El Hombre Sol: Birth (Part I)

Probably the most recognizable symbol of Toluca is a “El Hombre Sol,” stained-glass window located in el Cosmovitral, a botanical garden in downtown Toluca designed by Mexican artist Leopoldo Flores.

The “El Hombre Sol” Panel, created by Mexican artist Leopoldo Flores, is the highlight of the Cosmovitral, located in downtown Toluca.

Located in an old market, the Cosmovitral is one of the most beautiful places that I’ve had the chance to visit in Mexico.  While the building is a botanical garden, it is encircled by a magnificent stained-glass mural, which explores the theme of man and his place in the universe.  Towards the back of the building is a large panel, called either “Birth” or “Genesis,” that features a man and a woman, with an egg in the center.  As the name suggests, this panel explores the origins of mankind.  To one side, the mural takes on brilliant oranges, reds, and yellows, symbolizing the day; on the other side, Flores makes use of more somber blues and purples, symbolizing night.  But the most striking panel is directly at the front, and features a naked man surrounded by the sun.  This panel, “El Hombre Sol” (the Sun Man) has become the face of the exhibit, and quite possibly of Toluca itself.

This is a really awesome work of art, and if you’re in Toluca, you should totally check it out.  But I want to focus more on the spirituality and symbolism of the art than I do on the history and construction of the piece.  But you should totally read more about the history and construction.  You should also check out this panoramic view and these photos (which are a lot better than mine), and you can read more about Leopoldo Flores here.

Birth and Genesis
Now, on to symbolism and spirituality.  Here’s the first panel, “Birth”:

At the center of the panel is an egg, symbolizing something from which the universe emerged.  The egg is encircled by a man and a woman, whose hands appear to be in the act of grasping the other’s.  To me, there are two important philosophical points made by this panel:

1. The universe is seen by the artist as emerging from something.
2. That from which the universe emerges is somehow related to an act between two beings.

Emergence
Let’s consider the first point: the universe is seen by the artist as emerging from something.  If the universe emerges from something, then there is inherently some sort of relationship between that which emerges and that from which it emerges; the two are forever linked in some way…but what is that relationship?  How are we linked?  This is ultimately the question that all religion and spirituality — and to some extent, philosophy — tries to answer: Where did we come from?  What is our relationship to our origin?

From a Christian perspective, the answer is quite obvious: the universe is that which emerges, and the universe emerges from God.  Therefore, there is an inherent relationship between God and man…a point that I think Deism misses; if God created the universe, it seems as though he would have had a reason for which to create it.  As such, the idea that we are created by God, but that he doesn’t really care about what we do, or interest himself in the world that he created seems rather strange to me.  As for the question of our relationship to our origin, that is a question for Christian spirituality that I will address in Part II.

Action
Now, let’s consider the second point: “that from which the universe emerges is somehow related to an act between two beings.”  The fundamental idea here is that action, as a cause, is at the core of our existence.  Is it fair to call this action love?  The French Jesuit and paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, argues that it is:

“Considered in its full biological reality, love — that is to say, the affinity of being within beings — is not peculiar to man.  It is a general property of all life and as such it embraces, in its varieties and degrees, all the forms successively adopted by organized matter.  In the mammals, so close to ourselves, it is easily recognized in its different modalities: sexual passion, parental instinct, social solidarity, etc.  Farther off, that is to say lower down on the tree of life, analogies are more obscure until they become so faint as to be imperceptible.  But this is the place to repeat what I said earlier when we were discussing the ‘within of things’.  If there were no real internal propensity to unite, even at a prodigiously rudimentary level — indeed in the molecule itself — it would be physically impossible for love to appear higher up, with us, in ‘hominised’ form.  By rights, to be certain of its presence in ourselves, we should assume its presence, at least in an inchoate form, in everything that is.  And in fact if we look around us at the confluent ascent of consciousnesses, we see it is not lacking anywhere.  Plato felt this and has immortalized the idea in his Dialogues.  Later, with thinkers like Nicolas of Cusa, medieval philosophy returned technically to the same notion.  Driven by forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come to being.  This is no metaphor; and it is much more than poetry.  Whether as a force or a curvature, the universal gravity of bodies, so striking to us, is merely the reverse of shadow of that which really moves nature.  To perceive cosmic energy ‘at the fount’ we must, if there is a within of things, go down into the internal or radial zone of spiritual attractions.”

Chardin’s point is quite simple: at every level of material existence, there exists a principle of “love” — that is, a principle of an attraction to another that seeks to unite with the other to form a larger whole.  On the atomic level, sub-atomic particles have a tendency to join together to create atoms; atoms join together to create molecules; molecules to create compounds; living things to create new living things; living things group themselves into society; societies establish relationships with other societies, etc.  At the core of being itself seems to be a desire to come together to form something new that is more complex than what originally existed.

Moreover, if we take love as the core action of the material universe, then we begin to see that man evolves!  Love is the action from which we are born, and perfect love — found in God alone — is the action towards which the entire universe is moving and evolving.  Unlike an Aristotellian “Prime Mover,” we don’t believe in a God who simply sets the world in motion and then leaves, but rather a God who is, “Alpha and Omega…who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (Rev. 1:8).  All of us, and indeed all creation, is being drawn towards God, and evolving until we will finally be “home.”  And, indeed, our home is the love of God.  As St. Augustine says,

 “[Love] is the goal; that is why we run: we run toward it, and once we reach it, in it we shall find rest.”

As such, it seems fitting for Flores to try and illustrate the birth of the universe with a man and a woman, hands reaching towards each other, representing this fundamental property of all material reality.  They come forth from the universe, and by nature they seek to love, and in so doing they participate in the evolution of the universe towards Love Itself.

But, as an aside, we should be careful not to confuse this idea with Pantheism.  Yes, the whole universe is in motion, evolving towards God, but that doesn’t mean that we simply sink into some pantheistic whole; indeed, the opposite is true.  If to love is written into the fiber of our being — and that of all material beings — then it becomes our identity.  In short, we are most ourselves when we love others.  Love, being an action between two beings, cannot exist in some pantheistic whole where we all fade into one; on the contrary, it demands individuality in order for there to exist both lover and beloved.  As such, yes, we journey towards God, and we journey together towards God, but not to fade away into some faceless whole.  Instead, we journey towards a Communion, where all will share in the Beatific Vision of the face of Love Itself, and in that Communion we will be most perfectly ourselves, for we are most truly ourselves when we love.

One in Three
Furthermore, this sheds some light on why Christians must believe in a Trinitarian God.  If the basic concept of creation entails love between beings, a love that seeks to come together for the sake of creation, then God (as Creator of the universe) cannot be only one person.  For how can love exist if there is not another who is the object of love?  Rather, God must have multiplicity at some level; as the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox traditions teach, the Eternal Father and the Eternal Son are bound together in a dance of love, and the Holy Spirit is the love that flows between them.  The Father and the Son are both lovers and beloveds, since they have both existed for all eternity.

From one God, who is three persons because he is Love Itself, emerges the universe.  It is a universe where every being — from mankind down to the tiniest sub-atomic particle — has the desire to love and be loved written into its very nature.  And God, who is Love, teaches the universe how to dance, and as time passes, we become better dancers, living in the hope of one day being part of the dance of Love Itself…

 

Maristas Caminando: Pilgrimage, Gift, and Journey

A pilgrimage with the Mexican province of the Society of Mary — along with Marist Laity — to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City on June 18, 2016.

Is it fair to say that all of life is a pilgrimage, a journey into an unknown and foreign land, where the next step is not taken in certainty, but in the only slightly illuminated path of faith?

If we look to our common prayers and hymns with which we feed our spirituality, the answer would seem to be yes.  After all, in the “Hail, Holy Queen,” we pray, “Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy towards us, and after this, our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”  Perhaps that is a little too steeped in medieval spirituality of exile and suffering for us, but what about this hymn: “We are pilgrims on a journey, we are travelers on the road…”

If we are all pilgrims journeying towards unity with Christ, then we are all fellow travelers.  And, along the way, we’re pleased to encounter other fellow pilgrims; sometimes they’re our family, other times they’re lifelong friends, and sometimes they’re pilgrims whose paths cross with ours for but a brief moment.  Regardless, when we encounter someone during pilgrimage, our eyes are opened — if we allow them to be — to the grace and gift of God.  This is, I believe, one of the important themes in the Emmaus story (Lk. 24:13-35): two disciples are traveling on the road to Emmaus when a stranger joins them.  They begin to talk about Jesus’s death, and the stranger begins to reveal the meaning of the Paschal Mystery.  In the evening, they invite him to stay for supper, and as he blesses and breaks the bread, their eyes are opened, and they see that it is Christ who has been journeying with them.  “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” (Lk. 24:32)

This is the story of our lives; as we pass through our days, we encounter Christ hidden all around us, and our fellow pilgrims reveal Christ’s presence to us.  My name is Nik Rodewald, and I’m a seminarian for the USA Province of the Society of Mary (the Marists).  At present, I’m living in Toluca, Mexico, and am trying to learn Spanish, and I would like to take you with me on my pilgrimage of Marist formation.  My first year in the Society, mostly spent studying philosophy at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, was full of many blessings, and some darkness, and I would like to share those with you, but I also live in the hope that, through each other, we will come to see the grace of God in our lives a little bit better.  So please, feel free to comment and to share your own story, or shoot me an email.

I’ll see you on the road to Emmaus.