THE PRAYER "COLOURED ALPHABET OF HOPE"

Gianfranco Ravasi

Marking every Jubilee of Israel was the sound of the jobel, the twisted horn of ram, a sound that pierced the air and ideally rang from the hill of Sion to the valleys and the villages of the promised land. That instrument was part of the orchestra of the time and was, therefore, the expression of the praying faith of the liturgical community. Certainly, the Jubilee as it is described in c. 25 of the Leviticus is a social and moral event including the liberation of slaves, the remission of the debts and the resting of earth. But it is known that the prophets have always taught that the rite without life is magic and, therefore, the right existence is none other but liturgy which has reached its hope.

Then, in the Christian Jubilee, the pilgrimage with its chants and celebrations is a fundamental component. It is for this reason that we would now like to speak of prayer, of that breath of the soul that should be constant but that in certain periods - like the one that leads us to the jubilee year - can also be intense and serene. Danish philosopher Soeren Kierkegaard wrote: «Rightly the people of the past said that praying was breathing. Here one can see how foolish it is to want to speak of a "why". Why do I breathe? Because otherwise I would die. Prayer is the same». We, however, consider prayer according to a curious angle, that of the figurative arts. After all, for many, the Jubilee will also be an occasion to visit Italian and European cities rich in monuments and their pilgrimage will end either in Rome or in Jerusalem or in a sanctuary with a centuries old history.

There beauty which has become praise and adoration will appear visible. What we now propose is a brief and symbolic itinerary within prayer which has become stone or colour. What Paul supposed when he evoked «the men that pray wherever they may find themselves, lifting their pure hands to the sky without anger and without arguments» (1 Tim 2:8) has come true since the very origins of civilisation. Stretching out one's hands was the primordial gesture to ideally reach the sky or to caress the face of the statue of divinity. Positions will change in the various lands and in the eras - there will be silence, bowing, prostrating or kneeling, join of hands, crossing of arms, dancing, launching of kisses (like the verb «adorare», in Latin «to bring the hand to the mouth»). As a beautiful expression of the biblical Lamentations goes, «we all raise our heart on our hands up to the God that is in the skies» (3:41).

We can then go back to the small bronze figure of the first half the II millennium B.C. from the city of Larsa in Mesopotamia and kept in the Louvre representing a man praying who places his right hand on his mouth to kiss his god. Always in the Louvre, is the famous stele of black basalt of the Code of Hammurabi on top of which that Babylonian sovereign of the XVIII century B.C. is erected standing in front of the sun god Shamash on a throne. Also in the Louvre from another city in Mesopotamia, Lagash, comes a limestone relief of the XXIV century B.C. with two registers along which the sacred singers and the musicians parade with harps to praise the divinity. In Egypt the «monotheistic» Pharaoh Akhnaton (XIV century B.C.) comes to us with opens arms in front of the divine sun disk Aton, whose rays end up in the hands that touch the Pharaoh and all of reality blessing it, while Pharaoh Sethi I ad Abido is in front of god Sokaris to burn incenses.

This list could be very long. Also, in Christianity, starting from the catacombs, the figure of the praying man is already introduced in the III century with his arms raised, as in the fresco in the Cemetery of the Jordans in Rome. Sometimes the arms widen to repeat the gesture of Christ on the cross and the figure of the praying man is the martyr or the soul of the Christian already dead in the glory of the celestial liturgy or waiting for the final judgement or also while he intercedes for those alive who are commemorating him. Other times they are symbolic biblical subjects: Noah who invokes the God of justice and peace from his ark, or the three young Jews who sing hymns in the burning furnace (Daniel 3) or the very Daniel in the pit of the lions (c.6).

The Bible is, of course, the «large code» which is drawn from to elaborate the great models of prayer also because - as Chagall stated - it is «the coloured alphabet of the hope in which painters have dipped their brushes for centuries». One need only think of the enormous series of portraits of Daniel. A praying man or musician in honour of the Lord, placed at the beginning of the illuminated Psalters or of the Books of Times. But there is also Moses praying described in c.17 of the Exodus which in the Romanesque writing of the XI-XII centuries takes on the position of Christ crucified, «he who saves us from future anger», a typology which also appears in some illuminated Bibles like those of Farfa and of S. Isidoro of Leon. Also present in dozens and dozens of forms, popular and of significant artistic level, is Jesus' prayer in the Getsemani, which turns into the figure of the perfect praying man. But also Mary in the typology of Russian icons is presented as the Inamie, that is, the praying woman who turns to the Son and to the Father. The prayer is, however, the characteristic act of the individual believer or community and art has often borne witness to this theme. Also in this case there is a wide choice. The thought comes spontaneously to Piero della Francesca with two extraordinary paintings. On the one side the Pala of Brera in Milan where Federico di Montefeltro in armour is placed on his knees in front of the Virgin who is holding in her arms the sleeping Child (perhaps an allusion to the child born dead to Federico). On the other side, the Madonna of Mercy in the Municipal Pinacoteca of Sansepolcro, painted between 1445 and 1448, for the local Confraternity of Mercy: the solemn and statuary presence of Mary whose face is full of intense and sovereign beauty, places her mantle around four praying men and four women standing on her sides, kneeling with supplicant eyes turned toward her.

Masaccio in his Trinitas in cruce at S. Maria Novella in Florence had already evoked the two supplicants knelt in prayer. But there were always to be many representations of, mainly marian, prayer. We mention two works of great significance. The first one, not much earlier than Piero della Francesca, is the so-called Madonna of Chancellor Rolin in the Louvre, a work by van Eyck. The main character, with a very characterised profile, is represented on his knees in front of the Virgin, while a window opens up onto a delicious landscape. The other painting is the Madonna of Ca' Pesaro by Titian, kept in the church of the Friars in Venice. The whole Pesaro family prays at the feet of Mary's throne, behind which is a column and a Venetian architectural backdrop, in a deep and bright space.

Some have suggested that the term Jubilee, more than to the Jewish jobel to which we made reference above, should be linked to the late-Latin jubilee verb which meant «shouting» (with the onomatopoeic sound «iu», similar to a «cheer»). In any case, the Jubilee should be a time of joy and faith, of song and of praise, of liturgy and of prayer. A prayer not only holy and sincere but also beautiful, as art testifies (music is, in that respect, another chapter that will also be addressed on these pages). In fact psalm 47 invites us in our praise to God to «sing hymns with art».