Autumn and Corot ... and Mom

The leaves here are beginning to change ... and that Autumn Feeling that Sister Rupp talks about is very much in the air ... or it is for me.

So when I visited Philbrook today I was deeply impressed by a new Corot they have hanging in the French gallery. It's titled Pleasures of the Evening (1875) How our little art museum was able to acquire such a work I have no idea. There are two other very small Corot's hanging adjacent to this one. Mom was never able to see, as far as I know, Pleasures of the Evening ... which was just added to the gallery last week ... but she saw and liked the other two works. She liked Corot very much. I think as much for his scenic landscapes as for his wonderful pre-Impressionist expressions of the scenes he painted with such feeling. Mom was, frankly, a sentimentalist. As am I. And Corot was a painter who painted sentiment into his scenes with a feeling that Mom and I both enjoyed very much.

Pleasures of the Evening gives a landscape in deep golden dusk. Three figures appear, whether nymphs or girls, I don't know. They are dancing in the dusk which seems to almost, but not quite, be enveloping or even overwhelming the dancers ... who dance on either oblivious to, or even in celebration of, the rapid onset of darkness.

The season in the painting is very probably summer; but I can't help but think of Autumn looking at it. And thinking: here are figures who, in the dying light of Autumn, are dancing on despite, and perhaps even because of, the onset of the death of the light. Somehow I could see this kind of scene around the Holy Saturday Tomb. This is a very Holy Saturday kind of painting.

Contrast, for example, Dylan Thomas' famous do not go quietly into the night; rage, rage against the failing of the light. Corot, in contrast, calls us to no rage. His dancers are either quietly dancing into the night, or are not quiet, and perhaps even loudly celebrating the dusky onset of night.

Both responses to the night have appeals for me. Christ Himself may be seen as responding to both calls: "My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me?" is a Job-like, and Thomas-like, cry on Good Friday. Holy Saturday, in contrast, is more reflected in Corot.

In any event, today ... or tonight ... I choose that of Corot, and of Holy Saturday. The pain wells up inside even now and I can feel my heart almost bursting with sorrow. But this is a heart that by God's Grace seeks a Holy Saturday rest in the Tomb; the Tomb of the Dead Heart of Jesus. Mom, I think, has passed beyond Holy Saturday; my own time in the grave is not yet, and may not be for many years. Yet as Von Balthasar says all of life is Holy Saturday, and just for today, I embrace my life as a Holy Saturday life.

Just for today. Just for this hour. Just for this minute.

God bless all in the Pilgrim Church of Christ as we all pass our pilgrimage through Holy Saturday ... Following Christ in the Corot-like Dust, let us dance our way after Him even as we know we Follow Him into the Tomb.

Charles Delacroix
F of Ss Isaac Joques & Cos
F of St Paul of the Cross