God’s dictation; he is a messenger sent by God to warn those wandering
from the right path, who have forgotten the Covenant. He is the
secretary, the interpreter, and the delegate of God, and thus superior
to the King who does not obey God, superior to the priest who does not
understand God, to the people who have deserted God to run after idols
of wood and stone!
The Prophet is the man who sees with a troubled heart but with clear
eyes the evil which reigns to-day, the punishment which will come
to-morrow, and the kingdom of happiness which will follow punishment and
repentance.
He speaks in the name of the mute, he is a hand for him who cannot
write, a defender for the people scattered and oppressed, an advocate
for the poor, an avenger for the humble who cry out under the heel of
the powerful. He is not on the side of those who tyrannize, but of those
who are trodden under foot. He does not seek out the satiated and the
greedy, but the hungry and the wretched.
A troublesome importunate and inopportune voice, hated by the great, out
of favor with the crowd, not always understood even by his disciples.
Like a hyena scenting from far the stench of carrion, like a raven
always croaking out the same cry, like a hungry wolf howling on the
mountain top, the prophet goes up and down the streets of Israel
followed by suspicion and malediction. Only the poor and the oppressed
bless him; but the poor are weak and the oppressed can only listen in
silence. Like all loud truthtellers, who disturb the slumbering
majority, who unsettle the sordid peace of the masters, he is avoided
like a leper, persecuted like an enemy. Kings can barely tolerate him,
priests regard him as an enemy, the rich detest him.
Elijah is forced to flee before the wrath of Jezebel, slayer of
prophets; Amos is banished beyond Israel by Amaziah, priest of Bethel;
Isaiah is killed by the order of Manesseh; Urijah cut down by King
Jehoiakim; Zacharias stoned between the temple and the altar; Jonah
thrown into the sea; the sword is prepared for the neck of John, and the
cross is ready from which Jesus will hang. The Prophet is an accuser,
but men are not willing to admit that they are guilty. He is an
intercessor, but the blind are not willing to be guided by the
enlightened. He is an announcer, but the deaf do not hear his promises.
He is a saviour, but men rotting in fatal diseases delight in their
maladies and refuse to be cured. Yet the word of the Prophets shall be
the eternal testimony in favor of this race which exterminated them but
was capable of generating them. And the death of a prophet, who is more
than all the prophets, shall suffice to expiate the crimes of all the
other peoples who grub about in the dirt of the earth.
HE WHO WILL COME
In the house at Nazareth Jesus meditates on the Commandments of the Law,
and in the fiery laments of the Prophets He recognizes His destiny. The
promises are insistent like knocking on obstinately closed doors. They
are repeated, reiterated, never denied, always confirmed. Precise,
minute with irrefutable testimony, they foretell the story. When Jesus
at the beginning of His thirtieth year presents Himself to men as the
Son of Man, He knows what awaits Him, even to the last: His life to come
is already set down day by day in pages written before His earthly
birth.
He knows that God promised Moses a new prophet, “I will raise them up a
prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words
in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command
him.” God will make a new covenant with His people. “Not according to
the covenant that I made with their fathers ... but I will put my law in
their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.... I will forgive
their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” A covenant
inscribed upon souls and not upon stone; a covenant of forgiveness and
not of punishment!
The Messiah will have a precursor to announce Him. “Behold, I will send
my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me.”
“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government
shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful,
Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of
Peace.” But the people will be blind to Him and will not listen to Him:
“Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut
their eyes: lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and
understand with their hearts, and convert, and be healed.”
“And he shall be a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both
the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of
Jerusalem.”
He will not magnify and flaunt Himself: He will not come in proud
triumph, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, shout O daughter of
Jerusalem, behold thy King cometh unto thee: he is just and having
salvation, lowly and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an
ass.”
He will bring justice and will lift up the unhappy; “... because the
Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent
me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; ... to comfort all
that mourn.” “The meek also shall increase their joy in the Lord, and
the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. For the
terrible one is brought to naught, and the scorner is consumed, and all
that watch for iniquity are cut off.”
“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf
shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the
tongue of the dumb sing.”
“I, the Lord, have called thee in righteousness ... to open the blind
eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in
darkness from the prison-house.”
But He will be vilified and tortured by the very people He comes to
save: “he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there
is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of
men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were
our faces from him; he was despised and we esteemed him not.
“Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows: yet we did
esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
“But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our
iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his
stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have
turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the
iniquity of us all.
“He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he
is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her
shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth ... for he was cut off out
of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he
stricken.
“Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when
thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he
shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in
his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be
satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for
he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion
with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because
he hath poured out his soul unto death; and he was numbered with the
transgressors; and he bare the sins of many, and made intercession for
the transgressors.”
He will not draw back before the vilest insults. “I gave my back to the
smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my
face from shame and spitting.”
All will be against Him in the supreme moment. “They have spoken against
me with a lying tongue. They compassed me about also with words of
hatred; and fought against me without a cause. For my love they are my
adversaries.”
The son cries to the Father:
“Thou hast known my reproach, and my shame, and my dishonor: mine
adversaries are all before thee.
“Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked
for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I
found none.
“They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me
vinegar to drink.”
They pierce Him with nails and divide His clothes among themselves.
“For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed
me: they pierced my hands and my feet
“... they look and stare upon me. They part my garments among them, and
cast lots upon my vesture.”
Too late they will understand what they have done and will repent.
“... and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall
mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in
bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his first born.”
“Yea, all kings shall bow down before him: all nations shall serve him.
“For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him
that hath no helper. He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save
the souls of the needy.”
“The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee;
and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles
of thy feet.”
“For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the
people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen
upon thee.
“And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness
of thy rising.
“Lift up thine eyes round about, and see: all they gather themselves
together, they come to thee: thy sons shall come from far, and thy
daughters shall be nursed at thy side.”
“Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and
commander to the people. Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou
knowest not, and nations that knew not thee shall run into thee because
of the Lord thy God.”
These and other words are remembered by Jesus in the vigil before His
departure. He foresees it all and does not turn away from it. From now
on He knows His fate, the ingratitude of heart, the deafness of His
friends, the hatred of the powerful, the scourgings, the spittings,
insults, scoffings, obloquy, piercing of the hands and feet, tortures
and death. He knows that the Jews, carnal-minded materialists embittered
by humiliation, full of rancor and evil thoughts, are not awaiting a
poor, gentle, despised Messiah. They all, except a few of clear and
prophetic vision, are dreaming of a terrestrial Messiah, an armed King,
a second David, a warrior who will shed real blood, the red blood of
enemies, who will rebuild more splendidly than ever the palace of
Solomon and the Temple. All the kings will bring tribute to Him, not
tribute of love and reverence, but of massy gold and silver coin. This
earthly King will revenge Himself on the enemies of Israel, on those who
make Israel suffer, who hold the people of Israel in slavery. The slaves
will be masters and the masters slaves, and all the countries of the
world will have their capital at Jerusalem and crowned kings will kneel
before the throne of the new king of Israel. The fields of Israel will
be more fertile than all the others, their pastures richer, their flocks
will multiply endlessly, wheat and barley will be harvested twice a
year, the ears of wheat will be heavier than in the past, and two men
will bend under the weight of a single bunch of grapes. There will not
be enough wine-skins to contain the vintage nor enough jars to hold all
the oil, and honey will be found in the hollows of the trees and in the
hedges of the roads. The branches of the trees will break under the
weight of the fruit, and the fruit will be pulpy and sweet as it never
was before.
This is the Messiah expected by the Jews who surround Jesus. He knows He
cannot give them what they seek, that He cannot be the victorious
warrior and the proud king towering up among subject kings. He knows
that His kingdom is not of this earth and that He will be able to offer
only a little bread, all His blood and all His love. They will not
believe in Him, will torture Him and will kill Him as a false pretender.
He knows all that. He knows it as if He had seen it with His eyes and
endured it with His body and soul. But He knows that the seed of His
word thrown into the earth among thistles and thorns, trampled under
foot by assassins, will start into life when spring comes. At first
beaten down by the wind, little by little it will grow, until finally it
becomes a tree stretching its branches up to the sky, covering the earth
with the boughs. And all men can sit round about it, remembering the
death of Him who planted it.
THE PROPHET OF FIRE
While Jesus, in the poor little work-shop at Nazareth, was handling the
ax and the square, a voice was raised in the desert towards Jordan and
the Dead Sea. Last of the Prophets, John the Baptist called the Jews to
repent, announced the approach of the Kingdom of Heaven, predicted the
coming of the Messiah, reproved the sinners who came to him, and plunged
them into the water of the river, that this outer washing might be the
beginning of an inner purification.
