The Lamentation: a reflection for Good Friday
by Martin Sewell from Archbishop Cranmer:
The Lamentation is one of the limited number of subjects permitted to an icon writer within the Orthodox tradition. It renders the observer present at one of the low points of the Easter story: after the hope, the drama, the horror and the waiting, Jesus has died, has just been brought down from the cross, the instrument of lethal torture, and his friends contemplate his lifeless body.
It is finished.
Reading the story in the present, which is the only proper way to do it, there is no basis for hope. But step back into our everyday lives, and we know what those grieving do not know. This is but a hiatus in the narrative. It is not the end but a time of stillness that will continue until the triumph of Easter Day is declared, but nobody here knows this yet – not Jesus’ friends, nor the Chief Priest.
In some parts of central Italy this scene is presented in terracotta statue form, a tragic counterpart to the more popular Nativity crib popularised by St Francis of Assisi. Such 3D images known as Il Compianto sul Cristo morto can express a similar stillness to the icon, but the one at Santa Maria del Vita injects a shocking realism into the narrative.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
