Desiring to be ‘Close to the Flesh'
In 2005, as part of the UISG delegates’ meeting in Warsaw, we made a pilgrimage to Czestochowa where I became acquainted with Jerzy Duda Gracz’s Golgotha of Jasna Góra in the Beginning of the Third Millennium. The artist depicts the stations of the cross as a mirror of Divine Mercy through a modern vision of a generation looking at itself as witnesses and custodians of the Paschal Mystery. The message is ensconced in a poignant longing to be close to the flesh of Jesus.
The faithful women of Easter morning came to the tomb with spices in hand to make contact with the body of Jesus, just as so many people during earthly Jesus’ life yearned to experience healing through his touch, his words, his compassionate countenance. Even in death the women were drawn to the Lord’s body, living from the certainty that the only place to be is where Christ is.
“They intuited this truth – that the Person they once encountered in the trials and problems of their lives was still there with them and that the way to that Person continued to be through his flesh.”
(John Cameron, Jesus Present Before Me, 144-145)
by Marlene Weisenbeck, FSPA — LCWR Past President
