SLC event reinforces beauty’s role in attracting souls

Five bishops were present on the evening of Tuesday, Sept. 22, at the Spiritual Life Center in Bel Aire. 

Of course, one might say only four of those bishops were tangibly present, since Bishop Eugene Gerber, who shepherded the Diocese of Wichita from February 1983 to October 2001, passed on to his reward in 2018. 

But because the evening sought to celebrate the visual beauty Bishop Gerber strove to infuse into the SLC, one could argue that the SLC’s founding bishop was also present in a decidedly corporeal way.

During the evening’s culminating moment, in which an icon of St. John Henry Newman was unveiled to fill a temporary vacancy and yet again give the SLC a complete set of Doctors of the Church icons, the diocese’s current shepherd, Bishop Carl A. Kemme, made a point of preserving the artwork he was about to bless.

“Is it okay to get holy water on it?” he asked iconographer Mark Miller. Although Miller gave an OK, the bishop was decidedly conscientious about quickly wiping those droplets from the icon’s surface.

Along with encouraging attendees never to take the SLC for granted, Bishop Kemme also called on those present to cooperate with the art’s purpose as a connection to the divine. 

“Art elevates the mind and heart,” he said. “There’s also the invitation to converse with God and to use these sacred images as an invitation into deeper prayer, contemplation, and meditation.”

The other bishops present at the event – Archbishop Shawn McKnight of Kansas City, Kansas; Bishop John Brungardt of Dodge City; and Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, Nebraska – all had once been priests of the Diocese of Wichita ordained by Bishop Gerber.

Bishop Brungardt’s remarks centered on St. John Paul II’s Letter to Artists, and incorporated an apt personal example. He recalled the interval shortly after he was named a bishop but before he settled on an episcopal motto. 

Although he wanted to include the term “compassion,” he deliberated on how to do so until waking in the middle of the night thinking of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. 

Except it wasn’t, specifically, any scriptural turns of phrase echoing in his mind so much as the image of the father embracing the son as rendered onto canvas by Rembrandt. Thanks to that image, Bishop Brungardt said he chose as his motto the parable’s biblical description of the father as “filled with compassion.”

“Beauty imparts – really pushes us to – compassion,” the bishop said. 

Archbishop McKnight alluded to a variation on a well-known theme: that only after they are well into adulthood can children appreciate their parents’ wisdom. In his case, the archbishop said that as a young priest he did not fully appreciate Bishop Gerber’s vision for the SLC, which was rooted in a foundational teaching of the Second Vatican Council.

“The universal call to holiness is why we have the Spiritual Life Center – the understanding of the role of the laity in the life and mission of the Church meant they need to be spiritually and academically formed for their role … and carrying out the mission of the Church,” he said. “That is what the Spiritual Life Center is all about.”

Moreover, Bishop Conley told those assembled that Bishop Gerber understood a soul’s journey toward holiness often followed the tug of a transcendental property that tended to be more experienced than understood. 

“He really did think that beauty had an attraction that goes beyond reason that appeals to the imagination and to the heart,” Bishop Conley said. 

He went on to quote St. John Henry Newman shortly before the icon would be unveiled: “‘The heart is commonly reached, not through reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma; no man will be a martyr for a conclusion.’”