Duccio, Nativity, 1308-1311, tempera. (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)
I’m responsible for the “prayers of the people” at tonight’s midnight mass, and I spent much of the morning writing, and rewriting them. Some of these intercessions follow a standard form, where we insert the names of people who are sick, the recently deceased, the worldwide churches we’re asked to remember in the Anglican cycle of prayer, and so forth. But the beginning, where the intercessor asks the congregation to “pray for the world,” is open to their discretion. This is what I will be saying:
Let us Pray for Peace on Earth
On this holy night, our thoughts turn toward the humble manger in Bethlehem two thousand years ago, and the joy and hope represented by that birth. We also realize that the oppression, fear, violence and political instability of that time are still with us. Let us remember all the women in our world who give birth in dire circumstances, in fear, and without adequate care, including in the land of Jesus’ own birth. Let us remember the many children who are born into war zones or poverty and will live without adequate food, shelter, or safety. We pray for peace in Ukraine, in the Holy Land, in the Sudan, and all the other places on earth that are torn by war. Most of all, we who are so fortunate to live here, pray for peace in our own hearts, so that we may be instruments of your peace.
Let us Pray for Goodwill Toward All People
In this time of troubling division, when voices of hatred seem very loud, help us to be patient and steady voices of goodwill. Give us the strength and direction to protect refugees, deportees, and migrants; political prisoners; the homeless and displaced, and all who society sees as “other.” Help us to comfort the lonely, bereaved, and broken-hearted, and to continue to be a community of welcome and refuge, ever opening our arms toward the larger world.
This Christmas, help us to look deeper into the needs around us, and into our own hearts for ways in which we can be of service. As we face the many problems of our world and our own lives, please give us courage and the wisdom of discernment, and joy as we do your work.
Today there have been a lot of images coming across my Instagram feed. The Duccio tempera, from his Maesta altarpiece, made me stop and look; I’m a great admirer of Duccio and the way he tells a story. This painting, from around 1308, starts to move away from the static Byzantine representations that preceded it, but it also has a lot in common with them. There’s gold, there’s grandeur, and a whole host of angels surrounding the swaddled child and Mary, peaceful and resplendent in her blue robe on a bed of red.
Caravaggio, Nativity, oil on canvas, 1609. Whereabouts unknown.
Three centuries later, in 1609, Caravaggio painted a Nativity for the Oratory of San Lorenzo (St Lawrence) in Palermo, Sicily. In style it resembles his Seven Works of Mercy I saw in Naples: the almost-black background, a large group of figures, an angel hovering above stretching a hand down toward the human scene. It’s less complex though, and our gaze — like that of the participants in the manger, even the cow — keeps returning to Mary’s own gaze at her infant who lies naked on the ground. In addition to the shepherd, his hand open in wonderment, the painter has depicted Saint Francis and Saint Lawrence, both saints associated with poverty and simplicity. All of the figures, modeled on real, ordinary people, convey a feeling of poverty and humility — this naturalism was new in religious art, and gained Caravaggio both fame and derision by certain patrons who felt it was unseemly.
The nativity story is almost certainly apocryphal for the most part, but it has kept a hold on many of our imaginations for a very long time. “No room at the inn”, a birth under difficult circumstances; a star which seems to herald an event of enormous magnitude; angels announcing the birth to shepherds, the arrival of exotic wise men from the East — and then a desperate flight to safety for the young family. Duccio’s painting is beautiful, but it took Caravaggio to give common people an image with which they could identify. No gold here; just a weary mother gazing with adoration at her newborn, somewhat oblivious to the other figures who have been drawn into this story and are held there forever in this image.
The physical painting, however, is gone. It was stolen from the Palermo Oratory in 1969, cut from its frame by thieves probably associated with the Sicilian Mafia, rolled into a carpet, and taken away, never to be seen again. Whether it was bought, or destroyed after a planned sale failed to happen, is unknown; a copy was made from the study of photographic images and Caravaggio’s other works and hangs in the oratory now.
Nevertheless, this work reflects what I was trying to say in my intercessions; the scene is repeated even today, including in Palestine where so many mothers have given birth without hospital care, without anesthesia or medicine, only to be faced with raising their children in a war zone even less safe than in the time of Jesus. No one wants to become a refugee, and yet so many are forced to flee. Let us do whatever we can to help the people around us, and to be people of good will and of peace.