uring all those years there stood by me a friend, Charles Rich, a man of deep interior prayerfulness and learning, whose profound insights opened my eyes far beyond what they had previously seen to things of which I had not read anywhere. I recorded what he said to me, and this is part of it:

"There is so much in the Pieta that if you lived a thousand years and wrote a thousand books you could never express it. In other words, there is a divine quality in it. It must have been inspired, because how could a boy, twenty-four years old, create such a work? You can't imagine how. It was a special grace from God. True, he had to be an artist, but art alone could not have made the Pieta. - The Pieta transforms you inwardly. A prayerful spirit comes over you…Prayerfulness…it changes people."

The spiritual and the artistic have never been so perfectly combined. They are inseparable: the fact that the one and the other have attained the same degree of depth and intensity, the fact that this mastery is concentrated in a single man is essentially what makes Michelangelo unique. The Holy Virgin is remarkable in that all the love he felt for can be seen in her face. By contemplating this face, you can get an idea of who Michelangelo was - and not who the Holy Virgin was. For you can see in her face the faith that the sculptor had for having accomplished such a work. No words can better describe his faith better than the Virgin's face does.The ineffable expression of Mary's face could not possibly be conveyed by words. Nothing could provide better understanding of Michelangelo. His greatness here surpasses that of the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel shows the greatness of the artist. The Pieta reveals the faith of the man, in all its simplicity. There is saintliness in the statue...

Michelangelo's statue is a beam shining from heaven, giving us an idea of the beauty awaiting us on high".