What does the image of the Jesuit Christ mean?

In past centuries, Catholic art collected a unique image of Jesus, who became known as the “Jesuit Christ.” This is a series of paintings that present the Lord dressed as a priest dressed in the black habit of the Society of Jesus, the order founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola.

The origin of the image would go back to the visions that the venerable Spanish Marina de Escobar (1554-1633) would have had. But the paintings that portray this “Jesuit Christ” or “Christ of the Jesuits” also have a Christian teaching purpose.

Works that refer to the Eucharist

In an article titled The message and teaching of Christ of the JesuitsJosé Gálvez Krüger, director of the Catholic Encyclopedia and member of the Peruvian Society of History, highlights that in the paintings that present “Jesuit Christ” we see him “with a talar habit. Don’t say ‘suit’. Call it a habit, that is, a constant characteristic of the personality.”

Through the paintings, which sometimes show “Jesuit Christ” in the middle of the desert, explains Gálvez Krüger, “the message is very clear, the religious, the priest must separate himself and detach himself from the vanities of the world (which distract him and with which one is tempted), to have only the Holy Scripture in one’s hand.”

“Spiritual preparation, to defeat the devil on his terrain without fear, without losing serenity, implies a profound asceticism, as Christ teaches,” he adds in the article.

“Those paintings tell us about the establishment of the Priesthood. Christ established the priesthood in order to remain among men. And thus, achieving Salvation for them through his Church,” he indicates.

Next, he explains that “the Church spreads Grace through the Sacraments, which are celebrated through the Priests.”

“The pedagogy of the variants of this pictorial theme teaches everyone, starting with the religious, that the priest, whatever the Order, must behave in his private life and before others like another Christ, and not only when celebrating the Holy Sacraments”, specifies Gálvez Krüger.

“The set of images referred to refers to the Fountain of the Sacraments, which is the Holy Eucharist,” he highlights.

Christian art and its preaching of “Light, Truth and Life”

In statements to ACI Prensa, José Gálvez Krüger warns that “if Art does not preach Light, Truth, and Life, it is not Christian Art. “That is the tone of all Hispanic American religious art.”

“Having the Holy Eucharist as its center, its ecclesial triumph was achieved through Art, uniting image and word. There is no Eucharist without the Priestly Order. The meaning and teaching of the so-called Jesuit Christs is not ideological: it is mystical and pastoral,” he specified.

“Jesuit art,” he added, “is the art of Cardiomorfosis”, a study dedicated to Pope Francis “for that apostolate of the conversion of the human heart that was already evident in his Pastoral Letters as archbishop of Buenos Aires. “That is a historically Jesuit issue.”

The Cardiomorphosis, explains the work done by Gálvez Krüger, is “the conversion of the human Heart according to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which is the beginning and end of our penitent reconciliation.”