Stations of the Cross, Isaiah 53:3 Wall Art

Veronica and the cross

Jesus has stopped under the weight of a rough timber cross that rests on his right shoulder. He wears an ivory robe and a long red mantle, bare feet in sandals on a dusty track. His eyes are closed as a kneeling woman lifts a white cloth to his face with both hands. She wears a cream veil, a blue dress and a rust colored shawl, and looks up at him with great tenderness.

Off to the left, faded almost to gray, a small group of Roman soldiers in crested helmets waits with a spear raised. They are painted so lightly that they seem to belong to another plane, which keeps the attention on the two figures in front. Above, in brown lettering: “He is despised and rejected of men”, Isaiah 53:3.

Who is the servant in Isaiah 53?

Isaiah 53 belongs to a passage that starts at the end of chapter 52 and is known as the fourth Servant Song. The King James text of verse 3 continues: “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” The speakers are onlookers who at first turn away from a suffering figure, then realize he was bearing their griefs.

Jewish tradition has often read the servant as the people of Israel, suffering among the nations. From the earliest days, Christians have read the song as a portrait of Jesus. In Acts 8, Philip meets an Ethiopian official reading this very chapter in his chariot and explains it to him in that light. Handel later gave the words of verse 3 to one of the longest and most sorrowful arias of Messiah.

Veronica herself does not appear in the Gospels. Luke mentions women of Jerusalem who wept as Jesus passed, and a later tradition gave a name to one who stepped forward to wipe his face, adding that the cloth kept the imprint of his features. Her gesture is the Sixth Station of the Cross, the devotion in which Catholics walk through fourteen moments of the Passion, especially on the Fridays of Lent.

For Lent, Good Friday and a prayer corner

This is a solemn painting, best placed where it can be looked at quietly: a home altar, a prayer corner, a parish office or a religious education classroom. Many Catholic families bring such an image out during Lent and Holy Week. It can also be offered at a baptism to someone drawn to the Passion, or to a friend going through a season of rejection.