01-04-2007 - Traces, n. 4 NewWorld From Pagan Tradition to Christian Art by Luca Grillo “Judge everything and keep what is valuable.” Following St. Paul’s invitation, early Christians understood and transformed the pagan culture according to their faith in Christ. The theme and imagery of fatherhood provide an example of this metanoia (conversion). In the narration of the fall of Troy, Virgil portrays the ideal Roman family. As the city is in flames, Aeneas wants to die fighting the Greeks but, instead, he follows the will of the gods and flees, holding his son Ascanius by the hand and carrying his father Anchises on his shoulders. While Aeneas’ goddess-mother, Venus, covers him with a thick cloud, his father hastens him to the shore. Thus, while the mother protects her son, the father launches him into a new adventure. Aeneas is a good son to Anchises and a good father to Ascanius, and his flight preserves the family line. Christians appreciated this scene, and its most famous representation, Raphael’s fresco, is found in the Vatican. Early Christian art, as documented in the catacombs, borrowed also another image to express fatherhood, that of the Good Shepherd. In pagan iconography, a young man carrying a sheep on his shoulders represents Mercury leading a soul into Hades. Borrowing this motif, the Christians depicted both Christ leading the soul into heaven and the parable of the good shepherd rescuing the lost sheep. Some details exemplify the implications of the Christian metanoia. Christ’s and the sheep’s hair are one and the same, to indicate the same substance. God-made-man shares the human condition and this–His Incarnation–leads us to heaven. Two or more sheep stay next to the Good Shepherd as a sign of the Church, those whom Christ has chosen and through whom He will redeem the world. In other words, the Church born of Christ continues His presence in history. The new understanding of fatherhood is thus based on Christ, the Son of the Father, who generates a new people and bridges the gap between us and God: “Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father. …As the Father loves Me, so I also love you. …I have called you friends because I have told you everything I have heard from My Father” (Jn 14:9; 15:9-15). Virgil’s dream to have the son of a god (Venus) founding a new people–the Romans–seems a prophecy of Christianity. For the Christians, however, fatherhood does not depend upon personal strength, as for the hero Aeneas, but on the power of Christ: “Whoever remains in Me and I in him will bear much fruit” (Jn 15:5). “No one generates unless he is generated” (Msgr. Giussani). The awareness that one’s fatherhood comes from God the Father invites one to ask for His Son’s intercession. Accordingly, in the catacombs, the most attested figure associated with the Good Shepherd is that of the orans, a person in the act of praying. An inscription found in the catacomb of Pontianus (early 4th century) witnesses to this faith in Christ, the way to the Father: “Eutychius, the father, [has erected] this gravestone to his sweetest little son; the child who lived one year, two months, and four days, the servant of God.” Next to this inscription there is a carved fish, an acrostic for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, the Savior,” reminding all that it is Christ, the Son of the Father, who generates, who makes us fathers and saves us and those who become our children. In Christ, the family line from God the Father to His Church is preserved.