Angels of Love and Sorrow

I didn’t know, when I started my three-post “Keith Carter and the Cloud of Mercy,” how many new reasons we would have now, in this pandemic, to pray for mercy. Our perilous state, and our pressing need for charity of all kinds, have made me think of a photograph from my “Marion under the Moon” series: “Angels of Love and Sorrow.”

These figures occupy the doorway of a mausoleum shaped like a pyramid, in Hartford, Connecticut. It’s central to my feeling about the image that the two angels — the more evidently supernatural one and the human one — are joined in mutual feelings of sorrow and need, love and mercy. The angel carved in stone shows more obvious pain and damage, and her wings and her look of supplication are visible to us, but the human woman also has visible grace, and her position and gesture express both her receiving and her giving of comfort.

I hope that we’ll all be ready and able to act with reciprocal patience and prayer, sympathy and mercy, as we struggle to get through this frightening time. (As for me, I confess that my wife, my angel-editor, has had to keep me from writing angry comments about people who may have made all this worse than it needed to be.)

Thank God for all the health workers trying to save us, for all those risking their lives for the lives of us needy strangers, for all the delivery and other workers who maintain our lifelines while we try to protect our health and the health of the people we love. (And my thanks to the photographers and arts organizations who’ve offered videos and online exhibitions to help our minds and souls to travel, while we sit in our little caves, waiting for this danger to pass.)

34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 25.