Without Hands

I've been thinking about what it truly means to be creative: I touched upon this in my blog entry on The Lord of the Rings but I didn't have room to go into detail there.



When we think of creativity we usually think of producing something original, whether something to look at, or a performance, or something to read.  And we especially desire to produce something that "no one has ever seen or done before".  Indeed, we consider it plagiarism if we do otherwise.

And there is nothing wrong with simulating reality in our art, such as the visual arts and theatrical performances.  That has been going on for thousands of years, and the Church has commissioned such works.



But the fact is that "there is nothing new under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9).  As Aristotle would have put it, we might produce original forms--but the raw materials that we put into those forms are exactly the same and are available to anyone.  We aren't capable of creating new materials, as that's something only God can do, God who is Being itself.

That being the case, while there is nothing wrong with works of art that simulate reality, the highest form of artistic creativity is to tap directly into God's own creative power.  This is counter-intuitive to us today, even to many Christians, because it means "stepping out of the way" and not showing off.  It actually involves as little originality as possible.



While many icons in the Church were painted by hand, there are some icons called "acheiropoieta", a Greek word meaning "made without hands".

Among the best known of these are the Veil of Veronica (containing a miraculous image of the Holy Face of Jesus) and the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe (which miraculously appeared on the tilma of Saint Juan Diego).



The Veil of Veronica and the miraculous image thereon of the Holy Face of Jesus are not recorded in the Bible, but they make up the Sixth Station of the Cross.  Saint Veronica showed mercy to Our Lord as He carried His Cross through Jerusalem to Calvary, wiping the Blood and sweat off His Face--and then an image of the Holy Face of Jesus miraculously appeared on her veil.  Indeed, the name "Veronica" means "true image".

According to tradition, Saint Veronica took her veil to Rome and healed the Emperor Tiberius with it--and it was used to heal the blind, quench the thirst of the thirsty, and even to raise the dead.

The Veil of Veronica was displayed in Saint Peter's Basilica at least until the Sack of Rome in 1527, but after that it isn't clear.  Some say it was destroyed, but there is no conclusive evidence that it was ever taken out of Saint Peter's Basilica and it may still be there.

The Holy Face of Jesus devotion has continued into modern times.  Sister Marie of St. Peter, O.C.D., received private apparitions in which she learned that what Saint Veronica wiped away from the Holy Face of Jesus is being added to even at present by blasphemies and sacrileges, and so Our Lord desires devotion to His Holy Face in reparation for these.  These blasphemies and sacrileges especially include "those that directly outrage the Majesty of God--that is, Communism, Atheism, cursing, and the desecration of Sundays and the Holy Days."  Such things are terrible responses to the gift of being able to see the Face of God and live!

And of course, whatever we do to the least of His brethren, we do to Him--and so the Holy Face devotion can also help us to see His Face in the faces of the poor, the sick, and the captive, and to do what we can to show them some dignity, even if that's all we can do for them except pray and fast.  To do less is to add insult to their injury.



Our Lady of Guadalupe first appeared to Saint Juan Diego at Tepeyac Hill in Mexico City on December 9, 1531.  Three days later, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared miraculously on his tilma, and so that date (December 12) is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Near that hill, as Our Lady desired, a shrine was built to her, which is now the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  The tilma is still displayed within, even to this day.  And Our Lady of Guadalupe is Empress of the Americas, and since this year she is also the patroness of Mexico, a country that needs it.  Mexico's economy depends unfortunately on two things to an excessive degree: 1) drug cartels, who also commit murders which cry out to God for justice, and 2) money sent home from the United States by immigrants--all too often those who cross the border into the U.S. illegally.

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe recalls the woman in the Book of Revelation Chapter 12, and it depicts Mary as clearly pregnant with Our Lord, which makes sense because she would have been heavily pregnant with Him on December 12, thirteen days before Christmas Day.  Because of this, Our Lady of Guadalupe is also Protectress of the Unborn, also needed in this day and age of a holocaust of aborted babies whose lives are not protected by human laws--again, sins that cry out to God for justice.

According to a book I read, Our Lady of Guadalupe also helped considerably in introducing Christ to the New World by reintroducing the original means of converting souls: peer-to-peer, rather than top-down.  The latter is moot today anyway, when most nations are republics rather than monarchies: you cannot convert a nation by converting her monarch if the nation doesn't even have a monarch!  So peer-to-peer conversion is all the more important now, and Our Lady of Guadalupe reintroduced that in the West by introducing it for the first time in the Americas, specifically in Mexico City.

And in The Second Greatest Story Ever Told, Father Michael E. Gaitley said that North America (the realm of Our Lady of Guadalupe) is the site for the second biggest push for Marian consecration in history, after the Militia Immaculatae founded by Saint Maximilian Kolbe in the first half of the 20th century.  He has contributed to this with his previous book 33 Days to Morning Glory, especially in its Spanish translation which has been used to combat the demonic cult of "Santa Muerte" who demands human sacrifice.  And he believes that Our Lady is preparing us for something significant in history to come in the near future.

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These icons are made directly by God Himself, rather than being painted by human hands.  But in this day and age it is possible to make images without hands ourselves.  Saint Veronica is the patroness of photographers, who make images that directly capture God's reality rather than simulating them--images that are made with light, not by the work of human hands.  That's something to think about the next time you take a selfie.

But while photographic technology is new in history (less than 200 years old), the raw materials have been with us since the beginning.  Indeed, silver nitrate was discovered by Saint Albert the Great in the 1200's!



