Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is an artist of countless accolades and proclamations, and Guernica could be his best-known work. It seems right to offer this work again.

On April 26, 1937, the Nazis bombed the town of Guernica in the Basque Country of Northern Spain to prop up their side of the Spanish Civil War. Picasso painted this response, a mural-sized oil, 11 feet tall and 25.6 feet wide, in his favored cubist, surrealist abstraction soon after. It hangs in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid.

With a monochromatic palette of white, black and gray, Picasso gives us a moving and powerful anti-war statement. It is actually thought to be the most moving and powerful anti-war painting in history. For 1937 and now, it communicates the tragedy of war, the brutal suffering of the innocents.

Picasso is quoted as saying:

Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.

May we spend some time with this lie and let it push our prayers and our actions in this April of 2026. The suffering has not changed. It is being done in our name.

What is our prayer? What is our call? May this image help us realize and affirm our truths and turn to God’s wisdom and the Spirit’s guidance now.

Amen.

In gratitude, faith and hope,