Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Catholic Register
Good Friday commentary on Tissot’s What Our Lord Saw from the Cross
Most depictions of the crucifixion behold the Pierced One (Jn 19:37) from the viewpoint of spectators.
Some, like St. John of the Cross and Salvador Dali, have helped us to look at Golgotha from the perspective of God the Father.
In What Our Lord Saw From The Cross, the most famous of all 365 watercolors in his epic series The Life of Jesus Christ, Jacques-Joseph “James” Tissot (1836 -1902) daringly helps us to imagine the scene from the perspective of the divine Priest and Victim.
St. Paul liturgically urges us every Palm Sunday to have among us the same mindset that was in Jesus Christ, who, though God, emptied and humbled himself unto death on the Cross (Phil 2:5-12). In this masterpiece, Tissot allows us to enter prayerfully into Jesus’ visual cortex as he, like a serpent in the desert, was lifted up and drew all humanity to himself (Jn 3:14, 12:32).
We are able to look out with him tenderly at his mother, as she holds her heart as it is being mystically pierced by the sword of sorrow; at Mary Magdalene, clinging to the foot of the Cross; St. John, grasping onto two fingers in his right hand, a profession of Christ’s eternal divinity as his humanity was approaching its death.
With him we see arrogant Pharisees, seated on horses who, unlike their riders, were bowing in adoration before their Creator.
We behold Roman soldiers, standing or seated taking in the awful spectacle, one awaiting with the lance that would soon open up the floodgates of Jesus’ heart.
We glimpse the crowd of passersby, spectators and some stunned believers, for whom Jesus prayed to the Father for mercy, to whom he gave his mother, and for whose souls he thirsted.
We see the tomb that would soon become the tabernacle of his body and the most famous sepulcher in history.
We notice Jesus’ toes, an indication that at that moment he must have been standing straight up despite the nails, a sacrament of his voluntary participation and contraindicated triumph.
And somewhere, we imagine Jesus’ lovingly spying those whom Tissot didn’t depict: You and me.