In my first year in the Novitiate, I made this crucifix during the Long Retreat — the 30 day long Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. I cut out the cross shape from a piece of plywood, carved out the interior cross and filled it with some sort of polymer clay material. I sculpted and engraved the figure with a knife and then painted it with acrylic. (I copied a medieval enamel crucifix which I saw a few years later at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.)

The corpus of Jesus is bone white — all of the color has receded into the bright green of the vine — the living wood of the Cross. (Not my idea — it’s the wisdom and insight of some nameless medieval artist.)

When I left the Novitiate, this crucifix remained in the Regis Chapel in the Novice building. Years later, when the Novitiate moved to Culver City, I figured that this piece had disappeared during the move. But some 30 years later, I happened to visit the (new) Novitiate in Culver City, and there, in a parlor was my old friend. Even more touching than this discovery was hearing a scholastic with whom I had become friends tell me that he had used my crucifix during his own Long Retreat.

I’m happy that this little vestige of my own spiritual beginnings still has a home in the Novitiate. AMDG