This church is the second largest church in Paris, after Notre-Dame, and it’s famous for a few things: its magnificent pipe organ (one of the largest in the world), its rich frescoes by Eugene Delacroix, its meridian line that is featured in Dan Brown’s novel The DaVinci Code, and its lopsided towers. But what captured my attention was an 1868 sculpture by Jean-Baptiste Clevinger in one of the church’s side chapels.

It's a pieta, from the Italian word for pity, mercy, compassion. In religious art, it refers to the depiction of Jesus’ mother Mary holding her son after he’s been taken down from the cross. Having by this point in our trip already visited several churches, we had already seen a few pietas! But this one stood out in a couple of ways. One was it included Mary Magdalene at Mary’s feet, kneeling beside Jesus, her head leaning next to his. The other was it included two angels off to the sides. One angel, the one on the right, is looking up at Jesus, Mary, and Mary Magdalene in awe and devotion. The other, the one on the right, is looking down and away from the central scene and instead at the twisted crown of thorns in his right hand, and he has a furrowed brow. It was the angel’s furrowed brow that captivated me.

What was the meaning of that furrowed brow? What was the sculptor trying to convey by showing us this frowning angel? Perhaps it was the angel’s confusion at the scene beside him, the many questions on the angel’s mind about what he had witnessed: Why did this man Jesus, the Son of God, have to die? Why did he have to die in such a horrible way? Why didn’t he call upon the angels to rescue him from the cross? Why did they give him such a cruel crown to wear? Why? And what now?

I admit that while I would love to always wear the awestruck gaze of the one angel, I probably have more often worn the furrowed brow of the other one. Maybe you have, too. 

But we also know that the pieta isn’t the end of the story of Jesus. Eventually his body is taken from his mother’s embrace and laid in a tomb. But then, a couple mornings later, as the Gospel of John tells us, Mary Magdalene makes her way to the tomb, and she finds the stone rolled away. She eventually steps inside the tomb, and who should she see there but two angels in white, one on one side of the tomb and the other on the other. 

I wonder if it’s the same two angels. And I wonder if the one’s brow is still furrowed.