In that dark age of the Herods, old Judea profaned by the Idumean
usurpers, contaminated by Greek infiltration, scorned by the Roman
soldiery; without King, without unity, without glory; already half
dispersed throughout the world; betrayed by their own priests; always
remembering the grandeur of their earthly kingdom of a thousand years
ago; always obstinately hoping for a great vengeance, for a miraculous
resurrection, for a return of victory in a triumph of its God, in the
coming of a Saviour, of a liberator, of an anointed one who should reign
in a new Jerusalem stronger and more beautiful than that of Solomon, and
from Jerusalem dominate all the peoples, overcome all other monarchs,
conquer all empires and bring happiness to its nation and to all
men,—old Judea hating its masters, robbed by the publicans, plagued by
the mercenary scribes and by the hypocritical Pharisees, old Judea
divided, humiliated, plundered and yet in spite of all its shame full of
faith for the future, willingly lent an ear to the voice of the desert,
and hastened to the banks of the Jordan.
John’s figure was one to conquer the imagination. A child sprung by a
miracle from parents of great age, he was set apart from his birth to be
Nazir—pure. He had never cut his hair, had never tasted wine or cider,
had never touched a woman nor known any love except that for God. While
he was still young, he had left his parents’ home and buried himself in
the desert. There he lived for many years alone, without a house,
without a tent, without servants, with nothing of his own except what he
had on his back. Wrapped in his camel’s skin, his flanks girt by a
leather belt, tall, bony, baked by the sun, his chest hairy, his hair
hanging long on his shoulders, his long beard almost covering his face,
his piercing eyes flashed like lightning from under his busy eyebrows
when from his mouth hidden by his beard burst out the tremendous words
of his maledictions.
This hypnotic wild man, solitary as a Yogi, despising pleasure like a
stoic, seemed to those whom he baptized the last hope of a despairing
people.
Jesus heard the people talk of those “washed ones” who returned from
Jordan and took up their former lives, as in the morning a garment is
resumed which was thrown away with relief the evening before; and He
understood that His day grew near. He was now in His thirtieth year, the
right and destined age. Before he is thirty, a man is only a sketch, an
approximation, dominated by the common sentiments and common loves of
all. He does not know men well, and hence cannot love them with that
love, sweet with compassion, with which they should be loved. And
without knowing them or knowing how to love them, he cannot speak with
authority, cannot make himself heard, has not the power of saving them.
THE FIRST ANNUNCIATION
The desert sun burned John’s body and his fiery longing for the Kingdom
burned like a flame in his soul. He was the foreteller of fire. He saw
in the Messiah, soon to appear, the master of flame. The New King will
be a fierce husbandman. Every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit
is hewn down and cast into the fire. He will thoroughly purge His floor
and gather His wheat into the garner, but He will burn up the chaff with
unquenchable fire. He will be a baptizer who will baptize with fire.
Rigid, wrathful, harsh, shaggy, quick to insult, impatient and
impetuous, John was not gentle with those who came to him. He took no
satisfaction in having drawn them to take this first step towards
repentance. When Pharisees and Sadducees, notable men, learned in the
Scriptures, esteemed by the crowd, of authority in the temple came to be
baptized, he shamed them more than the others. “O generation of vipers,
who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth
therefore fruits meet for repentance: And think not to say within
yourselves, We have Abraham for our father: for I say unto you, that God
is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.”
You who lock yourselves up into houses of stone as vipers hide
themselves under the rocks, you Pharisees and Sadducees, are harder than
stone: your minds are petrified in the letter and the rites of the law:
your selfish hearts are stony: to the hungry who ask bread of you, you
give a stone, and you throw the stone at him who has sinned less than
you. You Pharisees and Sadducees, you are haughty statues of stone which
only fire can conquer, since water poured over you is quickly dried up.
But God, who from a handful of earth made Adam, could make from stones
from the shore, with rocks from the cliff, other men, other living
beings, other sons for Himself. He could change granite into flesh and
soul, while you have changed soul and flesh into granite. It is not
enough therefore to bathe in the Jordan. That ablution is holy and
salutary. Change your life, do the opposite of what you have done until
now, if you do not wish to be burned up by Him, who will baptize by
fire. “And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then? He
answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to
him that hath none, and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.”
“Then came also publicans to be baptized and said unto him, Master, what
shall we do? And he said unto them, Exact no more than that which is
appointed you.
“And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we
do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any
falsely; and be content with your wages.”
