We're already well into February … and Lent is quickly approaching. A great saintly guide for us this month has his feast day February 18. He can inspire us all through Lent with the beauty of his art.
Blessed Angelico (Fra Angelico) was a Dominican friar (1400-1455) famous for painting the walls of the San Marco priory in Florence. This humble and deeply gifted painter of the early Renaissance was beatified in 1983 by John Paul II.
Fra Angelico is known as the Patron Saint of Artists. He believed that his art was a prayer, and he is known to have frequently wept while he painted scenes of the Passion of Christ. It is no wonder that his paintings bring beauty to sorrowful mysteries.
A child's intuition
One cold February day when I was a child, grieving the death of my father, I reached for my Children’s Bible and was most comforted by the story of Jesus in Gethsemane. I felt a keen desire to enter the garden on the Mount of Olives. In those late nights when I was sleepless and lonely due to grief, I’d look out my window and imagine those same stars sending my prayer across time and space, to embrace Jesus and keep Him company in Gethsemane. The love offered in His Agony was the only thing that truly comforted my own broken heart, giving me a companion in my loneliness and a purpose for the pain I was feeling: to console Him, to stay awake with Him … just as He had asked.
Many years later, I was thunderstruck when I first came across an old master painting that gave me an indication that someone else, years before me, had this same notion. Someone else had been deeply affected by the idea that Jesus had been alone when He’d asked for companionship. Someone else had suffered when he thought about how Jesus in agony had reached out for human consolation, and received from his three most zealous and faithful companions only a gesture of the lukewarm Christian: friends fast asleep when they could have been ministering to Him.
I had chills when I saw it: a fresco painted in 1450. I recognized a kindred spirit across the centuries, wishing I could have known the artist in person. How often I’d admired his paintings and frescoes, his poignant and poetic brush strokes I’d studied well in art school. He was no ordinary artist. He was a monk, a creative genius: Fra Angelico.
Gethsemane and Bethany
In his masterpiece, “Agony in the Garden,” Fra Angelico juxtaposes the three fast-asleep apostles: Peter, James, and John, reclining in the garden; with Martha and Mary, who are staying awake, watching and praying in their Bethany house. It almost looks as though St. Peter’s elbow is resting against the outer wall of the sisters’ house!
How beautifully brilliant that Fra Angelico painted the devoted sisters of Bethany following the request of Jesus: “Watch and Pray that you may not be put to the test.” In the painting, Mary is engaged in contemplative lectio divina ... the scriptures open on her lap as she contemplates and listens to God’s Word. Martha, her hands folded, actively prays, talking to God. Both sisters are very much awake.
Fra Angelico famously prayed while he painted. And each day before he painted he would pray that God would guide his hand. And so Fra Angelico is an exemplar to us all: he chooses the better part and prays like Mary, but also joins that prayer to the work of his hands like Martha! The fruit of his prayerful art is a cry for all, throughout time, to stay awake in the Garden!
With Him in spirit
Fra Angelico, also shared a sorrow for Jesus’ loneliness there, and painted a prayer of reparation to Jesus in the Garden. When the painting is viewed, there is clearly a wall between the sleeping apostles and the house of the watchful, prayerful sisters. Although the different elements of the scene are viewed together on one canvas (allowing Martha and Mary’s nearness), the wall makes clear that despite his artistic license, the good monk knew well they weren’t really physically there. But that same wall, juxtaposed with their presence in the scene, teaches without words: Martha and Mary were there in spirit; and so should we be.
Jesus will recognize our spirit in Gethsemane when we arrive there in prayer, eager to console Him. And in our mind’s eye as we view that Fra Angelico depiction of the little house at Bethany, we can insert an image of own home, open to receive the Lord.
It is very plausible that such close friends of Jesus would have some knowledge of where their Master was and for what trials He was preparing and beginning to face in the Garden of Gethsemane. After all, Scripture reveals that He had told them that the fragrant oil Mary anointed Him with was preparing Him for His death (Jn 12:7-8). Just as the sisters cooked for Him and anointed Him mere days before His Passion began, it would be plausible that they’d characteristically continue to do what they could for Him as He entered the Garden; that is to say: they would keep vigil for Him.
It is so comforting to think of people who loved Jesus praying for Him and with Him as He faced His Agony, even if they were removed from His immediate presence. They were with Him in spirit, as Our Blessed Mother doubtless was.
How often have you heard or used that expression when longing to join a friend? For example, “I can’t be there. I wish I could. but I’ll be with you in spirit.” Martha and Mary were there for Jesus in spirit … we can be, too. They understood the meaning of holy hours spent with the Lord.
When we can’t be at church adoring the Eucharist because it is late at night, we can be with Our Lord spiritually through an at-home Holy Hour, offering consolation to Christ in Gethsemane. The at-home Holy Hour can be prayed anywhere, does not require any access to a church, and can bring a deep sense of consolation to any sorrow you are going through. It is like living what Fra Angelico painted: staying awake spiritually in Gethsemane … right in your very own home!
How and when do I pray the at-home Holy Hour? Go to Catholic Holy Hour to receive a free, guided Holy Hour every First Thursday themed for the Catholic devotions and saints of the month, and access to a special free online Lenten retreat enhanced by the arts to draw us closer to the Passion of Christ through the Garden of Gethsemane; just as Fra Angelico did: through beauty.
Without words, Fra Angelico’s painting teaches to prayerfully keep Christ company in the Garden, both the one He entered to save us, and the ones we will enter in our lives. Christ asks us to “watch and pray” that we “might not be put to the test.” So what are we waiting for?
