By Fr Hedwig Lewis SJ –
On Christmas Eve 2011, Timothy Schmalz, a Canadian sculptor was at the Friends of the Crèche international art show in Toronto where he featured his nativity piece “Joy to the World”. That evening, while on his way to a restaurant for dinner, he found the streets filled with Christmas shoppers and the sidewalk crammed with homeless people. “I was totally used to stepping over people,” Schmalz said. “You’re not aware they are human beings. They become obstacles in the urban environment and you lose a spiritual connection to them. They become inert, an inconvenience.”
However, his attention was drawn to a homeless person wrapped up in a sleeping bag. All he could see was a mass of cloth lying still on the floor. “My instinctive thought was, that is Jesus Christ. I just saw Jesus,” he said in an interview. “Something about this homeless person just jolted me.”
Schmalz has created religious artwork for more than two decades. Much of the Jesus art he had been commissioned to do wanted a Jesus who looked European, with shoulder-length “perfectly blow-dried hair and a symmetrical face. Jesus in those works might be pierced and bloodied, but his body is beautiful, reflecting the concept that inner holiness takes an outward form.”
The Christmas Eve experience changed all that for Schmalz. “Jesus hung out with the marginalized,” he said. “He was with the prostitutes and beggars.” Schmalz visualized a sculpture that would capture the inspiration of the moment: the now famous Homeless Jesus. The life-size bronze sculpture depicts Jesus as a homeless outcast, sleeping on a bench. The figure is shrouded in a blanket, with its face barely visible. But the feet which are exposed are pierced, leading viewers to think of crucifixion wounds. Schmalz intentionally left room on the end of the bench for a passer-by to sit next to the sleeping Jesus. He considers his sculpture “a visual sermon”. Schmalz says his vision of Homeless Jesus was inspired by the passage in the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus tells his followers that whenever they help a person in need – “the least of my brothers and sisters” – they do it to him.
Schmalz presented Pope Francis with a scale model of his statue at an audience in November 2013 in the Vatican. The Pope stopped, laid a hand on the statue, closed his eyes, and prayed. He told Schmalz that he thought it was a wonderful representation of Jesus.
Pope Francis has shown special concern for the homeless. Last February he asked that showers be set up for homeless people under the colonnade of St Peter’s Square. The Vatican’s charity office began offering haircuts and shaves by professional volunteers, as part of the shower service. In March, the pope invited some 150 mostly homeless people to a private viewing of the Vatican museums and the Sistine Chapel. In June, he commissioned a shelter to be built for the homeless on Via Penitenzieri, just a few steps away from the Vatican walls. On his recent visit to the US, Pope Francis shared lunch with the homeless, and reminded them that “the Son of God came into this world as a homeless person.”
Last September, we heard Pope Francis’ clarion call (in view of Year of Mercy): “Faced with the tragedy of tens of thousands of refugees are fleeing death by war and by hunger… The Gospel calls us to be neighbours to the smallest and most abandoned… May every parish, every religious community, every monastery, every sanctuary in Europe take in one refugee family.” Each of the two parishes in the Vatican welcomed a refugee family.
During the midday Angelus prayer at St Peter’s Square in December 2014, Pope Francis noticed a group of government protesters holding aloft a banner that read “The poor cannot wait”. He read the statement out loud and remarked, “It makes me think how Jesus was born in a stable, not a house.”
When you gaze at the Infant Jesus in the crib at Christmas, will he say to you: “Come, you blessed of my Father. I was hungry and you gave me food, thirsty and you gave me drink, naked and you clothed me, sick and you took care of me”?
Are you ready to make a firm “Christmas resolution” – to do something (little or much) for the homeless and poor? Merry Christmas!
Fr Hedwig Lewis SJ is the author of “Christmas by Candlelight”. Published by [email protected]. This article has been retrieved from the author’s Christmas archive – The New Leader, 2015.