As a
liturgical artist, as someone who makes expensive objects to furnish the Church
or to be worn by its clergy, there is a homily of St. John Chrysostom I like to keep in the back of
my mind. It is a homily on the Gospel of
St. Mathew in which he warns us: “Do you want to honor Christ’s body? Then do
not scorn him in his nakedness, nor honor him here in the church with silken
garments while neglecting him outside where he is cold and naked.”
At first
glance one could almost think him a Protestant, an Iconoclast when he says:
“What we do here in the church requires a pure heart, not special
garments” Or “Give him the honour
prescribed in his law by giving your riches to the poor. For God does not want
golden vessels but golden hearts.”
I love
this homily. Our father among the saints
has the mind of Scripture, as his homily repeats that structure we find so
often in the Bible. It is the voice of
God in the prophets saying: “Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me.” It is the pleading of the Psalmist who Cries
out:: “You do not delight in sacrifice,
or I would bring it; you do not take
pleasure in burnt offerings. My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will
not despise.”
As I have
expounded in my Recovery of the Arts series, we find St. John using a structure
of center and periphery, treating the arts as “garments” that are contrasted to
the “heart”. He warns us to mind our
hearts, to remember that the first fruit of our attachment to Christ is not a
beautiful church or a beautiful liturgy, it is love. It is wonderfully humbling to keep this in
mind. As a person who spends most of his time making objects for the faithful,
one can easily believe one is somehow special or more “spiritual” because of
this liturgical occupation… This
humbling reminder is the first reason why I love this homily.
The
second reason why I love this homily is that it shows, in a hidden way, the
very form of what liturgical art should be.
For although it might seem that Chrysostom opposes the liturgical arts
to loving our neighbor, to think this would be as much an error as believing
that the prophets or the Psalmist oppose the (God given) prescriptions of
sacrifice to a broken and contrite heart.
Chrysostom is not opposing them to one another, rather he is making the
“garment” dependent on the “center” , the outside submit to the inside. He is establishing hierarchy. For just as the psalmist declares that once
God has created in me a “pure heart”, only then “…will you delight in the
sacrifices of the righteous, in burnt
offerings offered whole;” In the same
manner, Chrysostom makes sure we understand that he is not “…forbidding
(us) to supply these adornments; (he is)
urging (us) to provide these other things as well, and indeed to provide them
first. No one has ever been accused for not providing ornaments, but for those
who neglect their neighbor a hell awaits with an inextinguishable fire and
torment.”
And so
the liturgical arts must be in two ways a proper participation in the
hierarchy 1. First their very existence should submit to the
pure heart, to love of neighbor and care for the poor 2. Then in their
appearance, the liturgical arts should also be structured though principles of
hierarchy and concentric forms so that their experience is a reminder of the
heart.
A proper
understanding of hierarchy will solve many of the problems that have plagued
the history of the Church and will avoid so many of the errors that were made
in opposing the outside forms to the inside, of opposing faith to works, of
opposing the hidden to the visible, the honor given to God and the honor given
to men. It is absolutely true that the
lower term of the hierarchy, when seen as an end in itself, when seen as broken
away from its master, is a sin. But when
the heart is pure, when it is broken and filled with love; then the garment
will glimmer and shine with immaculate beauty.
By Jonathan Pageau
Source: https://www.orthodoxartsjournal.org/st-john-chrysostom-on-liturgical-art/
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