Almost all my German friends at this time were 'Catholic.' I found myself swept along in their customs, helping my son keep his candle lit against the wind in the children’s Laternezug honoring Saint Martin, allowing my house to be marked with a chalk blessing by neighbors dressed in Magi costumes on Three Kings Day.
Through it all, I maintained a stubborn intellectual detachment. I observed and participated with pleasure, but made a point to find it all very fascinating in a strictly anthropological sense. I was still an atheist, still proud to stand in opposition to religion in all its backward manifestations.
Then a strange thing happened. As the years went by and my appreciation for German culture deepened, I somehow found it harder to hold it at an academic arm’s length.
Gaze long enough at a statue of Saint Denis, and you find yourself asking why he happens to be holding his head in his hands. Surrounded by so much Christian art, I began to focus on recurrent themes and symbols. What were they all about?
Of course, like art enthusiasts before and after me, I initially explained such symbols in terms of mythology. I did this for many years, but those explanations ultimately could not satisfy because of the one overwhelming theme in Christian art, found nowhere else.
I refer here to the theme of suffering. Indeed, why does that stone saint hold his head in his hands? Why will Saint Lucy persist in offering up her gouged eyes on a golden plate? And what about Christ on the cross?
REGINA | 146