His only little daughter lay at the point of death. The man’s name was
Jairus, and although he was a leader at the Synagogue he believed in
Jesus. They went along together. When they were half-way, a servant met
them, saying, “Thy daughter is dead; trouble not the Master.” But when
Jesus heard it, He answered him, saying, “Fear not: believe only, and
she shall be made whole.” And when He came into the house He suffered no
man to go in, save Peter, and James, and John, and the father and the
mother of the maiden. And all wept, and bewailed her: but He said, “Weep
not; she is not dead, but sleepeth.” And they laughed Him to scorn,
knowing that she was dead. And He put them all out, and took her by the
hand, and called, saying, “Maid, arise.” And her spirit came again, and
she arose straightway: and He commanded to give her meat. She was not a
visible spirit, a ghost, but a living body, awakened a little weak,
ready for a new day after feverish dreams.
LAZARUS AWAKENED
Lazarus and Jesus loved each other. More than once Jesus had eaten in
his house at Bethany with him and his sisters. Now one day Lazarus fell
ill, and sent word of it to Jesus. And Jesus answered, “This sickness is
not unto death.” Two days went by. But on the third day He said to His
disciples, “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him
out of sleep.” He was near to Bethany when Martha came to meet Him as if
to reproach Him.
“Lord, if Thou hadst been here my brother had not died.” And a little
later Mary too said, “Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not
died.” Their repeated reproach touched Jesus, not because He feared He
had come too late, but because He was always saddened by the lack of
faith even of those dearest to Him.
“And he said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and
see.... Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave.
It was a cave and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, Take ye away the
stone.”
Martha, the housekeeper, the practical, concrete character, interrupted,
“Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.” But
Jesus did not heed her, “Take away the stone.” And the stone was rolled
away. Jesus made a short prayer, His face lifted towards the sky, drew
near to the hole and called His friend in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come
forth.”
And Lazarus came forth, stumbling, for his hands and feet were shrouded
and his face covered with a napkin.
“Loose him, and let him go.”
And all four, followed by the Twelve and by a throng of thunderstruck
Jews, returned to the house. Lazarus’ eyes grew wonted again to the
light. He walked on his feet, although with pain, and used his hands.
Martha, moving rapidly, got together the best dinner she could in the
confusion after four days of demoralized sorrow—and the man come back to
life after death ate with his sister and his friends. Mary could
scarcely swallow a mouthful of food, nor take her eyes from the
conqueror of death, who, having wiped the tears from His eyes, broke His
bread and drank His wine as if this day were like any other day.
These are the resurrections narrated by the Evangelists, and from their
account we can draw some observations which will allow us to dispense
with learned, that is to say with unsuitable, commentaries. In all His
life, Jesus raised from the dead only three persons, and this He did,
not to make a show of His power and to strike the imagination of the
people, but only because He was touched by the sorrow of those who loved
the dead, to console a mother, a father, two sisters. Two of these
resurrections were public; one, that of the daughter of Jairus, was
accomplished in the presence of very few, and Jesus asked those few to
say nothing about it.
Another point, and the most important; in all these three cases Jesus
spoke to the dead person as if he were not dead but only asleep. He had
no time to say anything about the condition of the son of the widow,
because that decision was taken too rapidly, but even to him, He said,
as to a child, idly oversleeping, “Young man, I say unto thee, arise.”
When they told Him that the daughter of Jairus was dead, He answered,
“Weep not, she is not dead but sleepeth.” When they confirmed the news
of the death of Lazarus, He insisted, “He is not dead but sleepeth.” He
made no claim to bring back from the dead, only to awaken. Death for Him
was only a sleep, a deeper sleep than the common sleep of everyday, a
sleep only to be broken by a superhuman love. This love was for the
survivors more than for the dead; it was the love of one whose tears
flow at the sight of others’ tears.
THE MARRIAGE AT CANA
Jesus liked to go to weddings. For the man of the people who very seldom
gives way to lavishness and gayety, who never eats and drinks as much as
he would like, the day of his wedding is the most remarkable of all his
life, a rich passage of generous gayety in his long, drab, commonplace
existence. Wealthy people who can have banquets every evening, moderns
who gulp down in a day what would have sufficed for a week to the poor
man of olden times, no longer feel the solemn joyfulness of that day.
