SAUCIER — Burned and broken

On an early-morning walk, I ducked into a church for a few minutes of prayer. It was a typical old Mexican church, drab with age and neglect, but filled with statues and 17th-century paintings that invite reflection.

Just inside the ancient stone communion rail on the right was a tall, free-standing crucifix.

A thorny crown pressed deep into the long, curly locks that hung from the drooping head.

The body, though carved of rigid wood, was limp and lifeless. It was black as coal and skirted in Lenten purple with gold embroidery. 

This was Cristo de las Ampollas — “Christ of the Blisters.”

The story goes back to the early 1600s, a radiant vision, a mysterious artist, and a church fire that burned everything but the crucified corpus it left charred and blistered.

This seared survivor has been venerated by the Mayan people for centuries. Most don’t know that the original Cristo de las Ampollas was destroyed in the Caste Wars and that the crucifix enshrined in the cathedral, like the one in that church, is a replica.

But that makes little difference to their faith or their prayers.

I have seen countless depictions of Jesus: ascetic and athletic, skin tones from Nordic to Mediterranean, hair fifty shades of brown, and looks from deeply compassionate to divinely aloof.

But I have encountered few as compelling this one. I wondered what the throngs that followed this crucifix in procession or those who knelt alone at its foot saw in this Jesus.

The hair was dark like theirs, but curly like the Spanish royalty who once ruled their lives. This king, their king, abandoned the heights of power and met them in the depths of love.

These Mayans wear a darker skin after millennia of toiling under k’in, their tropical sun. But this Christ’s skin is even darker than theirs, in a world where gradients of white have ruled their lives.

A servant of the serfs, this Christ has placed himself below them, to lift them up.

Like their Cristo de las Ampollas, they too have been through the fire, seared and blistered by poverty, racism and exclusion.

They bow to a God they desperately need, one who knows the darkness of their pain.

For them, the cross is not the end. Easter is always on the horizon.

But it is the cross, and the One who hangs there with them, that gets them there.