“Ecce Homo” – “Behold the Man”

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John 19:5 Jesus then came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe.  Pilate said to them, “Behold, the Man!”

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I bought this medal of sterling silver when I was a junior in high school, at the San Fernando Mission gift shop, as a gift for my father for his birthday in December. The back of the medal is stamped in tiny letters – Creed, Sterling

When I saw this medal, I immediately gravitated to it, as it was different, and I have always been attracted to different.  It wasn’t a crucifix, it was rectangular and artistic, and in the newer liturgical style that I was introduced to when I entered Alemany High School, a Catholic high school in the San Fernando Valley.

As a junior in high school, I knew what “Ecce Homo” meant – “Behold the Man”.  For I took Latin in my first two years in high school – but I already knew what the inscription “Ecce Homo” meant even before high school.  For I was already familiar with Latin from my eight years of Catholic grammar school, especially from the four years of serving as an altar boy in 4th–8th grades, when I had to memorize all of the responses to the mass in Latin – Introíbo ad altáre Dei – which was still celebrated in Latin all through my grammar school years.  

For me, the use of Latin always seemed to lift everything, the mass and all the liturgical ceremonies, out of the ordinary, and somehow in my mind, the services and the physical church itself, especially the altar area, was reflective of my earliest understanding of God from the age of three – that He was personal, approachable, kind and good, but also of an entirely different order than myself.

However, just in terms of the medal, it was the uniqueness of the medal that attracted me to it.  I admired the modern high-engraved artwork, and I was intrigued how the image of Christ – His halo to the right, His shoulder and arm to the left – extended out of the confines of the rectangular frame behind it, and how the letters of the words “Ecce Homo” were not of a uniform height, nor all in one place.

Also, even though I would not have been able to articulate it at that time, the dynamic artistic energy and tension within the art form of the medal, caught my eye and my mind and soul, just as my first view of a van Gogh painting captured my imagination and mind at an earlier age.  I still love van Gogh’s art, and the art of this medal still resonates artistically within me, but also now with even more spiritual meaning than when I was sixteen.

(Please see the link below for the posting where I describe my response when I saw my first van Gogh.)

For this medal portrays Christ not yet crucified but rather the narrative of John 19:1-5 when Pontius Pilate presented Him to the high priests and Pharisees after he had had Jesus scourged and the Roman soldiers mocked Him and had sport with Jesus by placing the crown of thorns upon Him and clothing Him in a royal purple robe – the crown of thorns and robe seen on Jesus in the middle of the medal, His head bowed in pain and exhaustion.

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John 19:1-5

1. Pilate then took Jesus and scourged Him.  2. And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on His head, and put a purple robe on Him; 3. and they began to come up to Him and say, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and to give Him slaps in the face.  4. Pilate came out again and said to them, “Behold, I am bringing Him out to you so that you may know that I find no guilt in Him.”  5.  Jesus then came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe.  Pilate said to them, “Behold, the Man!” (NASB)

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However meaningful and moving this portion of the passion narrative of Christ is for me now, the real story of this medal for me is not the scripture or iconography behind it, but my purchase of it as a gift for my father, his response to it, its history within my family, how I eventually came to have it in my possession, and what I may do with it now.

As I wrote, when I saw the medal, I immediately gravitated towards it, as it attracted me on many levels.  Yet even then, as I was buying it as a gift for my father, I knew that I really wanted this medal for myself – as it is with all the best gifts I buy for family and friends.  In addition, looking back on it, for me, that was the key to understanding everything that transpired concerning this medal.

For in my life there were relatively very few things that I really wanted at first sight, and of them, especially those associated with persons in my life, many had no cost attached to their acquisition.  For if I really wanted something, it was because it expressed, or was symbolic of, or stirred something within me that was already moving and alive – in a sense birthing into consciousness, or helping to grow, ignite, or mature, something already deeply essential within me as a person at that time.

I gift-wrapped the little golden box with a black cover, and when my dad’s birthday came, I gave him the present.  I didn’t give my dad gifts often as I didn’t often have money, but he was always happy when I gave him presents, and that birthday he was smiling as he unwrapped my gift to him.  I was also happy and smiled and I watched his face as he opened the little box, but when he lifted the lid and then saw the silver medal laying on the brilliant red of the inside, a sudden unexpected look of shock mixed with confusion and awkwardness enveloped his face, a look I had never seen before, a look from which he did not know how to recover.

I was startled by the immediate strength of this totally surprising response.  I didn’t know what to think.  My dad didn’t know what to do, and he didn’t know what to say.  He actually did not know what to do with my gift of the medal then in his hands.

Why my dad reacted this way, I have never fully understood.  Perhaps the medal, the crucified Christ was just too confrontational – the crucified Christ is definitely confrontational – and perhaps … well, there could have been any number of things … 

However, one very important thing that I did understand when my dad opened the box, was that his reaction to the medal had nothing to do with me.  It was entirely centered just on the medal.  For I was still and always my dad’s only son, and even though we never truly understood each other, my dad was always kind and generous towards me.  And when as a boy and young teenager I would meet some of his friends at his work, they would look at me kindly and greet me warmly and say that my dad always talked about me to them, which always surprised me, as I really didn’t think there was much about me for my dad to talk about.  So, yes, his reaction was just about the medal itself for some reason, but that had nothing to do with me.

