This year’s stewardship image was the result of prayer, collaboration with the Holy Spirit

Wichita artist E. Vincent Wood III works on this year’s stewardship image of The Good Samaritan. (Courtesy photo)

E. Vincent Wood III and Audrey Ronnfeldt contemplate and pray about the stewardship theme and image for a long time before recommendations are made.

“We’re in conversation almost monthly leading up to the concept for the year,” Wood said last week. “It’s usually just inklings and about mid-July things really get cooking. Audrey and I are talking, she’s talking with the bishop and Fr. Jirak…I just come in at the end. I’m happy to play my piece of the overall vision that comes out each year.”

Starting the process

This year Wood and Ronnfeldt were discussing various ideas but when they began focusing on the story of the Good Samaritan, Wood said, he immediately became excited.

“I could see paintings that I think would be dramatic, and I always, always like a little bit of drama in my artwork,” he said. “A million things kind of popped into my head.”

Another thought he had, Wood said, was how does Jesus end the parable? “Sure enough, we open the scripture and Jesus’ last question to the teacher of the law was: Who was a neighbor to this man? Of course, he answers, ‘The one who had mercy on him.’ And Jesus says, ‘Go and do likewise.’”

Sudden enlightenment

Upon reading Jesus’ admonition, Wood said both he and Ronnfeldt jerked upright and felt something like a bolt of lighting.

They understood the Holy Spirit was at work when Fr. John Jirak, pastor of Church of the Magdalen Parish in Wichita and Vicar of Evangelization, Discipleship, and Stewardship, came upon the same passage. He was looking at the Gospel for Year B and turned the page – to his surprise – to the story of the Good Samaritan. He previously had another Gospel verse in mind.

“That just cemented the kind of imagery almost instantly,” Wood said about his discussion with Ronnfeldt. “When I thought about how am I going to depict this, a lot things came to mind. I realized that I am the one beaten down by the side of the road and that it is Christ who came along and had compassion on me. I was absolutely lost and ruined and without help and someone had compassion on me…that narrative has a powerful story.”

He said the flip side of the story is Jesus is talking to the teachers of the law who are shocked by the parable.

The Samaritan ‘bomb’

“Not only does he say people like you walked by and didn’t help this guy, he then drops the Samaritan ‘bomb’ on them and says the guy you think is unclean, the person who you think his blood is not pure, the person you could not imagine associating with is the person who stops to help.”

We, too, may be shocked at finding out who has compassion, he said, and who are the people, groups, or religious affiliations that we might never imagine are truly helping someone.

“How loving are we? And are we going to see the humanness and the person in need? Are we going to truly go and do likewise, no matter who that might be?” he said. “Those are things that float around in my head when I’m making a painting, which you know doesn’t help necessarily make a composition or make paintings physically, that’s all the stuff that’s sort of the maybe the gas in the tank.”

‘Emotions of the Pieta’

Wood said he wanted to evoke the emotions of Michelangelo’s Pieta with this year’s stewardship painting.
“As an art historian, I also think about how can I be reaching back a little bit and pulling on the themes that are familiar to us all – images and imagery that we’re all that many of us have familiarity with and love,” he said.

Wood said he usually submits about three ideas to the stewardship team for consideration. “They’re all ones that I would paint, that I like for different reasons, but usually it’s the one which resonates with as many people as possible. This one I was very happy with and loved where it landed.”

The mock-ups are discussed and suggestions are made to help the message connect with the viewer, he said. “My goal in making these artworks is to stir the heart and to encourage those as they’re thinking about stewardship and what that means.”

Wood takes very little credit for his talent as an artist.

“My life has been literally a grace upon grace upon grace,” he said. “And an invitation after invitation by others who saw a thing in me that I didn’t see.”

God’s hand in Wood’s life

Wood said looking back he can see God’s hand working in his life, forming him with an ability, and putting him in a place where someone else would ask him for an oil painting or giving him grant money to study in Italy, or inviting him to making artwork for a gallery.

“Life has just been a series of invitations and tried to say yes to those as they’ve come. I can’t take a lot of credit for that. It’s mostly been outside of me that those opportunities have arisen, and most times it was even in spite of me.”