Newspaper Page Text
Supplement to The Southern Cross, September 5, 1985
—
A supplement to Catholic newspapers,
By Neil Parent
NC News Service
The scene began with a slow
scan of the bodies — literally hun
dreds of them. They lay scattered
like so many stalks of wheat felled
by the reaper’s sickle.
Pausing from time to time, the
camera’s eye focused on a clench
ed fist, a bloodied tunic, a
bootless foot. Finally, it rested on
the face of a young soldier. He lay
there on the side of the dirt road,
facing upward, his bare head
propped against the back of a
fallen comrade.
Seeing this German soldier’s
boyish face on television some 40
years after the Battle of the Bulge
in which he died, I was struck by
its distinct lack of expression. It
was the eyes more than anything
else. They were open wide and
locked in a vacant stare at the
gray sky.
In a way it was fitting that as a
stranger I should be deprived of
intruding into this young man’s
last moments of life by somehow
reading his face. Whatever his
final thoughts, whatever his feel
ings, death had completely ex
tinguished their traces.
Even so, his face communicated
with me. He was Aryan and ter
ribly young.
□ □ Q
The face is truly a wondrous
thing. It is not only the beacon of
our personalities, it is the calling
card of who we are as a member
of a people, a tribe, a nation. Our
face bears the image of thousands
of years of genetic shaping. We
are not just humans; we are
Asians, Africans, Europeans and so
on.
Indeed, taken together, the vast
array of human faces bespeaks the
incredible complexity and diversi
ty of the human family.
“The face is the mirror of the
mind, and eyes without speaking
confess the secrets of the heart,”
wrote St. Jerome, fourth century
scholar and translator of the Bible.
Our thoughts and feelings can
take shape instantly on our faces
— and just as quickly dissolve. A
furrowed forehead, pursed lips, a
raised eyebrow can and often do
speak volumes. No wonder so
much human interaction entails
our searching each other’s faces
The Case of the
Mysterious
Face
What lies behind the human face? You may
discover the way to a person's heart. Or you may
find the path blocked by the face. Either way,
writes Neil Parent, an encounter with the human
face is an encounter with the divine.
for clues to deeper meaning.
But, if the face is a window to
the heart, it is also its mask. Not
infrequently, we feel compelled to
hide behind our faces rather than
speak through them.
For example, it would be un
thinkable for us to weigh down
others with our more troubling
thoughts and feelings each and
every time we meet.
At the same time, wrongly
deceiving another breaks down
the trust on which human com
munication is built. ‘‘A false face
must hide what the false heart
doth know,” wrote Shakespeare
in “Macbeth.”
As much as possible, our faces
should harmonize with our hearts.
□ □ □
A special challenge in relating to
others is not to interject our own
predispositions and prejudices. We
too easily and frequently assign
meanings to a face because its skin
color, shape of the nose or slant
of the eye is different from our
own.
We read the face as we are
wont to read the person; we see
what we want to see. Unfor
tunately we are often much more
comfortable remaining with our
prejudices than facing up to
them.
On a purely human level, this
presents problems of its own. But
when we remember that every
human is a bearer of divine life,
to foreclose on an authentic
human encounter because we can
not or will not go beyond the
face’s most apparent‘image is to
foreclose on God as well.
Is God to be identified only
with the comely face, a particular
skin color or a look of in
telligence? Don’t we also en
counter God in the unattractive
face, the heavily lined or weary
face, the faces of the retarded, the
face different from ours?
To fail to seek the mystery
behind such faces means to fail
not only at meeting other humans,
but also to fail at discovering the
face of God.
(Parent is the representative for
ad nit education in the U.S.
Catholic Conference Department
of education.)