Dec 13

Dec 13 The Crucifixion of Peter by Michelangelo

Michelangelo, after he had finished painting the Sistine Chapel, was commissioned to work on the Vatican’s Pauline Chapel. On the two main walls, he painted the conversion of Paul and the crucifixion of Peter. This would have been completed nearly sixty years before Caravaggio’s painting of Peter’s crucifixion (see last week’s essay). In Michelangelo’s painting, Peter is being lifted up in the same manner as in Caravaggio’s painting. As he is being lifted up, though, he strains his neck to look at you. It’s as if Peter is asking, “Are you ready to die for Christ? Are you ready to follow Jesus all the way from your Galilee to your Golgotha? Are you ready for the cost of discipleship?” That’s the lesson that Peter had to learn, and that’s the lesson for us today.

This “cost of discipleship” is the significance of Michelangelo’s painting, which he painted at the height of the Reformation. Michaelangelo knew the Pauline Chapel was used by the popes and that Mass would be offered there by the cardinals of a conclave before entering the Sistine Chapel to elect a new successor to Peter. The cardinals would, and unto this day can, look out and see Peter, craning his neck in pain, stretched out on the cross, looking at them as if to say, “Which one of you wants to be pope? Are you ready to be a good shepherd, even if it means dying for your flock? Because this is where it could lead.”

Although the Pauline Chapel is privately used only by the Holy Father and some of the cardinals, I was fortunate enough to be able to visit it the year after these paintings had been restored in 2009. After a conclave has reached a decision, the newly-elected pope comes to the Pauline Chapel to pray. Here he will see the painting of the crucified Peter looking at him. Michelangelo painted it in a way that no matter where you are standing in the room, you won’t be able to escape Peter’s gaze. The Pauline Chapel is called the “room of tears” because the newly-elected pope usually cries at the weight of his new responsibility to lead the Church.