After he opened the box, I don’t remember exactly the conversation we had – it was actually just a few words – but I seem to remember asking him if he liked it, which I’m sure he said he did.  I might have also said that if he didn’t like it, I would take it back, which was true, meaning I would keep the medal for myself, and figure out something else for him for his birthday, but I didn’t know what that would be, and I wasn’t sure I had more money for it right then.

And that was basically the end of our conversation about the medal, as we never talked about it again.  During the almost two years I was still at home before I left for college, I saw the little golden box with the black cover just a few times after his birthday, when I would see it in my father’s top bedroom drawer when he would ask me to fetch something for him.  So, I knew that he still had it, and that he saw the box at least occasionally when he opened his drawer, which satisfied and pleased me.  But that was basically the extent of the medal in my life, and I assume in my father’s life, for decades.

And in those decades, I graduated from high school, went to college, graduated, married, bought a house, had a child, our first daughter, my father died, two more daughters appeared, we bought a bigger house, the new century came upon us, then grandchildren, I retired, then more grandchildren, now up to ten.  

Then one day while visiting my mom, she showed me my father’s wedding ring, 18kt gold, purchased in England during the war, cracked and scratched, and asked me if I wanted it.  I immediately said yes, and then suddenly, I thought of the little box with the medal I had given my father – my first thought about the medal in about forty years – and I asked my mom if the medal was still around.  I told her it might be in a little golden box with a black cover.

My mom searched about in the top-dressing drawer in her bedroom and … she found the little box!  She opened the box and as she gazed upon the medal in thought, I caught glimpses of shining metal edges against a brilliant red inside just as I remembered it – seeing it for the first time in at least four decades or so. 

With some hesitation, I asked my mom if I could have the medal, as sometimes she was a little reluctant to part with things that may have value – basically stemming from our early family years when our family really did not have much money at all – and she had already offered me my dad’s 18kt gold ring.  But after another moment more of quietly gazing upon it, she put the cover back on the box and without saying a word she handed it to me, and I put it in my pocket, and we went on to something else.

The medal stayed in various places in my study for perhaps another decade or so.  Then when my mom died, I acquired other little treasures of hers that I then eventually placed, along with the medal, in a safety deposit box, some of these other treasures being the small multiple year diaries that my mom wrote in London during the war before she married my dad.

Then when this Easter was approaching, while I read the narrative of the crucifixion of Christ in the Gospel of John, from which I quoted above, I then remembered again the “Ecce Homo” medal.  So I retrieved it from the safety deposit box, took a photo of it, wrote about it, and have now published it on my website – thus committing it to history – my history.

So where does this personal history go from here?  Well, I am thinking of buying a sterling silver chain to wear the medal around my neck.  My father never wore it for whatever reasons residing within him, though, as I wrote, perhaps it was just too confrontational, but also perhaps my father did not want to be that declarative of his faith, or maybe it was just not what men of his generation or Mexican culture wore, or maybe it was something else to me entirely now unknowable.

Whatever it was, a large part of the relationship between me and my dad was that I was never truly able to synch all my inner English ways of being learned from my mom, with the Mexican ways of my dad, and I never truly understood my dad, or the world residing within his soul of where he came from and lived in, even though I deeply appreciated and enjoyed my father’s very large extended family – and the Mexican food and the tons of it always available at family gatherings!  But my dad and I were like magnetic opposites that you could never naturally put together.

Though by the time I left for college and then came back for Christmas, I think both my dad and I knew and better understood that I was very different from him and that this was not in essence ever going to change.  And then surprisingly, we both then seemed to just accept and live with this as just being the way it was, which in effect made it easier for us in time to appreciate and even enjoy each other. 

So, with me, in terms of wearing the medal, I considered for a time that perhaps it was time for me to wear the medal to be more physically declarative of my faith.  And yet that declaration, realistically, would mainly just be to myself, as I rarely take my shirt off in public, even when with the grandchildren at a beach, as I don’t like the idea of getting even slightly sunburned, something I have had a real aversion to since I was a kid.  For though as a boy, I loved going to the California beaches in the 50’s and early 60’s with my family – walking along the wet sand of the beach by myself watching the seagulls and looking for sand dollars and other seashells – that was at the time before sunscreen, at least for our family, and I hated the pain of getting sunburn and the peeling skin that many times followed our trips to the beach.

But … instead of a declaration, I eventually thought that perhaps it is now the time to just take the medal out of the little golden box with the black lid where it is has always rested on the brilliant red … and waited … and give it a different home instead of just the box, a real home with me, and for my dad, around my neck.  For this medal for me will always be connected to my dad as the medal he never wore, but that he kept safe and near him in his bedroom drawer all the years he was alive – and that, because I, his only son who he always loved, gave it to him as a birthday gift.  In wearing it, I will remember him and think of him more often.  And I will choose just the right-length sterling silver chain so that the medal will lay near my heart. 

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Please use the link below to view the posting where I describe my response to my first van Gogh.

Van Gogh – Wheatfield With Crows – Exactly! – Writing In The Shade Of Trees

Please use the link below to view all the Family Non-Fiction postings.

Family Non-Fiction – Writing In The Shade Of Trees

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