In every parent cradling a lifeless child, we see the Pieta. In every bombed home, a new Golgotha. Gaza suffers an unending Good Friday.
Dennis Kucinich
April 16, 2025
Dennis Kucinich
April 16, 2025
Michelangelo’s Pieta, the larger-than-life sculpture of the crucified Christ held tenderly in Mother Mary’s lap, has attracted visitors to Rome since it was installed in the old St. Peter’s Basilica more than 500 years ago.
Contemplation of the Pieta gifts one with the powerful presence of sacrifice and divine acceptance, life summoned from stone, transcending death. Christians approach Good Friday with two powerful remembrances: Christ’s sacrifice and redemption on The Cross, and the acceptance, love and compassion expressed through The Pieta.
Countless images emerging from Gaza, of the sudden deaths of children, by bombing, shrapnel, gunshots, and grieving parents evoke modern day Pietas, occurring with terrible frequency. Unlike Michaelangelo’s crucified Christ, the dead children are seldom intact.
They are horribly mangled and disfigured, limbless, headless, often identified by a scrap of clothing. Yet, the bereaved parents, holding what is left of their child wrapped in white shroud, look to the heavens, and, resonating with divine grace and acceptance recite “Allah Akbar,” God is Great.
The forbearance, the courage under fire, the suffering of the people of Gaza in the face of the relentless and cowardly bombing attack which seeks to exterminate them has awakened the moral conscience of people all over the world.
Read complete article of Easter week inspiration on Substack.
Contemplation of the Pieta gifts one with the powerful presence of sacrifice and divine acceptance, life summoned from stone, transcending death. Christians approach Good Friday with two powerful remembrances: Christ’s sacrifice and redemption on The Cross, and the acceptance, love and compassion expressed through The Pieta.
Countless images emerging from Gaza, of the sudden deaths of children, by bombing, shrapnel, gunshots, and grieving parents evoke modern day Pietas, occurring with terrible frequency. Unlike Michaelangelo’s crucified Christ, the dead children are seldom intact.
They are horribly mangled and disfigured, limbless, headless, often identified by a scrap of clothing. Yet, the bereaved parents, holding what is left of their child wrapped in white shroud, look to the heavens, and, resonating with divine grace and acceptance recite “Allah Akbar,” God is Great.
The forbearance, the courage under fire, the suffering of the people of Gaza in the face of the relentless and cowardly bombing attack which seeks to exterminate them has awakened the moral conscience of people all over the world.
Read complete article of Easter week inspiration on Substack.