Reflections on an Easter Sunday Morning: The Pantacrator by John DeRosen

In the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., the sanctuary is totally dominated by the imposing mosaic of "Christ in Majesty" modeled from the Eastern Christian tradition of the "Pantocrator," meaning the "Ruler of All" or "Celestial Emperor." It is the work of John DeRosen, an artist of Polish nobility, son of Jan Henryk DeRosen who was the court painter to Czars Alexander II and Nicholas II.. It is truly a vast mosaic, and when entering this basilica from the rear vestibule, it quite literally dominates the vision of the whole interior of that magnificent structure. It is a dramatic figure of Christ, risen and triumphant, his victory over death signified by the brilliant red of his garment, and his face and eyes looking forward, already ruling by his very presence, and awaiting his judgment of the world.

Some of the criticism of this Christ by DeRosen has been severe over the years. It is said by some to be out of place in this basilica dedicated to Mary, not only because of its dominating size, but also because of its severity and triumphalism. It is indeed a very different image of Christ from what we are used to today. It is far different from the gentle lamb who is slain and risen. It is clearly not the depiction of gentleness and mercy that we are accustomed to envision in the Risen Lord. It is a deliberate challenge to our age, perhaps a statement about our age. It is interesting at the very least, which is something that cannot be said about a great deal that passes for religious art in our day.

There is no doubt that the this dominant and austere figure of Christ makes one feel a bit uneasy standing before and beneath it, and that could not but have been intended by the artist. It makes us feel uneasy because deep down when we think of a true judgment, not a pseudo judgment based upon emotion, but one based upon absolute truth, we quite naturally feel uneasy, and should. We don=t feel at ease facing such a prospect, that in the end we will be judged not by any human judge moved by reason which is always tinged with emotions, but by truth, bare truth, for God is truth and will judge us in the end, in His world, only by truth. And who can lightly think about such a judgment, if he is in his right mind, that is, a mind that is seeing things truthfully and straight on?

But then the critics, and maybe our own heart, will respond that Jesus is man, not just God, and that we are to rely on his pity and not be worried about any abstract commitment to the truth. In our age, we are uneasy with any absolute commitment to truth, and so we are convinced that so must Jesus also be, in the end, we hope. Modern man has abandoned the truth much like Pilate - truth is seen to really be impossible in matters religious - and so we project this same attitude on Jesus, even though He told us not only that He is absolutely committed to the truth, but that he is Himself the absolute Truth.

But all that is shunned today, and we depend upon Jesus= heart to overrule his head, much as we live our lives in the absence of truth. And so our art often reflects the most sappy emotionalism of our age, a Jesus who could never condemn anyone, never judge anyone harshly, never allow the truth to get in the way of his feelings. Even our theology today moves ever farther away from any notion of judgment that might imply a harsh destiny for anyone, the antipode of the theology that inspired rather well known artistic depictions of the judgment and the punishment of Hell in former ages. Our theology rather moves in the direction of universal salvation and a universal. Anonymous - really, really anonymous - Christianity; the fundamental equality of all religions; the triumph of the personalistic - reduced to the emotionalistic - over the objective truth of things, etc. DeRosen=s Christ was not likely to inspire many positive responses in this intellectual and spiritual climate, and it has not.

But all true art is for the ages not simply for an age, though great art always tells us something about our own age to be sure, and this is absolutely true of great religious art. Perhaps DeRosen=s masterpiece is meant to evoke a negative response, but surely at least to evoke some response, to make us actually think, to reflect upon our own age and our vision of Christ and what it says about our faith.

To begin with the obvious, it=s truly strange, when you think about it all, that the bloodiest century in human history, so far, should be a century in which even many Christians no longer believe in a final judgment that actually renders justice for the countless victims of the atrocities which were, and still are committed during this age. Think of the literally millions and millions of victims of the ideologies that have taken hold in our age, including the millions and millions of the unborn victims of the ideology of so-called reproductive rights, rights of parents of course not the offspring. Think about how many of these victims ever find even the slightest vindication of justice in this world. We tend to think of injustice today solely in relation to the perpetrators, and totally separated from the victims, as if justice were not a true balancing of accounts, a restoration of truth in the form of equality. So we can easily think of mercy toward the perpetrator without any consideration of the rights of the victims that must somehow be restored if justice is truly to be done.

