When I consider what is beautiful today, I consider the broken, beaten, battered, abused Body of God.
When I was a little girl, there were a whole group of supermodels. One of them was an Australian woman, who the media called “The Body” because the dimensions of her body were considered perfect (or close to it) and therefore beautiful to look at.
And while it is true that this woman looked terrible beautiful and was the person who was photographed for the cover of most magazines during the 1990s, it is equally true that hers was not the most beautiful body that was ever created.
They say that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. And that is very true. What is considered beautiful for one person is considered unattractive to another. In some cultures, curves and chubbiness is considered beautiful and a sign of wealth and affluence. In others, being very thin is beautiful. For some people thick eyebrows are lovely, and for others eyebrows should be thin. Some people like long nails and hair, and others prefer short…
And I have been reflecting on all the differences in the human body and in all the ways that human beings consider beauty.
And then I began to imagine Christ Crucified. I am not talking about Christ suffering and dying on the Cross, I am talking about the dead body of Christ. I am referring to the Body hanging from the Cross after the Spirit had left it.
And I tried to imagine that today. I imagine the whole weight of the Body supported by the shoulder joints. I imagine that Christ must have weighed about seventy or eighty kilograms (having lived a life of fasting and abstinence) and I image the weight of that entire seventy or eighty kilograms leaning forward – straining – against the nails of the cross.
I imagine the whole weight of that Body and the whole weight of it pulling forward on the Cross after He died. When He took His final breath and His weight fell forward, did His shoulder dislocate? Did the Cross creak and look as though it would topple forward. Did it shake violently, as He fell forward? Did it shudder under His weight?
I close my eyes to image the scene, and I consider His Sacred Feet. Did His knees buckle and creak as His body dropped down upon His poor wounded Feet? Did His Mother watch that moment when the Spirit Left His Body and cry out – involuntarily – as she watched His slump forward on the Cross? Was her anguish for His life or for His death? Did she suffer more knowing that “It is accomplished” or did she suffer less?
Did she continue to watch the people walking about and the wind in the trees and the sun in the sky and wonder how the world continued to move when the Body of God was dead on the Cross.
So, when I consider what is beautiful today, I consider the broken, beaten, battered, abused Body of God. For it was that Body upon the Cross – slumped forward in Death – that truly saved the world.
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.