Called Out of Darkness Page 0,57

it to the statue of legend, and the physical world contrived to render the moment infinitely more beautiful than I'd imagined it would be.

I didn't acknowledge faith in these moments at the foot of the statue. But something greater than a creedal formulation took hold of me, a sense that this Lord of Lords belonged to me in all His beauty and grandeur. He belonged to me in the grandeur of this symbol if He did not belong to me in any other way.

There was a sadness to this happiness, an undercurrent of acceptance: you can't have faith but you have this. The Lord doesn't disappear when you turn away from Him; He remains, acknowledged in myriad forms, and even in the miracle of the ever shifting clouds themselves. The Lord is with you; no, He's not real. No, He's just a symbol. But this is such a potent symbol that your whole life is suddenly pervaded with Him. You belong to Him in the guise of art, and sensing something greater beyond it, though you haven't the courage or the ability yet to reach for what that is.

Lord, surely what I felt in that moment was love.

Faith, no. But love? Yes, love.

After visiting many gorgeous colonial churches in Rio, and viewing some of the most magnificent scenery in the world, we decided to wander around Brazil. For no particularly good reason we ended in Salvador da Bahia, a city that had been described to us by our friends in Rio.

And there we found two of the most intricate colonial churches that we were ever to see.

But to describe the impact of one of the the last churches I visited - to describe the way this pilgrimage to Brazil ended - I have to flash back to an afternoon in San Francisco many years before.

At the time, Stan and I were shopping in a store on Mission Street - the Mission Gift Shop - that sold religious statues, along with little white Communion dresses, and jewelry, largely for the Latin American families of the city. Mission Street was their world. I was looking for religious collectibles.

I wanted to have them around me. I wasn't sure why.

In this shop, I discovered an outrageous statue which at once riveted me; and I bought it, not even noticing what it cost.

The statue is about two feet high. It is a double statue, actually, because it includes Christ nailed to His cross, and beside Him the figure of St. Francis of Assisi, reaching up to embrace the Crucified Lord. But what makes the statue unique is that Our Lord is also reaching down from the cross to embrace Francis. Our Lord's left arm is freed from the cross and with this left arm, He tenderly holds the devoted saint.

This statue was made in Spain. It is hyperrealistic. Blood flows from Our Lord's wounds. His face is gaunt, stained with blood from His crown of thorns, and the blood from the crown flows down his shoulders onto His chest. He is looking down intently at the head of Francis who appears to be staring at the bloody wound in Our Lord's side.

Francis bears the wounds of the Stigmata in this statue.

That is, Francis, too, has the wounds of the nails in his hands and in his feet. Francis was the first mystic ever to be granted the gift of the Stigmata. I knew this from childhood devotion to Francis. So this image made sense to me. What was new was the depiction of Our Lord reaching down to embrace Francis in this tender way.

The figures are graceful and delicate and they have dark skin.

The Lord's face is filled with love.

Francis, in this double statue, is in a brown robe - the habit of his Franciscan Order - with a rope tied around his waist, and a wooden rosary hangs from this rope. Francis is barefoot. One wounded foot rests on a world globe without continents, a simple sphere of blue.

There are touching bits of ornamentation on these two figures - painted flowers on the loincloth of Our Lord, gold curlicues on the robe of Francis - an ornamentation that lifts them out of the bloody reality of the moment and renders them timeless and the property of all those who seek to possess the meaning of the union of Christ and the saint. An open book rests on the base of the statues, with words in Latin:

Qui-non Renuntiat Omnibus Que Possidet Non Fotes Meus Esse