Then think about modern theology. Today, we often hear it said in theological circles that because Jesus has truly become the justice of man, this also means that he can have mercy on whomever He will regardless of man's repenatnce, and that He will in fact do so in such a way that He dispenses with any human justice altogether, as if justice toward the victim, the other side of the scales of justice, can be totally overridden by mercy toward the perpetrator. It is a notion of justice where there is not only no justice in this world, none at all, for most victims, but worse, none at all even in the world to come. It is a notion of justice that renders the divine judgment totally divorced from any human concept of justice, from all reference to history as such, and it is one that our ancestors would not have understood, or accepted.

Moreover, it is a notion of justice that makes virtually unintelligible the Book of Revelation which scholars tell us was intended as a consolation for the martyrs. What can it possibly mean for the modern mind when it says in Revelation that the souls of the martyrs, seen under the altar when the fifth seal is opened, cry out, AO Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before thou wilt judge and avenge our blood upon those who dwell upon the earth?@ Are these souls simply told to wait a little longer until the full number of the martyrs is complete, only to discover then that their very call for justice was their mistake, maybe even their sin, that there is no human justice in the creation, now or ever, but only mercy, that their murders, even if they were totally unrepentant in this life, would all be moved to repent in the next and would know only mercy and not justice? Is it any wonder then that Purgatory has become a meaningless doctrine, let alone Hell, in an age that discards all justice in the name of mercy?

The difference between our age=s faith and theology and that of previous ages may be summarized well in this one issue, that we no longer understand the profound unity and continuity between natural law and divine law, between natural justice and divine justice, and thus between divine mercy and divine justice. We think only dialectically, and thus we cannot deal with the unity of justice and mercy, but must have one or the other, and thus justice, especially divine justice must be denied to affirm divine or human mercy. To affirm that God=s justice and mercy are one means for the modern mind that divine mercy supplants justice of any kind, divine or natural.

The theology of former ages, on the other hand, agreed that in this world, mercy may indeed require the setting aside of justice, but not absolutely, for justice will come back into play in eternity, and unless the criminal or sinner makes amends in this world, in some proportional way, then our faith has told us that he will make amends in the world to come, and that is surely the root meaning of Purgatory, even when it is seen in terms of purification. The purification is fundamentally tied to justice, the justice of man rendered in his own way, proportionate to his nature, and the justice of Jesus Christ rendered on the Cross.

What then does this imply, that Christ has not satisfied for all injustice on the Cross? Not quite, but that is precisely the problem dealt with in Hebrews 10: 26-31, where the inspired writer is dealing with the problem of sins committed by Christians after Baptism. Surely the sinner who repents and is baptized into Christ has all his injustice toward God compensated for by Christ, and that is why we believe that such a person, should he die before committing any other sin would enter directly into heaven, much like the good thief who by the Grace of Christ repents openly of his sins and then is surely baptized on the cross in his own blood, and by desire, and thus is totally justified and is simply told the consequent truth by Jesus, that this day he would be in Paradise.

But Baptism is a one time event wherein all injustice toward God is covered by Christ, and even all injustice toward man, only assuming the sinner's repentance without which Baptism would be a farce. Moreover, true repentance would make it mandatory for the Christian to sincerely intend to do what he could to make amends for injustice towards others committed before Baptism. This is where the element of proportion enters in, for a man might be able to in fact make total amends externally - he cannot raise the one he murdered to life for instance - but he can correct the evil of injustice internally, in the will where all injustice has its roots. If the good thief had somehow survived, or been rescued from the Cross, surely his becoming a Christian would not have relieved him from the obligation to restore justice in relation to those he had victimized, in so far as that was possible for him. Recall Zacchaeus the tax-collector=s statement that if he has defrauded anyone he will restore it four fold. Imagine Jesus saying in reply, that he should be baptized and would be free of all debts caused by his injustice. Nice for Zacchaeus perhaps, but what about his victims? Is it not a new kind of antinomianism that we live with in this Christianity which does away with justice, for everyone.

