naked set of
major themes; the numbers here do not match
those of the original.
1.
Customary
thanks to God and to Cuba for the meeting. A
spiritual potential of the “New World” (Cuba and
similar countries opposing the “Old World”,
Europe) is highlighted.
2.
The discourse
about the separation of two Churches, Catholic
and Orthodox; a desire for unity.
3.
The Middle
East, especially Syria: the need to protect
Christians and the places of the birth of our
faith is stated; new martyrs are acknowledged.
4. A
call to people of different faiths “to live in
peace and harmony”. “Attempts to justify
criminal acts with religious slogans are
altogether unacceptable. No crime may be
committed in God’s name, “since God is not the
God of disorder but of peace”.
5.
Thanks to God
for “the current unprecedented renewal of the
Christian faith in Russia” as well as in the
Eastern Europe.
6.
The contrast: a
concern about “secularized” countries where God
is not respected andChristians “are increasingly
confronted by restrictions to religious freedom
the right to witness to one’s convictions and to
live in conformity with them”, presumably Europe
because next Europe is called to be faithful to
its Christian roots.
7.
Timeless
universal themes: anti-consumerism, family
values, respect for human life (“no” to
abortions and euthanasia), ethical side of
biomedical reproduction, the vocations of young
Christians.
8.
“Orthodox and
Catholics are brothers”.
9.
“Uniatism” is
bad, the Orthodox and Greek Catholics must
reconcile. The general judgement of the
“hostility” in Ukraine; Christians should not to
participate in it and “work towards harmony”.
Proselitism of any kind is not acceptable.
10.
Finally,
customary “we are together”; “may our bold
witness to God’s truth and the Good News of
salvation be sustained by the Man-God Jesus
Christ, our Lord and Saviour, who strengthens us
with the unfailing promise: “Do not be afraid
any longer, little flock, for your Father is
pleased to give you the kingdom” (Lk 12:32)!
The declaration speaks
of just about everything, but this everything is
something that does not call for the urgent
meeting which has already been hailed by the
mass-media as “historical”. There is nothing
exceptional about any of the paragraphs but one;
there is some general truth in all of them but
one and I believe that paragraph was “the thing”
for the sake of which the meeting was organized.
It is nicely sandwiched in the middle and nicely
worded so one can always resort to the
renunciation of the meaning desirable, to
Patriarch Kirill: “In affirming the foremost
value of religious freedom, we give thanks to
God for the current unprecedented renewal of the
Christian faith in Russia, as well as in
many other countries of Eastern Europe, formerly
dominated for decades by atheist regimes.” This
is effectively the “certificate of being the
true Christian Church” which the Pope has just
issued to Patriarch Kirill, and for this purpose
all the rest has been written. If one removes it
from the text the declaration becomes a set of
disjoint themes any of which and in any
combination could be used anywhere, at any time
and by any of two. But here it “holds together”
other themes, animating them and giving them the
meaning and even hints at some action. This
“declaration” can be used, by the ROC MP, as the
following: we are the true Christian Church
[meaning the true Christian country], even more,
we have an “unprecedented renaissance of faith”
recognized by our age-long rival and even enemy
(now suddenly a brother), we are true disciples
of Christ therefore the state government of our
country is truly a “power from God”, we [meaning
Russia] are in fact the defenders of
Christianity from those who were obliquely
mentioned as “secularists” and “consumerists”
and “Old World”. It means that from now any
actions of the Russian state government are
implicitly deemed as good and highly moral
providing that the ROC MP gives its implicit
approval. And when did the ROC MP ever fail to
do so?
However, apart from
its applied meaning and handy usage, the
unfortunate paragraph has another dimension,
more to do with eternal categories than with
temporary ones like “uniatism”, “proselitism”,
even “hostility”. It is about preservation of
the absolute categories of the Christian faith
and the absolute truth as such.
It is hard to believe
that the Pope does not know what the ROC MP now
is. If he does it means that he effectively
called the decline of Christianity, and not just
decline but its transformation into an
aggressive state cult which “attempts to justify
criminal acts with religious slogans”,
effectively the parody of Christianity, “the
current unprecedented renewal of the Christian
faith in Russia”. To anyone who takes their
Christianity seriously and cares about Russia
and its people, what has been happening in the
ROC MP over the last fifteen-twenty years is
nothing but a disaster, the loss of all hopes
and the reason for shame. And, if one wishes to
be completely unbiased, one may address the
statistics which show the real situation with
the Christian faith in Russia, i.e. almost zero
knowledge about the very basics of its own
proudly reported Orthodoxy.
Just as with the
mutilated ‘Ecce Homo’, many good reasons for the
“white lie” can be given here, the most
important among them is probably the lives of
the Christians in the Middle East: to admit that
there is a revival of Christian faith in
exchange for the safety of the Christians in
Syria may look like a good deal. There are
numerous reasons why I think it is not as good
as it may appear (one of them is that the recent
years demonstrated that even when one makes an
agreement with the evil and saves lives in one
place (typically by the price of a lie), the
situation soon reproduces itself in other
surroundings and new lives are demanded again,
and again) but I feel that it is more profitable
to move to the area of the absolute categories,
precisely because the circumstances may vary
endlessly but not the essence.
I feel somehow that
the Pope swallowed the bait neatly placed
between many non-concrete lines peppered with
the absolute values and thus “unquestionably
good” – and this very action somehow compromised
the absolute values. It appears that it was
necessary, for some reason, for the ROC MP and
those behind it that the Catholic Church should
partake of the lie and thus lend her voice to
the fake, the evil – by first condemning the
crime with the aid of the Gospels and then
hailing the criminal as the bearer of the
Gospel’s truth. From the evil’s point of view it
must be hilarious.
While appearing to be
insignificant in the realm of the temporal, the
implicit lie of the Pope symbolically opened the
door to the evil because by agreeing to
accommodate it he actually began the process of
betraying the essence of his own vocation, “to
tend My sheep” – noteworthy, these
words were said by Our Lord to apostle Peter
after thrice “Do you love Me more than them?”
First “do you love Me more than them” and only
then “tend my sheep”, only loving the Lord more
than others do and more than anything else can
ensure that the sheep would be tended as the
Lord wishes, i.e. being fed by the Truth that is
Christ. This is why, from the first centuries of
Christianity, the essential thing about being
the Pope was that he has been an independent and
final judge in matters of faith, and this is the
role he failed to fulfil during “the historical
meeting”. Whatever may come of it, I fear that
this lie, this symbolic “crack” in the
metaphysical role of the Pope may mark the
beginning of the weakening of the Catholic
Church, under the slogan of the restoration of
the union of two Churches and other “good
things”. And, if before I was very much hoping
for such a union now I fear it.
I do not know how to
convey the rest otherwise than by returning to
‘Ecce Homo’. It is all about having good
intentions and good reasons, making “a very
small compromise” because of them and then
watching how those good intentions and good
reasons turn into their opposite, a parody, and
how one feels now that he is tied up, unable to
stop what is happening. It is a parody of ‘Ecce
Homo’ and this is why – apparently – it cannot
be stopped. The “restored” image is now “glued”
to its church and produced the souvenirs, vine,
the money, and so on. The church now needs the
notion of “God’s miracle of the unsuccessful
restoration” to explain its willingness to put
up with the very offence of God. And Google
keeps producing and reproducing the images of
‘Ecce Homo’ whose faces express idiotic
solemnity, and Ecce Homo, the Christ, is turning
into a reference for that mockery, so as His
Church. That Church which failed to say “no” and
to destroy the lie, the prospect of having the
tunic stitched (Catholic-Orthodox unity) but
without Christ . There is still time.
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