Françoise Rollin rscj Courtesy of Romanes.com Courtesy of Romanes.com Courtesy of Romanes.com Courtesy of Romanes.com Courtesy of Romanes.com Courtesy of Romanes.com

Leading people to experience God through the beauty of art

My work with art has its roots in a personal experience. And what I've discovered about God urges me to tell others too.

My experience:
10 years of deep spiritual crisis, but at last there was light at the end of the tunnel. It shone on the façade of Vézelay cathedral and its sculptured message of the good news of salvation: God's plan to gather up all things into Christ. (Eph.1:10)

Years of distaste for prayer during which God gave me the grace to discover little by little another way of praying through art.

But on the other hand, I no longer found myself really in harmony with the RSCJ way of praying, and so I had doubts about my place in the congregation.

And it was the Constitutions of 82 which gave me the light, in the chapter on prayer:
"we adopt forms of prayer which help us
to grow in faith, hope and love."
"Each religious finds her own rhythm of prayer and will decide how best she is to be faithful
to what Christ asks of her and of the Society."

That experience has been transformed into an urgent need for me to pass on to others my discovery of the meaning of life, through sacred art and the message that artists transmit to us.

My field of action
I have been able to develop it a great deal since I ceased to be involved in the provincial finances, and now I can give myself over to it entirely.
It is unfolding in two directions:

Helping others to discover sacred art and the message it transmits
First of all through Church organisations. (I don't have my own little association: the Society asks us to work in conjunction with already existing associations.)

There are the courses I give at the Catholic University

• the sessions and Week-end that I give in Jesuit centres, especially le Chatelard,
• pastoral work with tourists in several dioceses: courses, guided tours,
• visits to Lyons cathedral with school children,
• training catechists to make use of art in their teaching,
• sessions with congregations or other religious bodies.

Often there is a single meeting with a specific purpose, with associations, Christian or otherwise: lectures, guided tours, visits to churches.

Teaching people how to pray with a work of art
I give weekends of formation in prayer with Romanesque art, times of prayer with art during Holy Week, retreats based on Vézelay, and even sessions with RSCJ.

All these activities have another side to them - they make inner demands on me. I have to internalise the work of art myself, to pray with it, to let myself be moulded by a contemplation that helps me to seek for God. I can't speak about a work of art unless it holds life and meaning for me.

What am I trying to do in these activities?

I am trying to to show the message of medieval art: visible beauty is a path along which we discover the invisible Beauty, God.

• to to show that sacred art, especially Romanesque art, reveals to us that life has meaning: that God loves us, became incarnate in his Son and wants to gather us into what the Apocalypse calls the heavenly Jerusalem.
• to to introduce people to a form of contemplative prayer which is itself an introduction to the Gospel message.

The thing I find hardest is taking part in secular groups where I have to remain neutral in a domain that is far from being so.

It is always the Constitutions that point me back to my mission as an educator: to have "a concern for the growth of the whole person" and a desire - that people become ever more aware of truth, of love and of freedom - that they discover the significance of their lives, and devote themselves to others.

How do I try to carry out my mission as an educator?

Teaching history of art as such doesn't interest me: there are books to help you to look at or analyse sacred art, but what you don't learn from books or from university studies, nor yet from official guides, is the meaning of the art. I try to help people to discover that meaning.

My past as a teacher is a great help, as is the teaching method I discovered in the CASA Association (Community of welcome to antique sites: an association of guides to Christian monuments): starting from where people are; giving them the historical, sociological, cultural and artistic elements they need to understand the work of art; then helping them to discover, as far as possible for themselves, the spiritual dimension of the work, which points us back to ourselves and our approach to life.

I work with a group called "Care for Tourists in Lyons". They take as their motto: "building oneself up through beauty". Whatever I'm doing, I try to make that motto my own.

A work of art can give us an overwhelming feeling of wholeness, of perfection, of perfect fulfilment; we understand that an important event has just taken place, and that from now on nothing will ever be the same. We are wrapped round with happiness and real joy. I am moulded by what I perceive as beautiful, which arouses emotion in me; it makes me a better person, and helps me to grow, in other words, it builds me up.

If I can share that emotion, the result will be to impregnate in me, more deeply than ever, the message received through this perception of the beautiful.

I try to make this message identical with the Good News of Christ's love, giving meaning to our life.