Illuminated

On Holy Saturday, the monk had a tradition he had cultivated for himself over the years.

He was one of the monks who labored illuminating the Bible, a painstaking task very few would ever see, and yet he had always considered it a special privilege. 

On Holy Saturday each year he always set the day aside to contemplate Christ in the tomb. The point of all these illuminations was to glorify the faith in all its visual splendor, and yet he gave himself the challenge, each year, to imagine the darkest moment of the faith, when all seemed to have been lost.

He was aware of how the world saw the faith, in his time.

Most of Europe had been won to the faith at this point. The fall of the Roman Empire had brought about a seismic shift in the balance of power, away from its centralized nature, previously, and into the regional hands that had labored to cultivate themselves over the centuries, which in recent years had encountered a menace worse than anything they had confronted before, a horde that sought to sweep over their lands, assimilate them into a different faith, a different culture entirely. Many strongholds had resulted, many vanguards, and perhaps a few of them had perverted their roles. The Church, too. Perhaps.

He didn’t care. His faith was strong. There were always challenges. His faith told him the truths of civilization would endure. There were among his number those whose sole task was to copy the treasures passed down from previous generations, well beyond the scope of the core interests of the Church, what in other hands would be hailed as rediscovered, as if they had been lost. He knew the Church was considered oppressive. He knew there were those who agitated for autonomy, who wanted to break its power up into regional interests. Given all the forces at work it was inevitable.

He knew much of the Church was being condemned. He also knew he had one job, and that was to paint the Bible, not in works of art that would be collected and displayed in the homes of rich men, but would be sealed forever in pages that hid them away. 

That was his faith as he understood it.

On this Holy Saturday, he tried to relax. His faith was strong. He spent most of the day in quiet contemplation, his brushes set aside, his inks in their pots. 

When evening drew, he selected black. Red was the color most often used, in this work. He sketched, at first, his Christ in the tomb, hidden beneath a shroud, in the darkness. Then he focused on the outline, the highlights in the dark, a suggestion of an angel, seated patiently, and in the far corner…a finger, the hand of the Father, reaching out. 

His faith told him, Christ truly rested, was truly dead, had not yet descended to the pit, was nowhere but in this body, the portrait of defeat. 

He had always treasured this day for precisely that reason. The believers had often, from the very beginning, been defined by defeat. They had persisted in their belief anyway. They had seen that there was always a way forward, a belief not so much in another world where they needn’t fear their fellow man so much, but in this world, itself, the ability to push past difficulties, if not to solve them but to move past them, to keep going, to endure. No matter where it led. Even unto death. To believe all men might rise above themselves. As Christ had demonstrated even on the cross.

The scripture he embellished had very little to say about what Christ experienced after his death. It was a record of man’s experiences, and no one had witnessed Christ in the tomb. They had placed a body there, and then they had sealed it away. The next day it would be opened and the scriptures had plenty to say about that, who had witnessed the risen Christ. In the tomb, in the darkness, however, all was silent.

That was why the monk gave him company. His faith told him no one was alone.