THE LAST SUPPER PAINTING:
We thank God for keeping us to this day. I feel very particularly honoured that this church, the St. Cyprian’s church, would honour me and make me the Grand Harvester for this year’s harvest.
Well, this is to harvest a crop; what is more important for me is to harvest souls. It said in the Bible that when you harvest souls the heaven rejoices. And the only way to harvest souls properly is by showing love. When you show love you harvest souls.
There is a story I like to tell whenever I have the opportunity to do something such as this. I like to talk about the last supper painting, which is a true life story.
The LAST SUPPER PAINTING as you all know was done by Leonardo da Vinci. Now, when the artist was called upon to do the painting, he had to depict Good – in the person of Jesus Christ, and to depict Evil – in the image of Judas, the friend and disciple who decided to betray Jesus Christ.
Now one day, while listening to the choir, he found in one of the boys the perfect image for Christ; and so He invited the young man to his studio and made studies and sketches of the young man.
Three years had gone by. The Last Supper painting was almost complete, but Leonardo the artist had still not found the perfect image for Judas. But of course, the cardinal of the church had started putting him under pressure, time was running, the painting had to be finished.
After several other days spent vainly searching, the artist came across a prematurely aged young man, in rags and lying drunk in the gutter. With some difficulty, he persuaded his assistants to bring the young man straight to the church. He didn’t have much more time left; and then he propped the young man up a little bit and the artist was able to copy the lines of impiety, the lines of sin and the lines of egotism all clearly etched on the features of this young man.
Just as he was done, the young man had sobered up a little bit, and opened his eyes and saw the painting before him; and he said:
“Oh, I have seen this painting before!” he exclaimed. And Leonardo the artist was surprised and asked
“How? Where?”
He said “three years ago, when I was a young man singing in the choir and my whole life was ahead of me, full of dreams, the artist had invited me to pose as the perfect image of Jesus Christ”
So you find that the same person who three year ago the artist had used as the face of Christ was the young man he found in the gutter three years after and then tried to use that same young man as the face of evil.
It tells you that when we do not show love that is what can happen to our own. When the young man was full of life, when society cared about him, he was wonderful singing in the choir. when life was out of him, he was found drunk in the gutter. It tells us that we always should care.
On this note I make my harvest.
