Praying the Passion with St. Bridget: Call to Mind

We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.  Romans 6:6

In my last meditation, I spoke about the way in which Bridget’s passion prayers carefully turn us away from the danger of viewing Christ’s passion and death as a purely human story.  They also, quite carefully steer us away from the accompanying danger of seeing the Cross as an event that belongs only to the past, something that happened on a lonely hill in Palestine long ago and remains there, an interesting story in someone else’s life.

Instead Bridget believes that Christ’s passion and death are a reality with deep significance for the present moment, and that Christian discipleship is deeply bound up in responding to Christ’s call, described in one of the prayers as “enduring in the way of the Cross.” 

Praying the Passion with St. Bridget: Devastating and Glorious

God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.  II Cor. 5:19

If you’ve ever read through one of the Gospels from beginning to end in a single setting, maybe what surprised you most was how long the passion story, the account of Jesus’ suffering and death is.  In what is probably the earliest Gospel, St. Mark, 45% of the text is of the last week of Jesus’ life.  Regular worshippers know to prepare themselves for Palm Sunday, because when we read the passion, it will take quite a long time.

The Gospels are unlike any other kind of literature that predates them in the way they focus in on this final (or properly almost final) part of the life of their subject.  We have some deathbed scenes for other important figures in the Bible, and the classical biographies usually include an account of the death. There is generally in ancient literature a sense that the death reveals the character, but the passions of the Gospel stories are really unprecedented.

Praying the Passion with St. Bridget: Weeping with the Pain of the World

“He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed.”  Isaiah 53:5

You may think it odd to begin a presentation about a famous set of prayers by a Swedish nun by spending time with a German painting.  But this painting was directly inspired by the devotional writings of Bridget of Sweden, especially her Revelations, a book of visions of the crucified Christ.  Bridget never saw this painting, as it was completed 130 years after her death.  But had she been able to paint, I believe she would have created something just like this.

This is the Isenheim Altarpiece, painted by Matthaeus Gruenewald in 1515 for the hospital chapel at Monastery of St. Anthony in a village near Colmar in Alsace, now a part of France.  One of the masters of the Mannerist style, this is Gruenewald’s greatest work.  A similar “Small Crucifixion” is in the National Gallery.

The monks who served at the monastery of St. Anthony were a community dedicated to treating those who suffered from the plague and ergotism.  There was no remedy, and the monks’ mission was to provide physical care and spiritual consolation.  The painting appropriately reveals Jesus who suffered as we suffer and who shows the extent of God’s love through offering Himself to destruction.  Jesus is present in our pains and reveals His mercy as we face the certain prospect of death.