The Opulence of White Marble

Oils with a velvety texture, the canvas provided by the ceiling, marble, stained glasses, woods that are fine, rich and dark, tiles painted with precision and without the mind of men what are these?

The marble cracked and chiseled to form the image--shining like an otherworldly sheen as if angels stepped out of heaven and polished it to become a fitting monument to reflect the face of God. The sculpture's folds produced the mother’s dress, transformed rock hewed out of the earth into the woman which recalls clay formed to become man.

Stone may fit the face of death, but the woman’s grief has no stillness or lifelessness of rock. Our eyes upward turned to see the will of God in the utter lifeless man she bore. Her mouth turned down and pulled her sorrow towards her arms in which she cradles her God.

The opulence of white marble is not why we stare. It is the glimpse of the Divine’s lifeless figure still as stone, but resembling humanity so closely we see transparent the moment captured in the artist’s eye. How beauty compels us to the moment of Christ’s demise!

Michelangelo’s Pieta white marble statue shines as if God made the rock from which it was born for this purpose. For we gain entrance to the master’s realm at first glance.

Walking towards the glassed encasement, the crowds take photographs as I try to see. I wait for a chance to study something that captures the events of both heaven and earth. The white stone rolled over the dark gloom of clay which made us mortal breaks out into a shining depiction of the moment of divine completion.

Married to the mind of him who created the sculpture is a token of divinity. For how fitting is the will of God to touch the lives of men.