Artist Alumnus of the Washington, D.C. Monastery

For a time the friars of Washington, D.C. ran a Mount Carmel College for theological studies and welcomed students from other Provinces of the Order.  One became a missionary bishop in his own country, Colombia: V. Rev. Gustavo Giron served in the Diocese of Tumaco after his ordination as bishop on April 22, 1990. Another brother from Latin America became famous for accomplishments in another field, that of art, especially painting.

The Mexican friar, Father Gerardo Lopez Bonilla (born in Puebla on May 18, 1929) is a talented artist whose paintings are “powerful doorways to the metaphysical” and radiate deep “interior light.”  Before finishing a year of theological studies in D.C. in 1960 with ordination to the diaconate, he gifted houses of the Province with several paintings. Now two of them still grace the main corridor of our monastery.

To fast forward beyond his student days, however, here is an example of a splendid installment he created in time for the 1991 centenary of Our Holy Father St. John of the Cross behind and in front of the main altar of St. John’s resting place, La Fuencisla, in Segovia Spain.

Depicted are the major works of the saint with emphasis on the Eucharist as included in his poem “How well I know the Source.”

Upper: Ascent of Mt. Carmel / Left: Dark Night of the Soul / Right: Living Flame of Love / Lower: “Source which Runs” / Altar Frontal: Spiritual Canticle

Back in Washington we find two paintings, the first is of the Blessed Mother:

Another evokes much interest for its dramatic depiction of a human hanging from a tree. It could well represent a poem of Saint John of the Cross, “The Shepherd Boy,” both for its composition and for a detail related to our great expert in Saint John of the Cross, Father Kieran Kavanaugh, who translated the English editions of the saints works. Then Brother Gerardo signed his name on the reverse side of the painting dedicating it to Fr. Kieran with these words:  “To Very Rev. Fr. Kieran, with gratitude for the most understanding Subprior I have [ever] had.  Fr. Gerardo, O.C.D.”

To dedicate this blog to Fr. Kieran and see it posted for the annual feast of the saint he loved and served so well, here is his translation of the poignant verses of Our Holy Father Saint John of the Cross:

1.     A lone young shepherd lived in pain
Withdrawn from pleasure and contentment
His thoughts fixed on a shepherd-girl
His heart an open wound with love.

2.  He weeps, but not from the wound of love,
There is no pain in such a wound
However deeply it opens the heart.
He weeps in knowing he’s been forgotten.

3. That one thought: his shining one
Has forgotten him, in such great pain
That he gives himself up to brutal
handling in a foreign land,
His heart an open wound with love.

4. The shepherd says: I pity the one
Who draws himself back from my love,
And does not seek the joy of my presence,
Though my heart is an open wound
with love for him.

5. After a long time he climbed a tree,
And spread his shining arms,
And hung by them, and died,
His heart an open wound with love.

 Text and photography, John Sullivan
(assisted by Fr. Steven Payne for Madonna painting)