Close to a pilgrim’s road in southern Occitania, Santa Majestat has gazed down at weary pilgrims in the cool of Trinity Chapel for nigh on nine hundred years. As gentle radiance of Holy Trinity, his serene gaze has communicated his inexhaustible energies of kindly stillness without demanding from us what we were too tired to give. Instead, he just gives and goes on giving freely and generously from an endless heart of overflowing grace, imparting gifts of beauty and harmony down the centuries without reserve. Apocalypse in Trinity is not the cacophony of Armageddon but a gentle infusion of cumulative, expanding harmony, a wise fusion of beauty and truth. It is a transfusion of beauty that embraces the Good with Truth in balanced measure. To live in the light of this in-seeing gaze is to awaken to wisdom in her home of welcoming wonder.
The Apostle says that the whole creation groans, which the desert hears as creation eagerly yearning for the completeness of divine harmony to be revealed, not just to us but in us, as our participation in hallowing communion in Holy Trinity. The whole creation still groans as wisdom gives birth to beauty, divine-human cosmic harmony in ever greater depth and ever expanding scope. (See Rom 8: 19-22) Harmony in Christ is dynamic not static but his embrace is gentle not aggressive, as in the gaze of Santa Majestat. Christ embraces us with his gentle stillness as he lovingly questions our strain and stress, infusing the kindly energy of Holy Trinity as his Spirit proceeds from his Father to abide with him in us. His face reveals the unveiled face of hallowing Trinity, including us in this all-embracing grace of harmonious wisdom. Wisdom bears witness to the grace present in this gentle gaze, wisdom that awakened the uncreated, creative imagination of an unknown artist long ago, imparting to him the vision that guided his hand. For almost nine centuries, Santa Majestat has met us with his gentle gaze to heal our broken lives, infusing our hearts with transfiguring peace.
Wisdom’s harmonious witness conjoins with the gentle gaze of Santa Majestat, welcoming pilgrims from many lands in every age. Our whole-hearted co-operation with this harmonious unfolding is a humble self-emptying, welcoming all who come here into the wisdom of this wondrous gaze. Beauty saves and heals without rational proof being able to keep up with her wondrous dance of love. Impossible to calculate, she proves her dazzling worth by opening our hearts to harmonious spheres of ineffable beauty. Wisdom inspires prophecy that imparts beauty in icons so that prayer can assimilate beauty in transfigured lives. Santa Majestat gazes on, ineffably saying what cannot be said. But in the dark quiet of a Romanesque Church, dedicated to Holy Trinity, uncreated love is wondrously creative as transfiguring beauty overflows, extending wisdom’s welcome to life’s pilgrims as they come and go.