“Hands are the heart’s landscape.”
~Pope John Paul II
Last Friday I went to the Vatican Splendors exhibit that is currently showing at the Minnesota History Museum. It is a remarkable traveling exhibit of paintings, sculpture, uniforms, vestments and many other items that are housed in the several museums that make up the Vatican collection. The collection spans centuries and contains art from every century. This exhibit does a wonderful job of keeping the interest of adults and the numerous school groups that were present while I was there. I observed several young men who looked quite bored while looking at religious paintings perk up when they turned a corner and saw the uniforms and weapons of the Swiss Guard!
Of particular interest was a section where they had re-created what it must have felt like to be Michelangelo as he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The scaffolding suspended just four feet from the ceiling gave you an idea of how uncomfortable and claustrophobic that work must have been. How he had any visual perspective from his vantage point of how the art would look from the floor is beyond my understanding.
The entire exhibit was wonderful. But my favorite piece was one near the very end. It was a sculpture made of brass, about the size of a small car table. Rising out of the center of the square was a caste of the praying hands of Pope John Paul II. The hands were actually situated on their side so the back of his hand was on top, not in the usual visual of praying hands. A small placard invited people to put their hand on top of his. I looked at the brass, how it had been rubbed shiny by all those who had reached out to lay their hand on this brass image of this seeming sweet, kind, compassionate, yet larger-than-life man.
As I too reached out to lay my hand on his, I thought how good it felt. His hands were much larger than I had imagined. He always seemed a slight person to me. I lay my hand where others had and wondered what each person thought when they did so. Certainly the most devote Roman Catholics had a different experience than I. (I am sure the children were glad to finally be able to touch something.) Those places, rubbed to glistening gold by the hand prints of so many, shone into the darkness of the exhibit hall. So many hands who had reached out to touch the hand of this man who had been through so much, who so many believed to be the most powerful man in the world. It was a quiet act some would see as nothing of significance. But I have thought about it over and over. It felt like a holy moment.