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texaspanda
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I guess I am going to come off sounding racist when I say this, but so be it. I don’t understand this is such a big deal. Jesus wasn’t hispanic. He wasn’t black. He wasn’t even white. He was a Jewish man born of a middle eastern country. Why not worship for what he is and not what a race or community wants him to be?
Incarnate Word to unveil Hispanic Jesus
Web Posted: 10/12/2007 11:59 PM CDT
J. Michael Parker
Express-News
All his life, Raul Juarez has seen Jesus Christ the same way. Portrayed either with a supplicating gaze or in torment on the cross, Christ always has been a Caucasian man.
But in the spring of 2006, as he supervised the renovations of the Chapel of the Incarnate Word, Juarez set his eyes upon something that shocked him: a different image of Jesus, one that shared his brown skin and black hair. Shipped in from Italy to be the chapel’s centerpiece, the 10-foot-tall statue of Christ was unmistakably Hispanic.
Hoisted last week and expected to be unveiled Sunday at an 11 a.m. Mass marking the completion of the chapel’s nearly $5 million renovation project, the city’s first Hispanic Jesus has taken its place above the chapel’s altar and — even before its official unveiling — in the hearts of the faithful.
“I never thought about what Jesus looked like before this. It’s like I’m looking at myself,” Juarez exclaimed of the 500-pound likeness. “My wife doesn’t even believe it has brown skin. She says, ‘Every time we’ve seen a figure of Jesus, it’s always been white.’ I told her, ‘Just wait until Sunday and you’ll see.’”
The new face of Jesus, however, wasn’t meant merely for the city’s Hispanics to have a Jesus that looks more like them, although it was designed to represent the majority of people served by the ministry of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word.
Christ’s skin color and race instead are meant to symbolize a deeper issue that few Christians appear to contemplate when they confront representations of Jesus — specifically the impoverished lives of many Hispanics, said Sister Walter Maher, who headed the chapel renovation project.
Maher said the point of the Hispanic Jesus is about questioning an uneven distribution of wealth. Signs of that distribution are all around the world and in San Antonio, she said, so depicting Jesus as a Hispanic wasn’t a difficult decision.
…
So the colonized people inherited the cultural images of a Caucasian Jesus, Mary and the saints that were popular in those cultures.
White also showed a series of postcard-size pictures of different Gospel stories. One shows Satan tempting Jesus in the desert, and both are black. Another shows the Good Shepherd and a third, the Prodigal Son being greeted by his father. All are in African settings.
“That’s a comparatively new manifestation in Africa, because for the most part, the Christian faith was brought to Africans by white European missionaries, whose artistic depictions of Jesus were European,” she said.
Sister Martha Ann Kirk, a member of the Incarnate Word congregation, found an image of Jesus with a compelling message during a 2006 visit to Cambodia. Found in a religious souvenir shop, it had no ethnic features. It just was a small, flat, wooden crucifix with one defining characteristic: The Jesus figure had a stump for the right leg.
…
“Most Americans have no concept of what the historical Jesus looked like. People read their own cultures onto Jesus, and after several centuries, a Western European Jesus has become ‘normal’ to us. But the blue-eyed, brown-haired Caucasian Jesus is not what the historical Jesus looked like,” Mahan said.
Elizondo said it can be conjectured that Jesus was a Middle Easterner who was often exposed to the sun.
“He was probably dark-skinned, but nobody really knows,” Elizondo said. “But that’s the beauty of it. That’s why people can create mental images of him so that in some way they can see themselves in Jesus and Jesus in themselves.”
… rest of the article
link
Incarnate Word to unveil Hispanic Jesus
Web Posted: 10/12/2007 11:59 PM CDT
J. Michael Parker
Express-News
All his life, Raul Juarez has seen Jesus Christ the same way. Portrayed either with a supplicating gaze or in torment on the cross, Christ always has been a Caucasian man.
But in the spring of 2006, as he supervised the renovations of the Chapel of the Incarnate Word, Juarez set his eyes upon something that shocked him: a different image of Jesus, one that shared his brown skin and black hair. Shipped in from Italy to be the chapel’s centerpiece, the 10-foot-tall statue of Christ was unmistakably Hispanic.
Hoisted last week and expected to be unveiled Sunday at an 11 a.m. Mass marking the completion of the chapel’s nearly $5 million renovation project, the city’s first Hispanic Jesus has taken its place above the chapel’s altar and — even before its official unveiling — in the hearts of the faithful.
“I never thought about what Jesus looked like before this. It’s like I’m looking at myself,” Juarez exclaimed of the 500-pound likeness. “My wife doesn’t even believe it has brown skin. She says, ‘Every time we’ve seen a figure of Jesus, it’s always been white.’ I told her, ‘Just wait until Sunday and you’ll see.’”
The new face of Jesus, however, wasn’t meant merely for the city’s Hispanics to have a Jesus that looks more like them, although it was designed to represent the majority of people served by the ministry of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word.
Christ’s skin color and race instead are meant to symbolize a deeper issue that few Christians appear to contemplate when they confront representations of Jesus — specifically the impoverished lives of many Hispanics, said Sister Walter Maher, who headed the chapel renovation project.
Maher said the point of the Hispanic Jesus is about questioning an uneven distribution of wealth. Signs of that distribution are all around the world and in San Antonio, she said, so depicting Jesus as a Hispanic wasn’t a difficult decision.
…
So the colonized people inherited the cultural images of a Caucasian Jesus, Mary and the saints that were popular in those cultures.
White also showed a series of postcard-size pictures of different Gospel stories. One shows Satan tempting Jesus in the desert, and both are black. Another shows the Good Shepherd and a third, the Prodigal Son being greeted by his father. All are in African settings.
“That’s a comparatively new manifestation in Africa, because for the most part, the Christian faith was brought to Africans by white European missionaries, whose artistic depictions of Jesus were European,” she said.
Sister Martha Ann Kirk, a member of the Incarnate Word congregation, found an image of Jesus with a compelling message during a 2006 visit to Cambodia. Found in a religious souvenir shop, it had no ethnic features. It just was a small, flat, wooden crucifix with one defining characteristic: The Jesus figure had a stump for the right leg.
…
“Most Americans have no concept of what the historical Jesus looked like. People read their own cultures onto Jesus, and after several centuries, a Western European Jesus has become ‘normal’ to us. But the blue-eyed, brown-haired Caucasian Jesus is not what the historical Jesus looked like,” Mahan said.
Elizondo said it can be conjectured that Jesus was a Middle Easterner who was often exposed to the sun.
“He was probably dark-skinned, but nobody really knows,” Elizondo said. “But that’s the beauty of it. That’s why people can create mental images of him so that in some way they can see themselves in Jesus and Jesus in themselves.”
… rest of the article
link
