SURREY, B.C. (CCN) — Students at the new Saint John Paul II Academy in Surrey will soon eat their lunches beside a bronze Christ, the latest work from the Canadian sculptor whose most famous piece, Homeless Jesus, has been installed in cities around the globe, including at the Vatican.
The Surrey high school is preparing to install The Last Supper Table, a massive granite work with 12 empty seats and Christ at the centre. Designed by Timothy Schmalz, the interactive sculpture invites students to sit with Jesus daily — making them, in his words, “the apostles of today.”
Donated by Star of the Sea parishioners Joseph and Holly King, whose donations to the school include its chapel, The Last Supper Table will be placed in the heart of the school’s new campus courtyard. With garage-style doors opening from the dining hall, students will see it every day and be able to gather around it, turning the artwork into a living part of school life.
“When you look at it late at night, Jesus is sitting there alone, beckoning,” Schmalz said in an interview with the Saint John Paul II podcast Catholic Education Matters hosted by academy founder and chair Troy Van Vliet. “But when people sit down — whether children at lunch, or a family gathered together — they complete the sculpture. They become part of the art.”
Schmalz, now 55, has spent the past 35 years devoted exclusively to Christian sculpture. His journey began as a teenager in Elmira, Ont., when he discovered a magnetic love for sculpture. At 16, after completing a school piece depicting a man dreaming, he knew he wanted to spend his life creating in clay and bronze.
Raised in a secular, art-filled home, he had been baptized Catholic but with little religious formation. At 17, he experienced a profound conversion. “I absolutely identified as a Christian at that point,” he told Van Vliet in the interview.
He was accepted into the Ontario College of Art after winning a national sculpting prize, but he lasted only three months before dropping out, disillusioned by what he saw as shock-for-shock’s-sake art. He returned home, briefly worked in a fabric factory, then set up his first studio in Toronto at 19.
It was then he made a fateful decision: he would sculpt only Christian art.
“Art schools always told me: develop a style. But I realized I didn’t want a style. If the sculpture is great, the style disappears,” he said. “If you can make your sculpture so transparent that you don’t even see it but you see scripture — that’s a good piece of artwork.”
One of his most famous works, Homeless Jesus, was inspired by a single moment on University Avenue in Toronto.
While delivering a sculpture to St. James Cathedral, Schmalz saw a human figure completely shrouded in a blanket on the sidewalk. “It hit me instantly: that’s Jesus,” he said.
Back in his studio, he began to sculpt what he had seen. The figure was covered head to toe, but he rolled the blanket back at the feet to reveal the wounds of crucifixion. He also left a space on the bench for passersby to sit down beside Christ.
The result was startling. People often mistook the bronze for a real homeless person, sometimes even calling police or paramedics. In Warsaw, emergency crews once tried to revive it.
But then came the second glance: it wasn’t just a homeless person, but a sculpture. And then the third: the stigmata, revealing it was Christ himself.
That moment of recognition, Schmalz says, is a visual translation of Matthew 25: “Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.”
Homeless Jesus has since been installed in more than 200 cities, including at the Vatican, and continues to spread around the world.
Schmalz calls his studio a kind of chapel. He begins work at 4 or 5 a.m., often sculpting seven days a week, while Scripture or the writings of saints play aloud in the background.
“I try to make it possible for the Holy Spirit to come through one of these windows and land on a sculpture,” he said. “Sometimes, after the ninth hour, at 4:30 in the morning when I’m exhausted, something great comes.”
For him, the subject matter is everything. “In order to have an epic piece of artwork, you need an epic subject matter,” he said.
That conviction has led him to sculpt Padre Pio wrestling a demon, Jesus embracing a terrorist, and Dante’s entire Divine Comedy in 100 reliefs at the University of Toronto’s St. Michael’s College. Each piece, he says, must tell the story on its own — without needing a book beside it to explain.
Among his most cherished works is Life, a pro-life monument depicting a pregnant woman with the child visible in her womb, made of reflective material that captures light.
“It’s not a counterattack against abortion. It’s simply a celebration of life,” he explained. “A mother and child. That’s it.”
Large casts of Life stand across from the National Shrine in Washington, D.C., in Rome at San Marcello al Corso, and soon at the Texas state capitol. Smaller versions have been turned into rosaries used by pro-life organizations to raise funds for mothers.
For Schmalz, the message is clear: “Life is beautiful. Let’s have more humans.”
At Saint John Paul II Academy, his Last Supper Table will join the growing list of his works installed in public spaces around the world. But for Schmalz, the meaning is intensely practical.
The twelve empty chairs are not decorative. They are waiting to be filled.
“When people sit there, they become part of the art. It reminds us our faith isn’t an ornament,” he said. “The Last Supper requires us to be a part of it.”
For the students of Surrey/White Rock, that reminder will be waiting every day at lunchtime: Christ at the table, inviting them to take their place.
