Unfinished

A Reflection on the Psalm for Sunday, August 27th, 2023:
Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Psalm 138

R. Your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.

I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart; before the Angels I sing your praise; I bow down toward your holy temple, and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness.

R. Your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.

For you have exalted your name and your word above everything. On the day I called, you answered me, you increased my strength of soul. 

R. Your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.

For though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly; but the haughty he perceives from far away. Your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands. 

R. Your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

Do not forsake the work of your hands.

Last year I visited the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, Italy. This famous art museum is most known for housing Michaelangelo’s David. At the end of one long, columned hallway of the museum, David towers majestically over visitors. His splendor naturally captures the attention; so much, that it is easy to miss other art on display. But more of Michaelangelo’s work lines the walls of that corridor. 

Half-hewn out of massive blocks of marble, Michaelangelo’s Prisoners are four huge, thought provoking, unfinished statues that flank the pillars along the row. The Prisoners are “non-finito,” incomplete, and they are frustratingly inconclusive! One can almost taste Michaelangelo’s attempt to pull his creative vision out of the stone. The statues seem to express this too. Lithe limbs and perfect musculature appear to be wrestling to emerge from the stone that keeps them contained, striving to become what the artist conceived them to be.

Because good art helps us consider universal truth or human experience, the Prisoners evoked an obscure ache inside me. Examining them, I had an insatiable longing for completion — for them and for me — and for freedom; for a release from the chains that hold us hostage. I found myself frustrated with this half-finished, semi-realized version of a person I could be, one that seems just out of reach. I wanted to be whole, to be better, to be a story or a purpose, expressed artfully to a virtuous and uplifting end.

It’s interesting, then, that the Accademia’s website suggests that Michaelangelo may have left these particular sculptures incomplete on purpose — to represent the eternal struggle of human beings to free themselves from their material trappings.

I am unfinished. This is an uncomfortable, confusing, and sometimes even dissatisfying reality, as God my Father, the artist who is shaping and building me, continues to meticulously chip away and refine my form. I am like those large slabs of marble, heavy and incapacitated, groaning while waiting for the next strike on the stone. I would rather self-determine, but I cannot! I cannot become of my own making, no matter how hard I try.

As every material is subject to its artist, so creation is subject to God’s creative vision. Only trust and surrender will make the process less bewildering, even when it’s messy, slow to progress, or hard to understand. I know He will not leave me “non-finito.”  I will emerge from the stone when I give Him permission to make art with my life. His loving hands are creating me for Himself, and He will use everything in my life to make me beautiful for Him.

As of yet, however, I'm still rough around the edges. Mercifully, I remain unfinished, a work in progress. So for now, from this position, this prison, even, I cry out to God, as He continues to work on my form:

You steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever!

Do not forsake the work of your hands.




Michelynne Gomez

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