Mary of Cleophas / Santa Maria Cleophas
Sunday was Easter and in the midst of the glorious service—”He is risen!”—I found my moment of connection in the mention of “The Other Mary” as attending the tomb and witnessing the angel’s announcement: “He is not here.” Various scholars have claimed that this other Mary is Jesus’ aunt (although to me it seems unlikely that two sisters would both be named Mary) named Saint Maria Cleophas. Here she is decked out for Easter.
Last week when I took visiting friends to see the sights here we visited the Basilica of St. Francis, the imposing Roman Catholic cathedral downtown. In a side chapel, the statue of La Conquistadora who is said to have led the conquering Spanish back after they were driven out by the Pueblo Indians—the only time Natives have been able to expel their conquerors, if only for thirteen years—was dressed entirely in black, for Lent. Sunday, she would have been put into one of her most elaborate white gowns for Easter—she has a wardrobe of three hundred dresses—decked with her jewelry and revered as a symbol of returning and all-conquering faith.
A few blocks away, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, still the only museum I know of named for and devoted to the work of a woman artist, is showing her great white paintings of Deadly Nightshade, or Belladonna. As a devotee of modernism, I doubt if O’Keefe ever visited the cathedral although she lived here for years. And yet, white calls to white, and a powerful female saint must send a few vibrations to a powerful female artist.
We don’t know how to stop these murders. We don’t even know how to try. But a faith that expresses as foundational “Thou shalt not kill” perhaps once gave the gunman pause—if anything could, or can.
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