"Deafening silence and disturbing emptiness" The symbolic meaning of the emptiness in the photographic messages from the Vatican in connection with the Covid 19 pandemic

Abstract

The article reflects on the symbolic meaning of emptiness rooted in Christian doctrine, philosophy and religiosity on the basis of photographs presenting the message from religious celebrations in St. Peter in Rome during the spring Covid 19 pandemic incidence peak; these photos entered the wide circulation in the news media around the world. In Christian doctrine, emptiness is primarily related to the mystery of Christ's empty tomb, that is, the resurrection; thus it takes on an ambivalent meaning – it manifests the "presence of the absent". A similar phenomenon characterizes the essence of images (image anthropology). Not without significance in this context is the ambivalence of the desert experience, which in the eyes of mystics allowed for a spiritual relationship with God, as well as the "holy sense of absence", as a kind of "dark night" that Simone Weil wrote about. Thanks to their rich semantics, the above-mentioned photographs not only evoke a sense of the threat to life due to the Covid 19 pandemic, but also force deeper reflection, delving into one's own self in search of the true meaning of life, self-sacrifice, social solidarity. Finally, they allow us to conclude that voidness is not only a neutral space for relieving tension, but a nodal point where potentiality and becoming intertwine, where deficiency and completeness, identity and disaccord.