At times the Christian metaphor feels like, in Weil's words, affliction and humiliation.
There's so much I do not understand.
INTRODUCTION
“Kenosis” refers to a way of entering the mystery of Christ that is
anchored into a contemplation of the descending movement leading
from God’s glory to Jesus’ coming into the world, then from Incarnation
to the death on a cross, and from the Cross to the depths of the
underworld. The text of reference is of course a passage of the letter to
the Philippians that has become central to all Christological exegeses
(Phil 2: 7-11). Commentators of the Pauline writings have often noted
that this text does not stand as a mere theological proclamation but
comes after an exhortation to show to each other “the feelings that were
in Christ Jesus”: “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in
Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not
regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself,
taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of
men.”(Phil. 2:4-7) In other words, Kenosis, before being constructed as
a concept, is first a lived experience the one of feeling and sharing the
humility of Christ. Some artistic masterworks express in a special way
such lived spiritual experience. The “Mass in B moll” of J.S. Bach
comes to mind, with the melodic and rhythmic continuity which links
into one and the same piece the “Et incarnatus” and the “Crucifxus.” The
“last breath” on which the “Crucifixus” finishes is followed—in one of
the most startling contrasts offered by music—by the vital dynamics of
the “Et resurrexit.” This part of the “Credo” of Bach’s Mass can
certainly be read as a musical meditation on the Kenosis Hymn.
... ... ...
CONCLUSION
Simone Weil’s thinking on affliction (malheur) cannot be
separated from her stress on humiliation. Particularly noteworthy is her
often-repeated assertion that the experience of humiliation is associated
with the enactment of truth—only those people who are being forcibly
deprived of human dignity are capable of telling the truth, for only they
understand both the roots of human condition and the mechanisms on
which social reality relies for its existence. Weil is certainly one of the
thinkers who has renewed the understanding of the lived experience of
kenosis, and this is certainly through endeavors similar to hers that we
can integrate the lived experience of individuals and communities into
the Christology found in the Philippians, giving it new meaning for our
time.
The works of Chinese artists as well as the stories told by Chinese
Christians are all part of such Christological deepening. By essence,
these works and stories cannot be fully articulated, narrated and
analyzed: they keep open within themselves the wound, the Void that
the experience of affliction and humiliation digs into the one subjected
26 See notably ibid., pp. 124sq.
27 Ibid., p. 168.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid., p. 209.Humility and Humiliation in Modern Chinese Painting 101
to it. Works and words are windows on something that remains
somehow unspeakable. The fragments of testimonies emerging from
such kenotic experiences are made much more precious when one
realizes the depths from which, against all odds, they have been
eventually uttered.
School of Philosophy
Fudan University
Shanghai, China
CHAPTER V
HUMILITY AND HUMILIATION: KENOTIC EXPERIENCE IN MODERN CHINESE PAINTING,
AND IN THE HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE OF CHINESE CHRISTIANS
BENOIT VERMANDER, SJ
in Chinese Spirituality & Christian Communities
A Kenotic Perspective
Chinese Philosophical Studies, XXXI
Christian Philosophical Studies, XVII
Edited by
Vincent Shen 2015, https://www.crvp.org/publications/Series-VIII/17-Disjunctions-shen.pdf
Self-emptying, words easily pronounced, nevertheless remain unspeakable across the millennia from old villages in what has come to be called 'the holy land.'
Could it have been that this one man contained all of existence in his being? Emptied it. Then found a way to resurrect, rehabilitate, reincarnate into a new essence of what it means to-be-here?
