The stated goal of this book is “to demonstrate how God uses the circumstances of our lives, however confusing, to conform us to the image of his Son” (pp. 13-14). To achieve this, the author focuses on the sculpture by Michelangelo (1475-1564) entitled Pietà. Carved from marble in less than two years' time by the sculptor in his early twenties, the Pietà depicts a supine and lifeless Jesus being held in his mother Mary's arms. Each chapter of the book opens with a photograph of the Pietà from a different angle. The author associates a theme with the photo, and this theme is explored in the chapter.

The first chapter, “The Mystery of the Pietà,” discusses how the sculpture came into existence. Gire assigns revelational and miraculous properties to it, to the extent that can be true of a work of art. When you touch the Pietà, “you feel as if you have touched the very heart of God” (p. 26). At the end of the chapter, as in every chapter, the author offers a prayer. Then there is a page of study questions, “For Reflection or Conversation.” This makes the book suitable for small group or personal use.

Chapter two, “The Image of God,” treats man's majesty in creation but destitution in the fall. Genesis 3:15 and Isa52:13-53:12 are at the heart of discussion. Gire reflects on both the wonder and the horror that “he who stooped to shoulder the sorrows of humanity would himself become a man of sorrows, rejected by man and forsaken by God” (p. 37). We see, though, not only what it cost Christ to become like us, but also “what it will cost us to become like him” (p. 37).

Chapter three, “The Image of Christ,” ventures more deeply what it means for his followers to become like Christ. “Just as the essence of sculpture is the loss of the stone,” in that excess is chipped away to leave the image the artist seeks to create, so “the essence of being conformed to the image of Christ is the loss of the self” (p. 45). Sometimes it seems like God is wielding “the tools of a torturer” (p. 47) as he shapes his people.

Chapter four takes up “The Wounds of Christ.” The author draws on a madman's attempt to hammer the Pietà to pieces in 1972, on various Bible passages, and on the martyrdom of Western missionaries in the Boxer Rebellion to note that “our suffering, regardless of whose hands have inflicted it, is the raw material from which God wants to make something” (p. 66). Gire notes that God “permits our hands to prevent his hands from transforming our suffering into a blessing and filling it with meaning” (p. 66). An apt quote from Helmut Thielicke (pp. 65-66) identifies the blind spot American life seems to generate when it comes to the redemptive potential of our afflictions.

In chapter five, “The Mother of Christ,” Mary's loss of her son is Gire's focus. “The more people we love, the more we will suffer” (pp. 76-77), because those people will endure loss from which we cannot protect them. Moreover, “the deeper our love, the deeper our suffering” (p. 77). God did not spare Mary, and he will not spare us, unique miseries in the course of bringing about his saving intentions, in the world and in our lives.

The focus in chapter six is “The Body of Christ.” Michelangelo's depiction of Jesus suggests how we should live. Jesus in the Pietà is “the image of someone dying to the self and all its hyphenates: self-interest, self-reliance, self-indulgence, self-protection, self-preservation, self-promotion” (p. 85). In the end, Jesus “showed us how he loved us on the cross. That is what we are to remember. And that is how we are to live” (p. 94). One wonders about the view of the atonement implied here and the potential for concluding that self-abnegation earns redemption.

The final chapter, “The Miracle of the Resurrection,” details the handling of Jesus' body after his death, then quotes John 20 and Acts 2 virtually in their entirety. Gire uses the image of Aslan making statues come to life, freeing them from the White Witch's curse, to point to how we experience renewal in this life: “we experience smaller resurrections in the here and now” (p. 111). Gire could have gone farther when he states, “One day our bodies will be renewed. Today it is our spirits” (p. 111): Paul suggests that the Spirit is already giving resurrection life to our mortal bodies (Rom 8:11). But of course Gire is correct that we await something even greater.

An epilogue notes that Michelangelo began 44 sculptures. He finished just 14 of them. Not all the works of the master saw completion. Gire applies this with the help of C. S. Lewis's observation that “there are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'Okay, go ahead and have it your way'” (p. 116). Gire reminds the reader that the joy in the age to come will more than compensate pain and loss in the present order of things (pp. 118-19).

This is an elegantly written book. It reflects research into Michelangelo's history and art history's regard for him and for the Pietà. Gire draws effectively on Scripture, various authors, current events, and his own life to make his case. As meditations on the cross go, this one has theological depth. I wondered if a moral influence view of the atonement was unhelpfully dominant. And sometimes the imagery moved from vivid to saccharine (e.g., p. 111). I'm not sure that “image” can do as much to redeem as some passages in the book claim (e.g., pp. 91-92). Possible theological soft spots should probably be chalked up to artistic license and genre. On the other hand, meditation on the meaning of Christ's death needs to be informed by the very best in theological reasoning, deployed with scrupulous consistency. Still, this book can be commended as a creative and largely successful foray into one of the greatest divine mysteries in its implications for us all.

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