And of course, since the late 1800's, there have also been motion pictures.  As recorded by Steven Greydanus on his decentfilms website, Andre Bazin (a Catholic) believed that cinema is the highest form of art because it taps directly into God's creativity, recording rather than merely simulating His creation.

That being the case, the purest form of cinema in this regard would be live action documentaries, without scripts (or screenwriters) and without actors playing roles--recorded with deep focus and in long takes only, and minimal editing.

While there's certainly nothing wrong with other forms of cinema, those overlap with non-cinematic and non-photographic art forms, and so they don't truly represent the essence of cinema.

Bazin also held to the "auteur theory" of cinema, and the above explains why: without a script, the auteur of a movie can hardly be a screenwriter (as the auteur of a play is the playwright).  A documentary is essentially a moving photograph, and a photographer is the auteur of a still photograph.  According to the auteur theory of cinema, the auteur of a movie is the director, the one with the creative vision (even though "director" isn't the best name because it was borrowed from stagecraft, where the auteur is the playwright and not the director).

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But while photography and cinema are art forms that can record reality, they necessarily require a produced recording--and they are new to history.

When I read Aristotle for Everybody by Mortimer J. Adler, I learned that Aristotle noted three "cooperative arts", arts where nothing is produced, but human efforts facilitate natural processes by making them happen faster and more efficiently.  In Catholic terms, this means that human beings participate in the created order directly, by using our free wills to cooperate with these natural processes.

These three cooperative arts are:

1) farming arts;

2) healing arts;

3) teaching arts.



Whether we help it or not, plants will always grow and reproduce.  Farming arts help this to happen faster and more efficiently, for greater production of plant foods, which can then feed the hungry--a Corporal Work of Mercy.  And Adam, the first man, was a farmer.

Whether we help it or not, the human body has at least some ability to heal itself of maladies.  Healing arts help this to happen faster and more efficiently, so that someone sick or injured can become healthy again faster and more efficiently.  And Christ was in part a Physician, healing maladies that no human doctor could.

Whether we are helped or not, we are always learning something--even when we're not in school, and even long after we've left school behind.  Teaching arts help this to happen not only faster, but also more efficiently in giving us a direction, so that we can put our knowledge to good use.  And Jesus, again, was in part a Teacher or Rabbi, teaching what the Kingdom of Heaven is like, what we must do to enter, why we must enter, and what will happen if we don't listen.

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Once again, there is nothing immoral about other forms of art.  The Church has commissioned such in the past, and (for example), in the private revelation of the Divine Mercy image, Jesus told Saint Faustina Kowalska to paint the image she saw (she had it painted by a professional painter, but the point is that He didn't give her an icon made without hands).

Indeed, I have been drawing for my entire life, and I especially like to draw things that come into my head, things that I cannot see before me in real life--and if I root this in love of Christ, I can glorify Him with my drawings.



All I'm saying is that these icons made without hands, and these art forms, tap directly into God's own creative power--and therefore they are the best, objectively speaking.

That being the case, I don't intend to ignore them.  I am already consecrated to Jesus through Mary, and Our Lady of Guadalupe is simply one apparition of Mary.  Besides, I am partly a Mexican-American, with some American Indian blood in me (confirmed by an ancestry.com test that my grandfather took), and I have lived in North America my whole life.  Therefore I am subject to Our Lady of Guadalupe as Empress of the Americas.

I am also consecrated to Merciful Love, after the fashion of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face.  Saint Therese regarded these two devotions, the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, as inextricably linked.  On the one hand, both display how the Son of God became dependent upon, and vulnerable to, His own creatures--us human beings (and the same is true of the Eucharist, the only time we encounter His physical Presence today, in Mass and in Adoration).  This shows how He humbled Himself out of merciful Love, and how we are to show the same merciful love to Him and to the least of His brethren, including the poor and those condemned to death.

On the other hand, both manifest the notion that we can see the Face of God and live.  We are finite, and fallen, and so we cannot expect to see God as He truly is, according to His divinity, and not either die or go mad from the revelation.  God knows this, and He shows us mercy by not revealing Himself in all His glory, which would frighten us anyway given our fallenness.  But aside from the Holy Face being an image of the Face of God that is not made by hands, the Child Jesus recalls the first time that it was possible to see the face of God and live: Christ's birth.  Hence the connection with the devotion to the Christ Child, the most wonderful gift on the first Christmas Day (the second, inextricably linked to the first, being Mary as our Mother).



I have gotten back into the habit of doing First Saturday devotions in reparation for blasphemies against Mary.  I did so this year, and I intend to do so every year from now on.

I am now becoming interested in the Holy Face devotion, and in making Acts of Reparation to the Holy Face of Jesus.  In particular, Jesus revealed to Sister Marie of St. Peter the Golden Arrow prayer, which makes Reparation for blasphemies against the Most Holy Name of Jesus.  And my birthday is the Feast Day of the Most Holy Name of Jesus.  And according to the official website for this devotion, Pope Leo XIII established the Holy Face devotion for the entire world, although it was neglected after World War I, some 30 years later.



I will close this blog entry with the Golden Arrow Prayer:



May the most holy, most sacred, most adorable, most incomprehensible and ineffable Name of God be forever praised, blessed, loved, adored and glorified in Heaven, on earth, and under the earth, by all the creatures of God, and by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.  Amen.

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Thank you for being with me.  God bless you.