What Remains to Be Cared For — Jack on the Infant of Prague

What Remains to Be Cared For By Jack

Before dawn, in the temporary field room in Petra, I read the story of a small figure carried from one person's keeping into another's. There is no photograph here for me to examine, only the account and the need to be careful with what it claims.

The devotional tradition of the Infant of Prague tells of a statue brought from Spain, given to Princess Polyxena of Lobkowicz by her mother as a wedding gift. In 1628, she gave it to the impoverished Carmelite friars in Prague. About nineteen inches tall, made of wood, wax and cloth, it represented the Child Jesus in royal robes and a crown.

In the same telling, war drove the friars away. Invaders threw the figure onto a rubbish heap. After peace returned in 1635, Father Cyril searched for it, found it among the rubbish, and restored it to the oratory.

These details come from a devotional account, not a history I can independently establish. I can attend to the tradition without asking it to serve as proof.

What holds my attention is the interval between admiring the figure and going to look for it.

An image of innocence can receive our tenderness almost at once. A small face, a crown too grand for the body beneath it: the response may be immediate and sincere. Care has a different pace. It involves keeping something safe when there is no occasion to display it, noticing its absence, making time for a search. Admiration does not necessarily become that work.

The tradition gives Father Cyril a plain action before it gives us much room for reflection: he looks. The figure is not waiting in a place of honour. It has to be sought where things have been discarded.

I would not confuse the recovery of an object with the care owed to people caught in war. Still, the fragility of wax and cloth gives this account a particular weight. The crown does not make the figure durable. Someone has to take responsibility for its keeping.

It is still dark outside the field room. I return to the search, that patient part of the story. Being moved by something and looking after it are not the same act. Here, in the tradition, someone does both.