Francesco Marchisano

The Artistic Cultural Commission is still fully occupied in the work of examining the numerous projects which are pouring into the office. The authors send or bring in personally their ideas, their aspirations their requests, and as a result both the president Marchisano and the Secretary of Beni Culturali, Chenis, are overwhelmed with requests to be taken into consideration. The Commission for the Beni Culturali of the Church, which hosts the office of the Art and Culture Commission for the Jubilee, is besieged by a host of adventurers offering their products. Many hope to participate in the event by presenting some initiative. And the projects coming in are not always the best.

Having, now and again, to take stock of the situation we cannot fail note tendencies contrary to the fundamental intentions at the basis of preparation for the Holy Year. On the one hand there is an excess of motivation out of interest, on the other noble motivations of disinterest. On the one side we see the extreme subjectivity of the proposals due to a decrease in ecclesial knowledge and conscience, on the other we breath the air of the Council, ecumenism, interreligious dialogue. Unfortunately we have the profane attempting to commercialise this significant moment of our Christian culture but at the same we have rationes seminales of renewed spiritual vigour.

Emerging often is the eminently pastoral essence of this three years of preparation for the Jubilee, made visible by means of the poor weapon of prayer, the humble path of conversion, the austere art of holiness. In this sense, the arts with their natural liberality are highly suitable for portraying reality in its most profound connotations: if authentic they are able promote a process of catharsis of the spirit in order to direct the heart and mind towards God.

Of the abundant material received and studied by the experts of the Commission, some projects have particularly distinguished themselves for meeting the criteria previously indicated, and so with a judgement "suitable" have been transmitted to the Central Committee for the conferring of the logo. These are proposals modulated on the parameters of the lectio divina to present Jesus Christ; yesterday, today and for ever; presenting the history of the Church and the various Jubilees; traveling, with discreet charm, the ways of the pilgrims "ad limina Sancti Petri"; offering glimpses of the evangelization of peoples through the centuries and in particular new evangelization, drawing attention to the ills of modernity but also to the great witnesses of the faith. The projects make use of the most modern platforms - visual art, theatre, cinema, television, music, print media - so as to address men, women and children and enable those who are blinded by the culture of indifference to open their eyes and wonder at the greatness of the mystery of the Word made man.

1. From interest to disinterest

The approaching Jubilee stimulates us to begin a journey of conversion. This means admitting that some things are not right in the present-day social and ecclesial situations. To convert our hearts we must resist the temptation to turn to different roads, to search in different places. Success is not guaranteed and the path is arduous. The most frequent danger is that of commercialisation through which the approaching Jubilee, instead of being an occasion for spiritual renewal, would become a motive to procure new forms of profit. The arts in this sense are a prophetic divinity, with two faces. On the one hand they display the trafficking which leads to presenting the public with that which it asks for according to tastes of the masses and therefore source of abundant economic gains. On the other, they re-awaken our critical conscience leading us look at the world with different eyes and re-discover reality; to desire the good of others, portraying the civilization of love; to learn to take pleasure in purity and beauty entering into the enclosure of the sacred. This is the face of the true prophet. The Church is called to promote the arts in their authentic beauty so they may reawaken man from the torpor of indifference revealing to him through the splendour of forms, the "religion in spirit and truth" announced by Christ. The arts are naturally disinterested, that is, they begin where material, ideological and above all economic needs terminate, satisfying with liberality the needs of the spirit. The Holy Year needs the comment of the arts to express man's journey towards God along the paths of the world and through the passing of time. In this beginning of the three-years of preparation for the Jubilee we must deliver society from those who wish to instrumentalise this important ecclesial moment with the same firmness used by Jesus when he banished the sellers from of the Temple.

2. From the subjective to the objective

The appeal launched by the Second Vatican Council to renew the alliance between the Church and the world of art has not yet been fully answered. Today's cultural pluralism, ideologies contrary to religion and, at times, a low profile on the part of the ecclesiastical world, have distanced art from the Church. Re-emerging in recent years, besides other necessities, is a need of the sacred. Various artists are attempting a religious experience through their works but in a very subjective manner. They look at the divine through a sort of pantheism; the design for peace among peoples assumes a syncretistic form; the sublime nature of the sacred is expressed by means of an ever more abstract concept of art. The Holy Year offers an opportunity for initiatives in the field of art but at the same time poses several problems because of the separation between subjective perception and ecclesial vision of religion. This is shown by various projects in which an arduous yet fascinating interior adventure fails to bloom into language which is comprehensible or contents congruous with the Christian way of life.

The public must be presented again with the contents of the faith and we must encourage artists to sentire cum ecclesia if they are to translate their personal intuition of the sacred into the language of peoples. The Jubilee is an indirect challenge to rediscover the path of beauty to be travelled with the peoples of the world, overcoming narcissistic solitude, so that art becomes dialogue and a gratuitous gift to society in which we live a personal experience of God. Artists are called to have an attitude of openness to that which God has revealed to mankind in the Scriptures and which the Church has interpreted down through the centuries. The arts at the service of the Holy Year must be able to portray the pace, hurried or slow, with which mankind is going towards God with tales which people will listen too with delight of soul.

3. From the profane to the sacred

There are two opposite concepts of formulation, that inspired by Christianity and that of pagan origin. While in the classical world the divinity was inaccessible and therefore separate from men, in Christianity the Word becomes flesh and lives amongst us. Ruled out then is the typological distinction between the sacred and the profane according to which the cell of divinity was denied to the initiated who could only stand before it, that is in the place, pro-fano. In the mind of the Church the only profane thing is sin, everything else concurs to the full re-capitulation of reality in God. The Jubilee calls therefore for a new consecration of the world to God through a path of interior purification, whose exterior sign is offered by charity and by art. Both render good and beautiful the world of man and recall the time of creation, the longed-for hour of redemption, the final hour of resurrection. Beauty and holiness, aesthetic fruition and mystical ecstasy are irreducible poles of the same reality which concur to make man desire the supreme good recognised in the contemplation of the "glory of God".

But the world is under attack by profanation which distances it from God and therefore slows down the celebration of salvation. The Jubilee could be profaned by those who use this occasion to inoculate germs contrary to the faith, or by those who are just not interested because absorbed in concern for their own "particular". The Arts too desecrate when, instead of being finalised to asceticism, they are concerned with the fame of the artists, they free themselves from the norms of morality, they fail to communicate the power of creation and the presence of the sacred.

Accepting the formativity theory according to which art is created through the travail of the incarnation of forms in material, we can conclude that the Jubilee could favourably condition the arts seeing that it stimulates artists to express the image of humanity anxious to face the new millennium with a new heart. Perhaps we have overcome the phase of pure intuition to enter that of the project. We are looking at the first sketches not yet set into context and apparently immersed in chaos. But cosmos is dialectically opposed to chaos. The passage demands an ulterior elaboration of a global plan, in which works of art will serve to verify the world of the soul. The three-year period represents therefore a path of interior and exterior purification, of going beyond private interests and ideological exclusion, so as to cross the threshold of the Year 2000 with a truly liberal art. The art and culture Commission proposes to serve the arts by stimulating projects which effectively open to the sacred, through beauty. While not rejecting budding artists, it welcomes proposals from well established ones, especially those who still nourish reserves or regard religion with diffidence. The Church is in fact convinced that through art, as Pope John Paul II affirms, we can begin a dialogue with those who are far away, be they artists or audience and together with all people of good will, we can cross the threshold of hope.