Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times? Jesus answered, I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. Matthew 18:21-22.
The number seven is mentioned 735 times in the Bible, a fact that endows this prime number with deep spiritual relevance. According to the Book of Genesis, God created the earth and the heavens, together with all the creatures in seven days on the seventh day, he rested. The number symbolically joins the universe and all its marvels to the creator; it completes all creation.
This grouping in sevens runs across the hundreds of pages of the Bible, from the Old Testament to the New Testament. Jesus uttered the famous seven last words that are laden with ominously stark meanings. They are laments of abandonment, of being forsaken, the loin cloth covering the nakedness, while hanging on for three hours, trussed, vilified and suspended between heaven and earth.
Traditions, beliefs and religion
In Roman Catholic iconography, Mary, the mother of God, manifests the self-sacrificing pain of her motherly humanity via the seven daggers piercing her heart, each symbolising episodes in the life of her son that caused her unspeakable distress. She silently soldiered on, first amid the prescience of Simeons prophecy uttered at the time of her young childs presentation in the Temple, where the old man told the new mother: And a sword will pierce your very soul.
The torments of her sons passion at Golgotha and his passing away through the most undignified of Jewish deaths would add other daggers, painfully piercing her very existence and soul.
The choice of venue for Sebga (Seven), the chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows, in Mqabba, is not coincidental. The chapel is dedicated to the sixth dagger in the series of sorrows, that of holding the Son of God, her child, as a corpse in her lap. The seventh and last sorrow is the actual burial, the separation of the dead from the living.
The deadly sins are also seven in number; vices that open the gateways to damnation: the price the soul pays for relenting to devilish temptations. The seven heavenly virtues can be looked upon as neutralising the sins by indicating the path to eternal salvation.
The number seven has found itself integrated into our traditions, such as in the seven days of mourning after the death of a relative or a close friend. Seven also figures in many occult invocations and in esoterica. It is invoked in the casting of spells and finds itself woven into the fabric of mathematical magic squares.
The wonders of the ancient world were seven, as well as the classical planets, thus relating to the numbers astrological significance. The Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, also mentions the number seven in apocalyptical contexts.
Besides Christianity and Judaism, Hinduism and Islam also extol the numbers purported extraordinary properties by regarding it as a mathematical manifestation of physical and spiritual completeness and perfection. Like the other prime numbers, it is divisible only by itself; it controls its own destiny no other number can affect or destroy it by reducing it to a singularity.
The 14 Stations of the Cross
In every Catholic cathedral, church and almost every chapel around the world, one finds the 14 Stations of the Cross, in painterly, sculptural, symbolic or numerical form, commemorating 14 instances in Christs passion, starting from His condemnation by Pontius Pilate to death on the cross and episodically leading up to His burial. A praying ritual devotes contemplation on each of the 14 stations. It is not coincidental that the exhibits for this exhibition are 14 in number, although they are specifically themed to only two of these stations.
Each station in the chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows is accompanied by an exhibit, thus integrating the artistic with a ritual of prayer into one whole narrative. For Sebga, Mark Mallia and Etienne Farrell have focused on two of these stations, the former on the 12th station and the latter on the 13th, which are probably the most salient ones in the whole group.
Mallias exploration of the seven vices
As Jesus hung on the cross, He forgave the soldiers who had crucified Him and prayed for His mother and friends. Jesus wanted all of us to be able to live forever with God, so He gave all He had for us. The 12th Station of the Cross
Mallia regularly revisits themes related to the passion of Jesus Christ. In his March 2017 exhibition Zabach in a private chapel in Mosta also dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows, the artist investigated Christian iconography to come up with a series of 21 paintings that focused on the main protagonist as a sacrificial lamb. Zabach, in fact, is Aramaic, Jesuss language, for sacrifice.
The crucifixion paintings in that exhibition hinted that, in a post-apocalyptic world, every being, even the Son of God Himself, gets carbonised and transformed into ashes through nuclear warfare, as that the ship of redemption has probably sailed. In the backdrop of the Russian-Ukraine war, the message is more topical; most roads seem to lead to the most inauspicious of conclusions. It is ironic that both countries embroiled in the conflict honour the image of the saviour in their religion. But, probably, true religion and introspection are mere trifles in the context of war.
This reduction of the crucified body to an empirical representation evokes parallels with Francis Bacons Crucifixion of 1933. The translucence captured by Bacon is ghostly, as though a shadow, an X-ray image.
One could regard this as a portent of things to come; the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima 12 years later was the apocalyptic epilogue of World War II. Nuclear shadows of actual people were generated by the detonation; body cells were irradiated thermonuclearly, fried to the ground as terrible spectres of the people who had lived on the streets and sidewalks of the two ill-fated Japanese cities.
Mallias waif-like crucified bodies are also cinders, burnt through by all measure of irradiation apostasy, warfare, neo-liberalism; also by being subservient to the seven vices, by succumbing to the calls of the flesh and primeval instincts that are so hard to suppress.
The seven vices, or deadly sins, are explored by Mallia through seven artworks that are thematically linked to the cross and the emaciated crucified body, one of the timeless symbols dear to Christianity.
Farrells contemplations on Marys seven sorrows
Jesus, how brutally You were put to death. How gently You are taken from the cross. Your suffering and pain are ended, and You are put in the lap of Your mother. The dirt and blood are wiped away. You are treated with love. The 13th Station of the Cross
The procession of Our Lady of Sorrows in Malta probably dates to the 17th century. Forming one of the statuary groups of the Good Friday processions, held in many towns and villages in the Maltese islands, the Friday before Good Friday is solemnly dedicated to the heartache experienced by a mother throughout the relatively short lifetime of her son. In some statues, the grief-stricken mother is portrayed on her own, at the foot of the cross, overwhelmed by psychological ache. In others, the tortured body of her only son lies lifeless in her lap.
Sometimes, a small angel joins her, holding the crown of thorns and the four nails that pierced the limbs of Jesus, symbols of the physical agony that He endured on the cross. St John the Evangelist, Jesuss favourite disciple, is included as well in some instances, offering the aggrieved mother some solace.
Most of Farrells seven exhibits focus on the semiotics of the spiritual and psychological pain endured by a mother whose son had professed a contradiction: to love ones enemy.
The artist delivers a universal message, that this pain wasnt endemic to the Mother of God alone. Each mother goes through the pangs of hell when she loses a child through some physical and psychological sickness, accident, substance abuse or through wanton acts of war, declared by unscrupulous dictators.
The Maltese saying goes that it is unfair that some mothers have to pass through the torment of burying their own children. Perhaps the pain is much more profound than the one experienced by children when their parents pass away. One of the works tellingly integrates escutcheons of the daggered heart with what seems like a representation of the opening of the birth canal, perhaps suggesting that the sorrow of motherhood starts from conception. Depending on ones perspective, it could also be interpreted as a strong anti-abortion statement.
The Churchs rites for the day dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows prepare us for the sobriety of Holy Week, which starts on Palm Sunday until Holy (or Black) Saturday, during which time the faithful are asked to contemplate on episodes that occurred 2,000 years ago and that led to the birth of Christianity. Farrell and Mallia are inviting us to do this in the intimate sacred space of a small chapel in the village of Mqabba while also meditating on the 14 Stations of the Cross and their artistic interpretations of the seven vices and the seven sorrows.
Sebga, hosted by the chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows, Mqabba, opened on Sunday and runs until Saturday. Visit the events Facebook page for opening times and more info.
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The universal and spiritual relevance of the number seven - Times of Malta