But the poor man in the old days, the workingman, the countryman, the
Oriental who lived all the year round on barley-bread, dried figs and a
few fish and eggs, and only on great days killed a lamb or a kid, the
man accustomed to stint himself, to calculate closely, to dispense with
many things, to be satisfied with what is strictly necessary, saw in
weddings the truest and greatest festival of his life. The other
festivals, those of the people and those of the Church, were the same
for everybody, and they are repeated every twelfth month; but a wedding
was his very own festival and only came once for him in all the cycle of
his years.
Then all the delights and splendors of the world were centered around
the bride and groom, to make the day unforgettable for them. Torches
went at night to meet the groom with singers, dancers and musicians. The
house was filled with abundance, all sorts of meats cooked in all sorts
of ways; wine-skins of wine leaning against the walls, vases of unguents
for the friends; light, music, perfumes, gayety, dancing; nothing was
lacking for the gratification of the senses. On that one day all the
things which are the daily privilege of princes and rich men triumphed
in the poor man’s house.
Jesus was pleased by this innocent joy, and touched by the exultation of
those simple souls, snatched for those few hours from the gloomy,
niggardly poverty of their everyday life. In weddings He saw more than a
mere festival. Marriage is the supreme effort of the youth of man to
conquer Fate with love, with the union of two affections, with the
joining of two loving youths. It is the affirmation of a double faith in
life, in the continuity and stability of life. The man who marries is a
hostage in the hands of human society. Making himself the head of a new
society and father of a new generation, he frees himself while he
professes to bind himself. Marriage is a promise of happiness, and an
acceptance of suffering. Illusion and conscience have their part in it.
In the shadow of tragedy, which sends over the future a trembling hope
of joy, is the heroic and holy greatness of marriage, which cannot be
dispensed with, and yet, in the light of selfish reason, should not be
accepted. Who has ever seen, except in this case, a condemnation so
eagerly longed for?
For Jesus marriage has a still deeper meaning: it is the beginning of
something eternal. Whom God hath joined, man cannot put asunder. When
hearts have been united and bodies joined, no law nor sword can sever
them. In this our human life, changeable, ephemeral, evasive, failing,
frail, there is only one thing that ought to last forever till death and
beyond death,—marriage, the only link of eternity in the perishable
chain.
Jesus often speaks of weddings and banquets. Among the most beautiful
parables is that of the King who sent out invitations to the wedding of
his son, that other of the Virgins who wait by night for the arrival of
the bridegroom’s friend; and that of the Lord who prepared a banquet.
Christ compares Himself to a bridegroom feasted by His friends when He
answers those who are scandalized because His disciples eat and drink.
He did not despise wine, and when with His Twelve, He drinks that wine
which is His blood, He thinks of the new wine of the Kingdom. It is not
surprising therefore that He should have accepted the invitation to the
wedding at Cana. Every one knows the miracle He wrought that day. Six
jars of water were changed by Jesus into wine, and into wine better than
that which had been drunk. Old rationalists say that this was a present
of wine kept hidden until then, a surprise of Jesus at the end of the
meal, in honor of the bride and groom. And six hundred quarts of wine,
they add, are a fine present, showing the liberality of the Master.
These Voltairian vermin have not noticed that only John, the man of
allegories, the philosophizer, tells of the Marriage at Cana. It was not
a sleight-of-hand trick, but a true transmutation, performed with the
power of Spirit over matter, and at the same time it is one of those
Parables in fact, instead of in words, a Parable told by actual deeds.
But whoever does not stop at the literal meaning of the story, sees that
the water turned into wine symbolizes the new epoch which begins with
the Gospel. Before the Annunciation and the vigil in the desert, water
was enough; the world was left to sorrow. But now the joyful tidings are
come, the Kingdom is at hand, happiness is near. Men are about to pass
from sadness to joy, from the widowhood of the old law to the new
marriage with the new law. The Bridegroom is with us. Now is no time for
sadness, but for enthusiasm. There will be no more fasting but
rejoicings; no more water but wine.
