Picturing the Past

I HAVE before me as I write a portrait of Saint Anthony which is, in fact, a photograph of the sculpture based on the skull of the Saint. He looks rather different from the ideas of artists down the centuries. The face is thinner than one expects, to start with – yet not surprisingly, when one remembers his austere manner of life. The earliest friars did not eat too well, even when not fasting. The eyes seem to me kindly, though penetrating; the mouth has just the hint of a smile. Altogether, I find his look reassuring. This is my friend, whose thoughts, as recorded in his writings, I have tried over the years to interpret.





A foreign country





I dare say we all have our own ideas of what the Saint was like in his earthly life, and I dare say we would all get a surprise if we were able to travel back in time and actually meet him face to face, to see and hear him in action. It is the same with Our Lord and Our Lady: the Gospels give us some information, but we build on that slender foundation an edifice that may be quite unlike the reality. We use our experience and expectations drawn from the contemporary world to fill in the gaps, forgetting that the world of eight or twenty centuries ago was very different. I have been reading a book called The Time-traveller’s Guide to Medieval England, and have been struck how it is in the little things, the things we take for granted in our own day, that the past is indeed a foreign country.



Modern historical research has made us more aware of this, but earlier generations were far less conscious of the differences between their own ages and those long before. Medieval paintings show Biblical characters dressed in thirteenth or fourteenth century fashions, and so on. In some of his sermons, Anthony evidently pictured first century Palestinian villages as resembling those of his own day, complete with the local castle!





Unifying intention





Does this matter? If Anthony (and others) had a false idea about how the Biblical events looked, does it undermine his ability to interpret the Scriptures? Of course not! He was well aware that there is a literal, historical sense to the Scriptures, and that all further interpretation must grow out of that, but that historical sense is not concerned with trivial circumstances and details. The Gospel-writers themselves were often unconscious of the difference between their circumstances and those of Old Testament events they referred to.



Unlike a modern historian (and even some modern Biblical scholars), the Biblical theologian is not so much concerned with historical detail, as in discerning the divinely established patterns that enable us to interpret the past to the present. What is God saying to us? Anthony was a master of this method. He takes Biblical illustrations from the Old Testament, and uses them to illuminate passages of the New. He sees the New Testament foreshadowed in the Old. Although, historically and humanly, the Scriptures were written by many authors at many times and in many places, Anthony sees the unifying intention of the Divine Author at every point. Everything is connected.





A useful tool





Archaeology can throw a wonderful light on the past. The discovery of ancient artefacts can help us to grasp more vividly the way people used to live. It is a sort of ‘time-machine’ enabling us to travel back, in imagination at least, to days of long ago. But our faith does not depend on such details. The Christ we worship lives now, lives eternally. The saints we pray to are not figures of the past, they are our friends in the present. It is good to have a more accurate portrait of the historical Anthony, but it does not change how I think of him in any important respect.



In May, I was able to be in Fatima at the same time as the Holy Father, Pope Benedict. The little group I was with attended the Wednesday evening Vespers and the Thursday Mass, but we were at some distance from the Pope himself. It would have been wonderful to meet the Holy Father, but we were not that important! One of our group, though, had an idea. He took a photograph of us all on the steps of our hotel, leaving a gap in the middle. Then, by the wonders of computer technology he inserted into the gap a picture of the Pope, sitting on a chair. Totally unreal, of course, but fun nonetheless!



Imagination (and the manipulation of images) can be a useful tool, bridging the gap between past and present, or expressing realities that we desire, but do not possess. Spiritually, we did feel close to the Holy Father on our Pilgrimage; but our real spiritual closeness did not take that precise historical form. In meditation, we can imagine ourselves present at the Gospel-events: but the value of the exercise does not depend on the accuracy of the image.





Fatima and Anthony





In passing, I noticed with pleasure that the old parish church of Fatima – the one in which the little shepherds were baptised, and in which Blessed Francisco said so many rosaries – is dedicated to Our Lady and Saint Anthony. The landscape round the modern shrine is not so different from the way it was a hundred years ago – or even in the time of Saint Anthony. Travelling from Lisbon to Coimbra, he would have passed not far from Fatima. The little shepherds would have been, in their way of life, not all that different from the children he met in his travels.



The portrait of Anthony I am looking at is still, probably, not entirely like him: but more than any artistic representation it reminds me that he was, and indeed is, a real person. Equally, Our Lady and Our Lord himself are real, and in the case of Our Lord we may (through the Holy Shroud) also have a true likeness. But whether or not our imagination is accurate, it is the real person we encounter in our prayers.