REFLECTIONS ON THE CROSS

My posting on the internet, via www.blaisdonbroherhood.info, stating that Liz Perry is researching sources for a book on Blaisdon, and is calling for information on the provenance and period when the Cross depicting the crucified Christ was erected brought no response. Even so, I found myself in a quiet corner of time composing this speculative reflection.

The prominent Cross is positioned directly opposite the Blaisdon village War Memorial commemorating the service and sacrifice of the Blaisdon villagers who went to fight in the two Great Wars (1914-1918) and (1939-1945) never to return. The names of four Salesian School Old Boys, who lost their lives in The Second World War, are inscribed on the Memorial plinth. The Calvary was placed overlooking The Memorial by the Salesians sometime in the 1930s. They arrived in Blaisdon Hall in 1935 and erected a similar Calvary in the grounds up at The Hall. The one beside The Lodge is a figure of suffering that is in complete contrast to the plain stone cross it faces. There was a feeling among the religiously-minded of that time that a cross, without the replica of the crucified Christ upon it, implied that the salvation and redemptive presence was absent from the conflict and its subsequent stone symbolic commemoration. War poets often invoked the image of Christ on The Cross:

THE WAYSIDE CALVARY

Now with the full year Memory holds her tryst
Heavy with such a tale of bitter loss
As never Earth has suffered since the Christ
Hung for us on the Cross.

If God, O Kaiser, makes the vision plain:
Gives you on some lone Calvary to see
The Man of Sorrows Who endured the pain
And died to set us free --

How will you face beneath its Crown of thorn
That Figure stark against the smoking skies,
The Arms outstretched, the Sacred Head forlorn
And those reproachful Eyes?

How dare confront the false quest with the true
Or think what gulfs between the ideals lie
Of Him Who died that men might live -- and you
Who live that men may die.

Ah, turn your eyes away: He reads your heart;
Pass on and, having done your work abhorred,
Join hands with Judas in his place apart,
You who betrayed your Lord.

OWEN SEAMAN.

Iron and irony inspired Wilfred Owen in his poem Soldier's Dream

" I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears;
And caused a stoppage in all bolts;
And buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts;
And rusted every bayonet with His tears."

But this dreamed of intervention is dashed in the concluding stanza:

"And there were no more bombs, of ours or Theirs,
Not even an old flint-lock, nor even a pikel.
But God was vexed, and gave all power to Michael;
And when I woke he'd seen to our repairs."

There is another aspect to this need to contrast the image of human suffering with an empty cross. As a boy in the 1950's, I remember that someone said the Cross had come from Italy. A prominent Salesian in that pioneering group who occupied Blaisdon Hall was Father Alberto Carrette SDB. Coming from Italy, his awareness of the iconography of Christ's suffering as portrayed in religious art could well have been an influence on how the figure on the cross was chosen and decided upon. The great artists of the Renaissance vied with each other to show the extremes of the crucified Christ's suffering. This continued into the extravagant imagery of the Baroque and Rococo period which never eclipsed the agony represented in The Grunewalde Cross (1515). It is not unreasonable to suppose that the Salesians of that time wanted a "Catholic" image to contrast the "Protestant" representation.

What does it matter? What matters is that the Calvary became an abiding presence in that sanctified place and a lasting image. It was even renovated by the new owner of Blaisdon Hall - a layman of no particular religious persuasion. More importantly, it matters because as you look up to the present day Cross and, depending upon the angle of vision, you can see St. Michael's church beyond on a rising aspect. In those reflective moments the true purpose of the Calvary is achieved: it inspires thoughts that are not only poetic but spiritual.

Tony Brady 11th November 2009