Studying Grandpa’s elaborate remembrance of Christ’s passion and death.
For years it sat atop my grandfather’s dresser in his Bronx house on East 236th Street, haunting and a bit of a misfit: The crucifix elaborate, essentially a story, chockablock with symbols of Christ’s hours of passion and torment, while its deeply reserved possessor—I called him "Grapes”—was not known for displays of religiosity or sermons (except for those directed at the street urchins making too much noise). Make no mistake: He was a good man who went to church. But he was overtly religious about only one thing: The New York Mets.
And yet he had this ornate crucifix, and it fascinated the little boy. Half a century later, it still does. Why did he have it? Displayed next to an ancient photo of his mother and another of his sisters, it seemed to have already been around for a long time. No one is sure of its origin (no one ever asked!), so we guessed It might have been a wedding present, or maybe even the crucifix of his own parents, Italian immigrants who came to lower Manhattan and then The Bronx to raise ten children.
Most crucifixes are wall-mounted, often adorned with palms, often watching over the parental bed. My grandfather’s was like a museum piece. With faux gold effects (it remains shiny and untarnished), it is a slice of Golgotha, the cross bearing the nailed and dead Christ atop a mound of brass-ish land, that atop a wooden base—felt-topped—on three rough squat legs.
The felt was there for a reason: to cushion the glass silo (unscratched by the decades—how did that not break in various moves?) that contained the entire production. The silo gave it an air of treasure—for aren’t things beautiful and rare contained in glass?.
Grandpa’s Crucifix came into my possession after spending decades in his own, and then, when Gran went into nursing care, it passed into my mother’s possession, and was s sentry in her room for twenty years. And now that she has moved into such care herself, it has come into mine, although I believe I am only its steward, not its owner.
It evokes complex feelings—one wants to study it, deeply curious, while such investigating calls to mind the pain of the Passion. It stops short of anything to do with Resurrection.
If a crucifix can be festooned, this one is, with a dozen-plus symbols. At the base of the cross, on Jesus’s right, is a chicken on a pillar. Or so thought the little boy. It is a rooster, a cock—the thing which thrice crowed to punctuate Peter’s denial of Christ. And that is a pillar—representing the one on which Jesus was brutally scourged. Balancing this on the left is a garment, topped by dice: The garment for which the Roman soldiers cast lots.
Hanging from the arms of the cross is the scourging whip and what seems to be a lantern—for that I cannot figure its reason. Possibly it signifies the light used by the crowd finding Jesus in Gethsemane, or maybe it is not so much a lantern as a container (say, for 30 pieces of silver). Atop the arms, on the Lord’s right, is a cup—surely the Holy Grail used at The Last Supper. To the left is a jug. Maybe this contained the vinegar given to Jesus after he uttered, “I thirst.”
Or maybe it is a reference to the act that commenced the Passion, from Luke 22: “And he said unto them, Behold, when ye are entered into the city, there shall a man meet you, bearing a pitcher of water; follow him into the house where he entereth in.”
At the cross’s base is a skull, and atop that, but below the nailed feet of the Lord, Is an X formed by a sword and what seems to be a club, From Matthew 26: “Just then, while Jesus was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve apostles, arrived. A large crowd carrying swords and clubs was with him.” And at the cross’s top is the sign, INRI: Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum.
Behind the cross is a moveable ladder, its legs able to fit into two holes—less a symbol than a necessary tool to remove Christ when he had died. Beside it, also behind the cross, also able to fit into two holes on this display’s version of the Place of the Skulls, are four items united in an X, the spear used to pierce Jesus’s side matched with another long and thin item: The stick on the end of which was affixed a sponge. From Matthew: “‘He’s calling Elijah.’ One of the men ran at once, took a sponge, and soaked it in some vinegar. Then he put it on a stick and offered Jesus a drink. The others said, ‘Leave him alone! Let’s see if Elijah comes to save him.’” At their center—providing an unintended faintly Communist whiff—are a hammer, to nail Jesus, and pliers, to remove them upon His death.
Does my grandfather’s crucifix evoke some culture? It seems not Italian, which makes it odd for an Italian to own. Could it be from a Polish or German or Croatian tradition?—not that I would not want to assign this thing of deserved fascination to a particular people. In part because, well, it is just not beautiful. Not that a crucifix should be “beautiful”—but I have seem many that are majestic, and worthy of being called art.
That does not diminish the purpose and consequence of this item. Maybe the facts that it is thick with symbols, with details (the three dice add up to ten), and housed under glass—oh yes, and its “subject matter”—and the additional fact that it evokes a response (“That’s kind of cool” or “I’ve never seen anything like that before . . .”), and the ensuing, unavoidable curiosity that seeks to fit the symbols with their role in the Passion and Crucifixion of Jesus, show that even in its Poor Man’s Michelangelo presentation, Grandpa’s Crucifix has been worth preserving, and that it tells quite well, even in laminated metal, its part of The Greatest Story Ever Told.
This being Good Friday, Christians might do well to reflect on this religious item, or any crucifix in their vicinity, and see where it takes the heart and the soul.
