In the few months Elizabeth Ann Seton spent in Italy after her husband\u2019s death, the Catholic faith became deeply attractive to her. She encountered it in the prayers and fasting of her hosts, the art and architecture of her environs, and above all in the mystery and reverence surrounding the Masses she was able to attend. The Eucharist was a prime draw.<\/p>\n
At that time, she wrote with wonder to her sister-in-law Rebecca:<\/p>\n
\u201cMy Sister dear, how happy would we be if we believed what these dear Souls believe, that they possess God in the Sacrament and that he remains in their churches and is carried to them when they are sick.\u201d<\/p>\n
The words are those of an awestruck Protestant, and perhaps, we might think, we should not take them too seriously. After all, can we really say, as Elizabeth does, that Catholics \u201cpossess God\u201d? God is transcendent, infinitely greater than his creatures. We have no property rights vis-\u00e0-vis God. We cannot make him our own. We might conclude that Elizabeth exaggerates the situation, the understandable mistake of an Episcopalian judging the faith from the outside.<\/p>\n
But I think Elizabeth was onto something here. In this blessed moment, the dawn of her conversion, Elizabeth gives witness to a very deep and basic human need. She doesn\u2019t want God to be just \u201cout there.\u201d She wants Him to be where she can see Him, touch Him, taste Him. She wants to go to Him every day and be sure she is getting Him. She wants to know He will never leave her, that He will remain with her to the end.<\/p>\n
In short, Elizabeth wants a God who can be possessed.<\/p>\n
And the truth is that in Italy, among the Catholics, she discovers that God wants that too. She discovers that God became man so that He can become bread, a living bread that can be really touched and tasted, carried and consumed. She has, it turns out, a Creator who comes to lie down among his creatures, hidden in a gold box. Such is His spendthrift love.<\/p>\n
It rocked Elizabeth\u2019s world, and it should rock ours as well.<\/p>\n
It is no coincidence that Elizabeth had to go to Italy\u2014a land replete with Catholic art and architecture, liturgy and spectacle\u2014to have this experience. The Italians have a sense of God\u2019s flagrant gifts like no other people, a fact that is evident in today\u2019s saint, Blessed John of Fiesole, also known as Fra Angelico.<\/p>\n
Born in the hills outside Florence around the year 1400, John trained as an artist from a young age. At the same time, he felt a deep calling to serve Christ. At twenty, he could no longer deny the pull and joined the Order of Preachers, the Dominicans, an order known as much for their scholarship as their poverty. And, like the rest, he took the three vows\u2014poverty, chastity, and obedience\u2014that meant that from that time forth he would give up deciding what could be made of his gifts. When his superiors ordered him to paint, paint he did. And John\u2019s talent, it turned out, was to be a spectacular one. He was destined to be one of the early Renaissance\u2019s greatest lights, a master of color, line, and form.<\/p>\n
Few artworks are as well-known as his glorious Annunciation, one of forty-three frescoes he painted on the walls of the Convent of San Marco over a five-year period. John\u2019s Mary, robed in blue, is clearly startled by the appearance of the angel and yet is deeply serene. Gabriel leans forward to angle his eyes below her humble gaze, with rainbow wings unfurled. Yet what most strikes art aficionados is the background. John had taken interesting liberties. His Annunciation is set outdoors, limned with lines that give depth to the scene. This sense of perspective was an artistic innovation.<\/p>\n
For Catholics, what is perhaps more striking is not the scene, but the painting\u2019s actual setting\u2014where it is physically located. This masterpiece does not grace the walls of a rich man\u2019s house or decorate the altar of a fine cathedral. It occupies the wall at the top of a stairway in a convent dormitory corridor, making it one of the most \u201cpublic\u201d pieces in the convent. In fact, all but three of the forty-three frescoes John created in San Marco are on the walls of the friars\u2019 bare cells.<\/p>\n
This is how Friar John of Fiesole spent his gifts and his time, creating grandeur in humble places. Every friar had his own individual masterpiece all to himself. And all for the sake of each man\u2019s prayer, each soul\u2019s encounter with the living God. The friars thus learned about God\u2019s love through John\u2019s love of light and form.<\/p>\n
Just imagine having such a masterpiece in your bedroom. Truly, this is God letting himself be possessed.<\/p>\n
In later years, John became known as \u201cFra Angelico,\u201d \u201cthe angelic friar.\u201d It makes sense, because his paintings announce God\u2019s love to the world just as Gabriel announced the Good News to Mary with the words, \u201cHail, Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with you.\u201d<\/p>\n
This, Fra Angelico is saying, is where we ought always to live our lives\u2014in the middle of this moment in which light takes wing, where the Word becomes flesh, where a virgin can become with child. We too can become “full of grace.”<\/p>\n
Right now, right here, the whole extravagant love of our God is being poured out into the midst of our everyday, humdrum lives.The Word becomes flesh and dwells among us.<\/p>\n
And St. Elizabeth Ann Seton was right: how happy we should be!<\/p>\n