Remember the words of the steward to the Bridegroom, “Every man at the
beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then
that which is worse: but Thou hast kept the good wine until now.” Such
was the old usage, the usage of the Jews of old times and of the
heathen. But Jesus meant to overturn this old amphictyonic usage also.
The men of old gave the good and then the poor; He, after the good wine,
gives better. Sour, unripened wine, the poor quality which was drunk at
the beginning, symbolizes the wine of the old law, the wine that has
turned sour and can no longer be drunk. Christ’s wine, finer and
stronger, which cheers the heart and warms the blood, is the new wine of
the Kingdom, wine intended for the marriage of Heaven and earth, wine
which gives that divine intoxication which will be called later, “the
foolishness of God.”
The marriage of Cana, which in John is the first miracle, is an allegory
of the evangelical revolution.
THE ACCURSED FIG-TREE
Another parable expressed in the form of a miracle is that of the
withered fig-tree. One morning towards Easter, returning from Bethany to
Jerusalem, Jesus was hungry. He came up to a fig-tree and found only
leaves. It was too early to expect fruit, even from the earliest
species. Yet Jesus, according to Matthew and Mark, was angry at the poor
tree and cursed it.
According to Matthew, “Let no fruit grow on thee hence-forward forever.”
And presently the fig-tree withered away.
According to Mark, “No man eat fruit of thee hereafter forever.... And
in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig-tree dried up from
the roots.”
In the Evangelists the account of the curse is followed by a return to
the thought many times expressed by Jesus, that anything can be obtained
if asked for with powerful faith.
Others instead see here a metaphorical lament which many times returned
to Jesus’ lips. The fig-tree is Israel, the old Judaic religion, which
from now on will bear only unnourishing leaves of rites and ceremonies,
leaves fated to shrivel without nourishing men. Jesus, hungry for
justice, hungry for love, sought among the leaves for sustaining fruits
of mercy and holiness. He did not find them. Israel did not feed His
hunger nor fulfill His hope. From now on nothing can be expected from
the old trunk, leafy but sterile. May it be dead to all eternity! Other
races will henceforth be fruitful.
The miracle of the cursed fig-tree is at bottom nothing more than a very
apparent gloss of the parable of the sterile fig-tree in Luke. “A
certain man had a fig-tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and
sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of
his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this
fig-tree and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?”
And he answering said unto him, “Lord, let it alone this year also, till
I shall dig about it and dung it: and if it bear fruit, well: and if
not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.”
The tree was not condemned at first, but after three years of sterility,
and even then by the intercession of the workman, was given a year’s
respite, and in that year the plant was handled and treated with loving
care. That was to be the final test: only if all care was unavailing was
it to be hewn down and burned.
For three years Jesus had preached to the Jews, and He was thinking of
giving them up, and announcing the Kingdom to others. But one of His
workers, a disciple still attached to his people, asked for mercy; one
respite more. We shall see whether even great love could convert this
adulterous and bastard generation. But when they were on the road from
Bethany, Judaism had been put to the test, Christ had only His Cross to
expect. The evil fig-tree of Judaism deserved to be burned and from that
time on no one will eat its tardy, withered fruit.
BREAD AND FISHES
On two occasions there was a multiplication of bread, alike in all
details except the proportions of the quantities involved,—that is, in
exactly what give them their real spiritual meaning.
Thousands of poor people had followed Jesus into a place in the
wilderness, far from any settlements. For three days they had not eaten,
so hungry were they for the bread of life which is His word. But on the
third day, Jesus took pity on them—there were women and children among
them—and ordered His disciples to feed the multitude. But they had only
a little bread and a few fishes, and there were thousands of mouths.
Then Jesus had them all sit down on the ground on the green grass, in
circles of fifty to a hundred, He blessed the small amount of food they
had; all were satisfied, and baskets of the broken pieces were left.