In Hebrews the issue is what happens in terms of justice if the justified sins after Baptism. Baptism happens only once, and thus the justice of Christ seems to fully compensate only in this one Baptism. That is why even Penance is referred to by tradition as a laborious form of justification to distinguish it from Baptism. There is the same gift of grace in terms of mercy, but the justification seems somehow different, in the sense that man must labor more here to restore the dual order of justice, whereas in Baptism there is only the justice of Christ.

In Hebrews, the Spirit teaches us that if we sin after Baptism, in which we come to the Aknowledge of the truth,@ then Athere no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment ... how much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the man who has spurned the Son of God and the blood of the Covenant by which he was sanctified and outraged the Spirit of Grace? For we know who said >vengeance is mine, I will repay,= and again >the Lord will judge His people.= It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.@

This passage makes sense only within the lived tradition of the Church which includes the doctrines of Purgatory, Hell, doing penance for sins here in this world, the expiatory value of each Mass, and the awfulness of the final judgment for the unrepentant sinner, etc. Clearly within that living tradition the passage cannot be interpreted to mean that there is no forgiveness for sins committed after Baptism. It has to do with the more laborious way of the penitent, for the path after Baptism is related to justice in a different way than the path through Baptism. Sin after Baptism involves a greater injustice toward God, beyond the injustice of the natural law, and to restore this justice will involve a more laborious path for the sinner, one that demands penance, which we do not demand of the un-baptized before Baptism.

But if this judgment applies to the Christian who sins after Baptism in a graver way than before, it still applies before. For man stands before God and His judgment by virtue of the natural law itself written in man=s heart, and man cannot in any way contribute to his justification for sins committed before Baptism. After Baptism, if he sins, he owes an even greater debt for his ingratitude and spurning of the initial gift, and here he can no longer resort to the power of rebirth in Baptism to cover all injustice through Christ. Surely he is justified before God by the free gift of Grace in Penance, but this justification evidently does not attain the same purification as the initial, for the debt of temporal punishment due to sin is not remitted as it was by the full power of rebirth in Baptism, or the Church=s whole penitential discipline would have no foundation. We do not assign a penance to those who are Baptized for a solid reason, because there is no temporal punishment that remains after the rebirth, because this rebirth is truly a re-creation. But in the Sacrament of Penance, we do assign a penance and it is itself a reminder of the need of penance in the life of the Christian as a whole, and this too is done for a reason. This is the sacrament not of rebirth, or re-creation, but of healing or resurrection from the dead. A re-creation is ontologically different from a resurrection from the dead, a healing in the absolute sense of that term. The penitent is not a new creature after absolution, but a restored son or daughter who still carries the temporal debt of sin even though the eternal debt has been covered by Christ=s redemption.

So even as we see in Baptism that the intention to restore ana spect of justice temporally, to the neighbor victimized, is not set aside but actually re-enforced, so the temporal punishment due to the injustice of sins committed after Baptism is not set aside but actually magnified by the fact of the Baptism. The temporal punishment due to sin committed before Baptism is not simply overlooked, or simply set aside in itself, but it no longer applies since the creature is new in relation to God, even though not new in relation to the world, hence the temporal debt remains after Baptism in relation to the neighbor wronged.

The Christian, who is unrepentant and un-reconciled with God, because of grave sin committed after Baptism, cannot look at the final judgment with tranquility simply because He believes God is merciful and because he is baptized into Christ. The latter fact simply makes the judgment even more fearful as we see in Hebrews 10. And the fact that God is merciful has much more to do with this temporal journey than with the final judgment. Now is the time of salvation, says Paul, for now is the time for working out the intrinsic relationship between justice and mercy. God=s mercy is worked out in this world where his justice was manifested and fulfilled on the Cross of Jesus. In the next world, there will be only the judgment that is worked out in time, now, which is the sense of all those passages where John speaks about the man already being judged for not believing in God=s only son.

DeRosen=s image of "Christ in Majesty is truly magisterial in character, a challenge to modern man, to the modern Christian who would deny that justice is involved in God=s final judgment, but only mercy. It is in direct contradiction to the presumption of modern Christians rooted in this reductionism of faith. It makes us think, perhaps, that not is all well for those who fail to repent.

Fr. Mark A. Pilon, S.T.D.