The first thing I’ll do when they make me pope is write a brief letter recommending—strongly—that pastors replace the “beautiful crucifix” over the altar with an image of the Risen Christ, which may be pretty or not but represents the truly beautiful historical reality.
That’s the trouble: the crucifixes above altars not only in the United States but in Zimbabwe and South Africa, in Mumbai, in India, and in Paris, Madrid, and—even here—Rome, are pretty. I’ve been there; I’ve seen them. They are world wide, these crucifixes on which the body of the Lord is clean, smooth, and everyday, and if there are some gestures at wounds, they do not destroy the beauty of this sacred Body.
There’s a lot of truth in these models. But the sense of devotion these crucifixes are meant to elicit are in the prayer books that I used as a boy gone (too quickly) on a century ago. We started this way: “Look down upon me, good and gentle Jesus”—the good and gentle Jesus who had been bitterly beaten by trained brutes with leather thongs, probably with bits of iron fixed into them, leaving slashed and torn and bloody his back and ribs and probably his chest, belly, and legs as well.
Not this pretty Jesus on the image above our altars, to whom we used to pray: “ while before Thy face I humbly kneel and,” then go on talking about myself, “with burning soul,” and we didn’t leave Jesus out, but prayed “while I contemplate with great love and tender pity Thy five most precious wounds,“–just that, but not the savage treatment of the rest of His precious body., which would make this not a really beautiful image.
As though to confirm the prayer, we called on King David, whose own grave sin was forgiven with some years of splendor and power: “They have pierced My hands and My feet, they have numbered all My bones.” Right. Nothing too ugly. Amen.
That’s the crucified Jesus we find above our altars. “Beautiful crucifix,” we casually call it. Really? What have we done? Was the crucified Jesus really beautiful?
No. When He rose, He spent forty days so that those who did see the destroyed Body would remember Him as He is: risen. So, replace the destroyed, dead body, with the Risen Christ, who really was and is beautiful, who could show just His Five Wounds (put you hand here into my side and see my hands) when that helped an Andrew or a Peter or a couple on the way out of Jerusalem on Monday morning, to faithful love. That’s the whole of what He did, the Risen Jesus.
The Church in the United States—and a lot of other places around the globe—have already replaced the pious books we once found precious. Now we need to correct the precious image above the altar with who Jesus really is.