Compelling, almost superhuman when he announced the terrible separation
of the good from the bad, John becomes commonplace when he descends to
particulars and falls, one might say, exactly into the Pharisean
tradition. His only advice is to give alms, to give away the
superfluous. From the publicans he asks only strict justice: let them
take what has been allotted and nothing more. To the fierce, thieving
tribe of soldiers, he recommends only discretion! “Be satisfied with
your pay and do not rob.” This is nothing more or less than the Mosaic
law. Long before him, Amos and Isaiah had gone further.
Now is the time for the accuser of the Dead Sea to give way to the
liberator of the Sea of Tiberias. The lot of precursors is hard: they
know, but are not permitted to see; they arrive on the banks of the
Jordan, but do not enjoy the promised land; they make plain the path for
him who comes after them, but will pass beyond them. They prepare the
throne and do not seat themselves on it. They are servants of the master
whom often they do not meet face to face. Perhaps the fierceness of John
is justified by this consciousness of being an ambassador and nothing
more. A consciousness which is never envious, but which leaves a tinge
of sadness, even in his humility. They came from Jerusalem to ask him
who he was, “What then? Art thou Elias?”
“No. I am not.”
“Art thou that Prophet?”
“And he answered, No.”
“Art thou the Christ?”
“No.... He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.... He
it is, who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe’s latchet
I am not worthy to unloose.”
At Nazareth, in the meantime, an unknown working man was lacing up His
shoes with His own hands to go out to the wilderness, resounding with
the voice which three times had thundered, “No.”
THE VIGIL
John called sinners to wash in the river before repenting. Jesus
presented Himself to John to be baptized. Did He then acknowledge
Himself a sinner?
The texts are explicit: the prophet preached the baptism of repentance
in remission of sins. He who went to him acknowledged himself a sinner;
he who goes to wash, feels himself polluted.
The fact that we know nothing of the life of Jesus from His twelfth to
His thirtieth year, exactly the years of fallible adolescence, of
hot-blooded youth, has given rise to the idea that He was in that
period, or at least held Himself to have been, a sinner like other men.
The three remaining years of His life are the most brightly lighted by
the words of the four Gospels because in thinking of the dead, what we
most vividly remember are their words and deeds during the last days of
their lives. Nothing of what we know of those three years gives any
indication of this supposed existence of sin in Christ’s life between
the innocence of its beginning and the glory of its ending.
There is not even the appearance of a conversion in Christ’s life. His
first words have the same accent as the last. The spring from which they
run is clear from the first day; there is no muddy sediment of evil. He
begins with frank absolute certainty, with the recognizable authority of
purity. You can feel that He has left nothing turbid back of Him. His
voice is clear and limpid, a melodious song not roughened by the sour
lees of voluptuous pleasure, or by the hoarseness of repentance. The
transparent serenity of His look, of His smile and of His thought is not
the calm which comes after the clouds of the tempest, or the uncertain
whiteness of the dawn which slowly conquers the malign shadow of the
night: it is the clearness of Him who was born only once, and remained a
youth even into His maturity: the limpidity, the transparency, the
tranquillity, the peace of a day which ends in night, but is not
darkened until evening: eternal day, childhood intact and untarnished
until death.
He goes about among the impure with the natural simplicity of the poor
among sinners, with the natural strength of the sound man among the
sick, with the natural boldness of health. On the other hand, the man
who has been converted is always at the back of his mind a little
troubled. A single drop of bitterness, a light shadow of impurity, a
fleeting suggestion of temptation is enough to drive him back into
anguish. He always feels a doubt that he may not have rid himself wholly
of the old Adam, that he may not have wholly destroyed but only stunned
the Other, who lived in his body. He has paid so much for his salvation,
and it seems to him so precious but so frail, that he is always afraid
of putting it into jeopardy or of losing it. He does not shun sinners,
but he approaches them with an involuntary shudder, with a scarcely
confessed fear of fresh contagion, a dread lest the sight of the
vileness where he also took delight will renew unbearably the
recollection of his shame, will drive him to despair of his ultimate
salvation. When a servant becomes a master he is never on familiar terms
with his servants. When a poor man becomes rich he is not generous with
the poor. A converted sinner is not always a friend of sinners. That
remnant of pride which sticks fast in the hearts even of saints mingles
with his compassion. Why do sinners not do what he has done? The way is
open to all, even to the wickedest, the most hardened: the prize is
great, why do they remain down there, plunged in black Hell?
And when the converted sinner speaks to his brothers to convert them, he
cannot refrain from dwelling on his own experience, his fall, his
liberation. It may be only that he wishes to be helpful, rather than to
vaunt himself, but in any case he is always eager to point to himself as
a living and present example of the sweetness of salvation.