Editor’s notice: All through July, we’re internet hosting 31 Days with St. Ignatius, a month-long celebration of Ignatian spirituality. Along with the calendar of Ignatian articles discovered right here, posts on dotMagis this month will discover the theme of “The Audacity of Ignatian Spirituality.”
I sense God’s presence strongly within the hallways and corridors of an artwork museum. Maybe it’s the silence of those halls that permits me to sense God shut. Or maybe it’s the connection to the previous that attracts me into the panorama of time. I do assume each these are true and but, it’s the magnificence that traces the partitions and sits upon pedestals that offers me a window into God’s goodness.
The paintings doesn’t should be spiritual in nature for it to be transcendent to me. Many works lend themselves simply to prayer as I discover myself considering the response they evoke in me.
A quotidian portray like Jean Siméon Chardin’s Cleaning soap Bubbles is such an instance. It isn’t a spiritual portray. It doesn’t characteristic a cross or inform a narrative from Scripture. The 18th-century French portray depicts a younger man creating bubbles out of a glass of soapy water and a straw, whereas a small youngster watches.
The portray is, certainly, superbly rendered. It captures one singular second, a second of time. The bubble is translucent and on the sting of bursting. I marvel on the stillness and focus of the younger man. There’s something quiet and holy in it.
I discover myself holding my breath after I take a look at this paintings. I discover God’s presence on this odd second, now captured in a valuable murals. I see the reflection of God’s Imago Dei, the picture of God, each within the younger man’s need to create one thing lovely, even when fleeting, within the bubble after which via the artist’s creation of capturing such a second. We people need to create magnificence, similar to our Father in heaven.
The bubble itself is fleeting, similar to our personal transient existence right here on earth. It jogs my memory of the Psalmist’s phrases:
Let me know the way fleeting my life is.
You may have made my days a couple of handbreadths,
and my lifetime is as nothing in your sight.
Absolutely everybody stands as a mere breath. (Psalm 39:4–5)
This lifetime won’t final. The portray turns into a meditation on the early Christian follow of memento mori, Latin for “keep in mind you’ll die.” This isn’t a lesson in morbidity however a reminder to dwell superbly for this life won’t final.
A small youngster watches quietly within the background of the portray. He doesn’t disturb the second, however as he watches, he learns the audacity of making one thing lovely that won’t final without end, merely out of affection.
Picture: “Cleaning soap Bubbles” by Jean Siméon Chardin (Wentworth Fund, 1949), public area by way of The Metropolitan Museum of Artwork.
At present in 31 Days with St. Ignatius, Rebecca Ruiz outlines 5 Methods to Observe St. Ignatius’s Instance to See All Issues New in Christ. #31DayswithIgnatius
