Welcome to
Sacred Heart School of Theology's
English as a Second Language Program
The ESL Times / Summer, 2003
The Secret Life of the Chicago Art Institute
By: Fr. Krzysztof Napora
Do you like to visit Art Museums? Of course you do. After all you are cultured
and scholarly. A lot of times you have heard the names of Monet, Picasso,
Rembrandt, Renoir and many others. I want to invite you to visit The Art
Institute in Chicago in a different way. I want you to walk with me through the
rooms and halls of the museum at night. – Yes, maybe you are right...maybe I AM
a little crazy... And, yes, you are right – the museum IS closed at night – but
this is the best moment to visit a museum because it will be quiet - without
crowds of people looking for bread to feed their souls, without children
running from room to room, without the noises of bored children on school field
trips. No, do not be afraid of the Police, we won’t have to enter through the
windows; we won’t have to dig a tunnel to get in. The only thing that we will
need is our imagination and so – let’s go...just close your eyes and let me
guide you!
When the last employee leaves the museum and closes the doors, then the pictures start to live their own lives. In the night, figures from the pictures stand up, straighten their tired backs, move their sleeping hands and legs. They set aside their carried baskets, sword, and crosses. The men put on their clothes which have been taken off during battle frenzies. The women pat down the wrinkles from their foreheads and wash their faces. Even Holy Mary wipes away the tears from her eyes and helps Saint Mary of Magdalene to bandage Jesus’ head and the wounds of Saint Sebastian. You can see, at this time, what these figures really are like; you can know their real natures.
I want to invite you to look at this woman with the red hair painted by Amadeo
Modigliani. When you see her in the day time, you can admire her calm and
self-control. Blushes cover the paleness of her countenance. Braided fingers on
her knees repress her feelings. These feelings are like beads strung on a black
thread and slung around the woman’s long neck. In the night this tension
disappears, the black thread bursts and her feelings, like black beads, spread
out on the floor. Her eyes can’t stop the tears. They run down her cheeks and
show the true paleness of her tired face – tears with a subtle, salty kiss
touch her mouth and fall down on her black dress. Why does the woman cry? Maybe
this is the secret of her black dress; maybe it knows something about the black
beads of feelings, about her sad eyes, and her clasped mouth. I do not
know...but, I believe that in the night the woman closes her eyes and in her
dreams she sees the one for whom she cries. He approaches her and sits close,
looking at her and leaving, kissing her tired, tearful eyes. Calmed by this
dreamy kiss, the woman can sleep till morning…
Now, come, we have to go along…I told you that after dusk every figure starts
to move. Well, it is not completely true for every figure...not every one…
There are some figures who stay still in the evening as well without moving. –
Why is that? I think it is because they are not only works of art, they are
“magic in a picture”. These are forms really exist. They live their own lives,
not looking on crowds of visiting people, not paying attention to the night
trifles of baroque amors and the posturing of classical satyrs and
water-nymphs. These are works are more than that, and one of them is the
Praying Jew by Chagall. Look at him now please. Let us try to see how prayerful
he is. He does not see us. He did not see Chagall either. He sees something
else, maybe someone else…The years dedicated to praying have ordered his life,
divided it into white and black parts. If there is something grey it means to
him that it was not touched by the flame of prayer. No, prayer does not
annihilate the gray – prayer only explains it to him; it allows him to see what
is the crumb of white in grey, which does not change the grey to black. The
Praying Jew can see what is the crumb of black in gray, which does not allow
grey to become white...However, if you are looking for stagnancy in this
picture, you will not find it. Maybe for a 
short second the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob permitted the Jew to close himself in a black-white world, but
this moment has passed. This is true as the eyes of the old Jew are still full
of trust, rapt in the face of God who is hemet – faithful. This is a God who
transcends our thinking, our expectations, even our prayers. Maybe God himself
painted the astonishment that you can see on the face of the old Jew, maybe it
was not Chagall…I think that at night, in prayer, God leads this faithful son
of Abraham, this Praying Jew, to the room where everyone stops in front of the
Goya picture Assumption. But, God does not show him the cold picture of Goya.
Instead, God sits with the old Jew opposite Zurbaran’s picture Crucified. Do
they talk? I think only one sentence whispers from God’s mouth: “Look my
beloved child, for I so loved the world, that I gave my only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” And,
I do not think that they need to talk any more. So, I have to say you, that all
I want this night, is to sit with them, to look on the crucified Gift of God’s
love, and in the morning I want to come back to my life holding in my heart the
same unbelievable trust that the praying Jew has. I want too to have his
astonishment – his wonderful, saintly astonishment - on my face too…
Priests of the Sacred Heart
Sacred Heart School of Theology
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Hales Corners, WI 53130-0429
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