Two years ago, the Director of the National Gallery in London came to see me about a picture he wanted to borrow from the Vatican Museum. During the conversation he talked about the extraordinary success of the Exhibition he had mounted earlier in the year, which was called Seeing Salvation. Tens of thousands of people, perhaps only a minority of them convinced Christian, had flocked to contemplate images of Christ down the ages. Seeing people's reactions to these profound images it was as though some became transfixed and moved in a way that art rarely moves and transfixes. The paintings, frescoes and sculptures somehow revealed something of both the humanity, and the divinity, of Jesus Christ - a remarkable achievement of the artists who, in their own time, and in their own way, must have contemplated the transcendence of God as revealed in His Son Jesus, who came to live among us on Christmas night two thousand years ago.

One contributor to an on-line review of the exhibition wrote about a life-sized limestone statue titled "Christ on a cold stone". He says "Christ, naked save for a crown of thorns, sits in an attitude of inconsolable sorrow - vulnerable and waiting what is to come. It evokes responses of compassion for the sufferer and by extension for all who are degraded; sorrow for the sin which is the cause; and gratitude for the loving sacrifice on our behalf. The more of humanity we see in the life of Christ, the more closely we seem to approach the divine". It seems to me extraordinary and marvelous that an artist, using only his hands, but who has eyes to see the face of Christ, can produce a canvas, an icon or a sculpture which reveals to us something of the humanity and divinity of our God. As Rowan Williams has suggested in his book on icons these images of the face of God, of the Virgin Mary, of the baby Jesus or of the prodigal son being greeted by his father seem to gaze at us, and move us in our hearts, just as much as we gaze at them.

To gaze at the face of Christ is to pray. To be held in God's loving gaze is the heart of contemplation. It is where we begin to understand the nature of our relationship with our Father. It is where, and how, the heart responds to the call which we cannot hear in the din of our busy modern lives. It is a place, and a moment, of hearing and of healing.

Seeing Salvation was an inspired and daring recognition that everyone, and anyone, can see salvation in the works of great artists who themselves have tried to see and share their own vision of the God who revealed himself to us in Jesus.

Today the contemplation of the Transcendent in art has to a great degree been replaced by the celebration of another kind of icon - the celebrity icon: Madonna, Princess Diana, Tiger Woods, David Beckham - you name him or her. Everywhere there are unusually, almost unrealistically, beautiful faces which smile at us from bill boards in our streets, and from our television screens. But Christmas reminds us that all humanity hungers to see another face, the face of God.

So how can we, in our turn manifest that face? How do we, like great artists down the ages, present our own vision and experience of the transcendent beauty of the divine gaze?

Rather than answer that question I would like if I may to leave it with you. Let it resonate in your own imagination. Because the answer will be a deeply personal one. And it will change with time too - just as Rembrandts reworking of his etching of the Crucifixion, and Michelangelo's successive sculpting of the Pieta, changed over time and with increased wisdom and personal suffering.

For me the face of Christ is the face of the poor and the powerless.

One of my favourite towns in Europe is Assisi, the home of the most attractive of all saints, St. Francis of Assisi. His life was blessed by a poverty which could only be filled by God. The last time I paid a visit to Assisi I went down to the Church of San Damiano to pray before the cross where St. Francis had prayed and where the Lord had revealed to him that he wanted him to rebuild His Church. As I walked away, I heard the sound of fifty or so young Franciscan novices over the wall. They were picking the olive trees and singing songs. I was very touched by the simplicity and the joy of those young men who were actively and deliberately embracing a life of poverty in their search for the face of God.

So please, this Christmastime, seek the face of Christ from within your own experience and in the world around us? I hope the following passage from Scripture will help conjure for you your personal image of the face and the beauty and God?

How happy are the poor in spirit, theirs is the kingdom of heaven; Happy the gentle, they shall have the earth for their heritage; Happy those who mourn, they shall be comforted; Happy those who hunger and thirst for what is right, they shall be satisfied; Happy the merciful, they shall have mercy shown them; Happy the pure in heart, they shall see God; Happy the peacemakers, they shall be called Sons of God; Happy those who are persecuted in the cause of right, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Happy are you when people abuse you and persecute you and speak all kinds of calumny about you on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward will be great in heaven.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'ConnorArchbishop of Westminster