
Blogger and fellow Bay Area resident Arturo Vasquez has just published an article in Catholic Exchange. Titled “God in a Broken Frame and Shattered Glass: Another Look at Sacred Imagery” and taking as its starting point the recent vandalization of a local parish, the essay is a meditation on the ways in which images draw us into worship and teach us about the nature of God. A small sample:
Recently, St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church here in Berkeley, California, was vandalized and robbed of various sacred images. Among them was a portrait of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, a favorite amongst the parishioners. The Byzantine-style icon was ripped out of its place, leaving nothing there but the empty frame and broken glass.
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One Sunday after these events, I saw something a little strange, but touching, at least to me. At the early morning Mass, several people approached the empty frame with their usual candles and stopped to say a prayer in front of it. To those who think that praying to an image is silly in the first place, perhaps this would be something that would prove their point. Not only were these devotees having a picture fill in for Jesus and His mother Mary, but they were having an empty frame fill in for the picture. Having grown up with religious imagery in a Mexican household, I personally found this act of faith profoundly moving; just another example of how our Catholic Faith has to do with such little things that can mean so much.
Arturo is a profound thinker and an eloquent writer, and “God in Broken Frame and Shattered Glass” is worth reading in its entirely—which should come as no surprise to anyone who regularly follows his blog, Reditus: A Chronicle of Aesthetic Christianity. Congratulations, Arturo; may you be blessed with many more published articles in the future!
(On a more sober note, I would ask my readers to say a Hail Mary for the parishioners of St. Joseph the Worker, and another for the thieves who stole the icon of Our Lady.)







