September 2008 The Road to Daybreak A Spiritual Journey by Henri J M Nouwen

Continue from ...... The Pilgrims of Emmaus Today I went to the Louvre in Paris with Brad Wolcott to see Rembrandt's The Pilgrims of Emmaus. Brad and I met for the first time many years ago, when I was teaching at Yale Divinity School and he was finishing his dissertation in French literature. We became friends and lived through many struggles together. After a few years of teaching at St Lawrence University in upstate New York, Brad decided to come to L'Arche and live here as an assistant in one of the foyers. It is a great joy for me to be so close to Brad again. Seeing The Pilgrims of Emmaus together has been our long-time hope. At first sight, the painting was a disappointment. It was much smaller than I had expected and surrounded by so many other paintings that it was hard to see it as a separate work of art. Maybe I was too familiar with it through reproductions to be genuinely surprised. Brad and I stood in front of it just looking at the event portrayed. Jesus sits behind the table looking up in prayer while holding a loaf of bread in his hands. On his right, one of the pilgrims leans backwards with his hands folded; while on his left, the other has moved his chair away from the table and gazes with utter attention at Jesus. Behind him a humble servant, obviously unaware of what is happening, reaches forward to put a plate of food on the table. On the table, a bright white cloth only partially covers the heavy table rug. There are very few objects on the table: three pewter plates, a knife, and two small cups. Jesus sits in front of a majestic stone apse flanked by two big square pillars. On the right side of the painting, the entrance door is visible, and there is a coat stand in the corner over which a cape has been casually thrown. In the left corner of the room, a doglike figure can be seen lying under a bench. The whole painting is in endless varieties of brown: light brown, dark brown, yellow-brown, red-brown, and so on. The source of light is not revealed, but the white tablecloth is the brightest part of the painting. Brad and I noticed that the bare feet of Jesus and the two pilgrims were painted with great detail. Not so the feet of the servant. Rembrandt obviously wanted us to know about the long, tiring walk they had just made. The large door and the cape on the coat stand were also there to remind us of the journey. These men truly came from somewhere. As we looked at the painting, many people passed by. One of the guides said, "Look at Jesus' face, in ecstasy, yet so humble." That expressed beautifully what we saw, Jesus' face is full of light, a light which radiates from his head in a cloudlike halo. He does not look at the men around him. His eyes look upward in an expression of intimate communion with the Father. While Jesus is in deep prayer, he yet remains present; he remains the humble servant who came to be among us and show us the way of God. The longer we looked at the painting, the more we felt drawn into the mystery it expresses. We gradually came to realize that the unoccupied side of the table across from Jesus is the place for the viewers. Brad said, "Now I see that Rembrandt painted the Eucharist, a sacramental event to which we, as we view it, are invited." It suddenly dawned on me how many similarities exist between this painting and Rublev's Trinity icon. There, as here, the viewer is made a real part of the mystery of the Eucharist. As we continued to let the painting speak to us, we were amazed that we both came to see it more and more as a call to worship Christ in the Eucharist.The hands of Jesus holding the bread on the white altar table are the centre not only of the light, but also of the sacramental action. Yet if Jesus were to leave the altar, the bread would still be there. And we would still be able to be with him. For an instant the museum became a church, the painting a sanctuary, and Rembrandt a priest. All of it told me something about God's hidden presence in the world. When we walked away from the painting and merged with crowd of tourists headed for the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo, we felt as if we were returning to a busy street after a time of silent adoration in a holy place.

- To Be Continued - © Copyright Shalom 2008. All rights reserved.