पिएता

Have you ever seen Michelangelo's Pietà?
Most likely the answer is yes.

I, however, had not. I was sitting in my GARTH class, eyes glazed over as we went through Leonardo's sketches and inventions and last supper and his Mona, all about Pope Julius II and all the extravagance he added to Rome, Michelangelo's David, etc. I find art history very interesting in itself, but my mind is prone to wander even when I really would rather it wouldn't.
Anyway my professor flashes Pietà on one of the screens and starts talking about Michelangelo's work not really being quite as developed yet. On the other screen is a detailed image of the sculpture- one staring directly into Christ's face.
I can't really say what exactly it was, but I just start crying. My throat tightens, and I'm not listening anymore, and the tears just sort of roll out of my eyes.
Am I a dramatic person? ...I've been told this before, so maybe yes. But I really didn't want to be crying. I just was, silently. Nobody else was crying and nobody else noticed I was.
I can't even really say what exactly it was, but it was something like-
there was too much beauty in that delicate moment caught in painstaking, hard, and less-than-malleable marble stone. It was the eternal-youth in Mary's face as she held her son's aged, frail, wiry body with so much maternal care- it brought to my attention their dynamic relationship: Mary the mother, Jesus her son- yet also her Father. Also, the peace on Christ's face, his complete acceptance of his death for what? For me to sit in an Art History class? So maybe that's it. I wasn't crying for him, I was crying for me- for my complete lack of urgent responsiveness to his great gift to the World...

for what it's worth.
Here it is: