Medicine for the soul

Apparently, during his recent visit to Mexico, Pope Francis handed out rosaries to children on a hospital ward in Mexico City. One report even stated that he gave a little boy his own personal rosary and asked the boy to pray for him.

I was impressed by this, and I wanted to find an image of the incident, but I could not find a single photo on the internet. There are lots of pictures of the Pope handing dummies to babies, and a raft of images of a staged incident in which Francis gives a small boy some drops of medicine - actually, a polio vaccine.  But no rosaries.

It's not exactly a stunning revelation to realise that the World's media are more interested in photographing the Pope giving a vaccine than handing out rosaries, but it reminded me of just how counter-cultural we are, as practising Catholics, when we pray the rosary. In the world's eyes, this string of beads is utter foolishness, superstitious nonsense - particularly in comparison to the wonders of modern medicine.

Of course the Church has never denied the efficacy and necessity of science and medicine. St Luke, after all, was a doctor. But what our faith teaches us is that we also need supernatural grace, the grace of God, which is what makes us truly live - not just in this life, but for eternity. What the materialists of the modern era, and indeed the image of the Pope administering medicine, are saying, is that science alone can save us.

This reminded me of a painting I saw recently at the National Gallery of London's exhibition of portraits by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya - an artist who wholeheartedly embraced the Enlightenment, and yet who retained up to the end a complicated relationship with his Catholic faith.

The work, entitled 'Self Portrait with Doctor Arrieta' was painted in 1820, after the 73-year old artist had recovered from a particularly intense bout of illness.

In the portrait, Goya paints himself with ashen face, his eyes almost closed, his mouth half open, leaning back in bed feebly clutching at his bed sheets. One can almost hear the hoarse breathing and see the sweat glistening on his brow. He is held up by his doctor, Eugenio Arrieta, who holds a glass of medicine which he is about to give to his patient.

Self Portrait with Dr Arrieta, Goya, 1820.

At the bottom of the picture there is an inscription: 'Goya in gratitude to his friend Arrieta: for the compassion and care with which he saved his life during the acute and dangerous illness he suffered towards the end of 1819 in his seventy-third year'.

This image is very reminiscent of the traditional ex voto: paintings and other gifts placed on the altars of Our Lady or particular saints in gratitude for prayers answered - babies conceived, illnesses cured and so on. The giving of an ex voto as a kind of thank-you present to the saints was a regular and normal part of Catholic life for centuries.

In this 19thc Italian ex-voto image below, a woman lies ill in bed, while the family pray at her bedside. Our Lady and saints in Heaven are shown above, indicating that the prayers were heard and answered. This little painting would have been donated to a particular altar, probably in the local church, in thanksgiving for the woman's recovery.

Goya's painting of Dr Arrieta is a deliberate break with tradition - a new, Enlightenment version of the ex voto: here, it is not Our Lady or the saints who are being thanked for the cure, but the good doctor and his medicine.

Thoughts of death were preying heavily on Goya's mind at this period of his life as his illness took hold. Just a year earlier, Goya had finished his last religious painting, a beautiful image of 'The Last Communion of St Joseph of Calasanz'. In this work, the dying saint receives his final Communion before he is taken up to Heaven. The saint closes his eyes and opens his mouth, a bit like a patient waiting for his medicine, while the priest, like a doctor, places the host on the saint's tongue.

The Last Communion of St Joseph of Calasanz, 1819, Goya. 

In some ways, these two paintings encapsulate a good deal of what was going on in Europe at the time, as the new rationalism of the Enlightenment sought to undermine the ancient certainties of the faith. It is a process that has perhaps reached its peak in our lifetime.

Goya was not a regular Mass-goer, but he had faith, and indeed he asked in his will to be buried in a Franciscan habit. Sadly though, he did not have enough belief to request a priest for Communion and the last rites before he died, in April 1828.

His image of St Joseph of Calasanz however, leaves us with a beautiful message. When our body finally gives up and when no doctor, however skilled, and no medicine, however strong, can save us, we have the body, blood, soul and divinity of Our Lord Jesus, and it is that which will give us everlasting life.