A Comparison:
Eric's Crucifixion series and
"The Passion of the Christ"

The following is adapted from a portion of a talk given by Dr. George C. Anderson on Good Friday, April 9, 2004, for the Shenandoah Lunch Group in Roanoke, Virginia.  The talk compared his paintings with the movie, "The Passion of the Christ."

          The movie of "The Passion of the Christ" is the hot topic these days.  The movie presents a literal, graphic, portrayal of Christ’s physical suffering and has drawn the greater public’s attention to the cross and to the sins of those who crucified Jesus. 

Eric Fitzpatrick gives another consideration of the cross that is less literal, leaving much more to the imagination than Gibson’s film does.  I am certain that Gibson’s film speaks more directly to some people, but for others- and I’m one of them- a less literal considerations is more personally devastating, inspiring, meaningful and more instructive theologically.

Eric painted these crucifixion scenes during the death of his father, Judge Fitzpatrick.  Eric did not study pictures of Golgotha or do any historical research.  These paintings are not exterior, literal portrayals of the crucifixion of Jesus, but interior expressions of Eric’s own suffering. 

He began with an Atlas theme, a man bending under the weight of the world.  The weight of death was bearing down on his father and on Eric himself.  At least, Eric thought he was beginning with an Atlas theme.  When he finished the painting, what he saw was a crucifixion. 

          Eric stuck with that theme as he continued to paint his way through his confusion, pain and helplessness in the face of this father’s suffering and dying.  It is the Christian’s claim that in Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, the powers of sin and death were defeated.  It is not the sin-caused suffering that is here displayed as it was in the movie, but another aspect of the atonement, and that is God’s complete identification with us in our suffering.  It would be too much to say that Eric was expressing his confident faith in painting these pictures because he was addressing the inevitability of death, and the emotional and spiritual pain he was experiencing- the helplessness he was experiencing- in watching someone he loved die.  I would say, sort of like Mary watching Jesus in the movie, except that you can see from the darkness and violent flashes of the early paintings that Eric wasn’t as understanding or as accepting as Mary was in Gibson’s movie.  You can see his frustration and anger that a power over which he had no control was in control of his father’s body.

          But I don’t think it is too much to say that Eric’s paintings became his own sermons to himself.  I think that the cross more and more began to affirm that God was with the Judge right into the heart of night, and right to the center of Eric’s own cry, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned my father and me.  And the hopefulness that begins to show at the end of the series with more light and softer colors, when death begins to change its face from that of an enemy to a friend, shows Eric’s growing sense that God is seeing the Judge not only through, but also beyond, his death.  And maybe God was doing that for Eric too, letting him know that he will be with Eric beyond his father’s and his own deaths.  That’s incarnational love being proclaimed.

          I think that those who watch Gibson’s movie are drawn into Christ’s physical suffering.  These paintings help draw interior suffering out of those who see them.  And the constant presence of the cross lets you know that God knows the pain, shares it, and will bear it with you until you get through the valley to the light.

Epilogue:

          I asked Eric Fitzpatrick to attend the luncheon with me and have his paintings on display.  Eric answered questions about the paintings after the talk.  Later, Eric reminded me that it was at the conclusion of the Good Friday service in 2000 that he informed me of his father’s diagnosis.  Between that Good Friday and this, he had produced the paintings and had gone from someone overwhelmed with grief to someone able to help others express theirs.  Perhaps the different shadings of that Good Friday and this one four years later, reflect the different shadings one can see through the progression of the paintings themselves.