John
W. Dixon, Jr., Art
as a Means of Thinking and of Grace
The grace of God is grace as a free gift, one not demanded or forced
by anything we do. We cannot decide when or where or in what the grace
of God is made manifest. What we can do is prepare ourselves, train
ourselves to receive it if it should come to us. This is a function
of the liturgy, of the devotional life, of the hard intellectual work
of study, of the disciplines of service. And of the experience of art
when it serves its appropriate function.
Giotto had mastered his craft. He had done the hard work of thought
by carefully thinking about the subject he was portraying, using his
craft as an instrument of interpretation, finding the forms that would
set forth that interpretation. He did more.