The less there is of the true bread, the bread of truth, the more it
satisfies. The old law is abundant, copious, divided into innumerable
sections. There are hundreds of precepts written in the books and
thousands more invented by the Scribes and Pharisees. At first sight it
seems a gigantic table where a whole race could be satisfied. But all
these precepts, these rules and formulas are only dry leaves, shavings,
trash. No one can live on such fare. The more numerous they are, the
less they satisfy. Humble and simple people cannot satisfy their hunger
for justice with these innumerable but inedible viands. Instead, one
Word alone sums up all the words and transcends the petrified bigotry
beloved by the complacent and satiated; one Word which fills the soul,
which reconciles hearts, which calms the hunger for justice; the
multitudes will be satisfied and there will be enough to eat also for
those who were not present on that day. Spiritual bread is in itself
miraculous. A loaf of wheat bread is only enough for a very few, and
when they have finished it, there is no more for any one! But the bread
of truth, that mystic bread of Joy is never finished, can never be
finished. Give it out to thousands and it is always there; distribute it
to millions, and it is always intact. Every one has taken his part as
the men and women in the wilderness did, and as much as was given out,
so much the more remains for those who are to come.
Another day when the disciples found themselves without bread, Jesus
admonished them to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
And the disciples, almost always slow to understand Him, said among
themselves, “It is because we have taken no bread.” Which when Jesus
perceived he said unto them, “O ye of little faith, why reason ye among
yourselves, because ye have brought no bread? Do ye not yet understand
neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand and how many
baskets ye took up? Neither the seven loaves of the four thousand and
how many baskets ye took up? How is it that ye do not understand that I
spake it not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware of the
leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees?” That is, of the blind
guardians of the degenerate law.
They are the Twelve, the chosen, the blest, the faithful, and yet they
cannot understand at once, do not sufficiently believe.
Again in the boat, the night of the tempest, Jesus was obliged to
reprove them. The Master had gone to sleep in the stern, His head on the
pillow of one of the rowers. Suddenly the wind rose, a storm came down
on the lake, the waves beat against the boat and it seemed from one
moment to the next that they would be wrecked. The disciples, alarmed,
awakened Jesus, “Master, carest thou not that we perish?” And he arose,
and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, “Peace, be still.” And the
wind ceased and there was a great calm. And He said unto them, “Why are
ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?” And they feared
exceedingly, and said one to another, “What manner of man is this, that
even the wind and the sea obey him?”
There is one, Simon Peter, who has no fear. Not only does his nature
transcend the human, but great is his faith, great his love, great his
power of will. Nothing animate nor inanimate can resist these three
great qualities. A man who possesses them has renounced all that is
temporal and is victorious over time. He has renounced the good things
of the flesh, and for this reason can save the flesh; he has renounced
material things and so is master of matter. Every one can partake of
this power. Faith is sufficient, but it must not be faith only in
oneself.
A few years before Christ, a great Italian, captain in many wars,
corrupt but a fitting ruler over the putrefaction of the Republic, was
on the sea, on a real sea, in a boat with a few rowers, in search of an
army which had not come up in time to win the victory for him. The wind
began to blow, the tempest bore down on the boat and the pilot wished to
turn back to the harbor. But Cæsar, taking the hand of the pilot, said
to him, “Go forward, fear not, Cæsar is with thee and his fortune sails
with you.” These words of haughty self-confidence heartened the crew;
every one, as if a little of Cæsar’s strength had entered into his soul,
did his best to overcome the opposition of the sea. But notwithstanding
the efforts of the seamen the ship was nearly sunk and was obliged to
turn back. Cæsar’s faith was only pride and ambition, faith in himself:
Christ’s faith was all love, love for the Father, love for men.
With this love He could walk to meet the boat of the disciples tacking
against a contrary wind, and could step upon the water as on the grass
of a meadow. They thought in the darkness that it was a specter, and
once again He was obliged to reassure them, “Be of good cheer: it is I;
be not afraid.” As soon as He was in the boat, the wind fell and in a
few minutes they reached the shore. Once again they were astounded
because, says the honest Mark, “For they considered not the miracle of
the loaves: for their heart was hardened.”
This comparison may seem ingenuous, but it is revealing, for the miracle
of the loaves is the foundation of all the others. Every parable spoken
in poetic words or expressed with visible prodigies was as bread
prepared in different manners, so that His own followers, at least His
very own, should understand the one needful truth that the Spirit is the
only fare worthy of man, and that the man who is nourished on that fare
is master of the world.
NOT SECRETIVE: A POET
Jesus seems at first sight secretive. He orders those affected by
miracles to say to no man who has cured them; He wishes prayers and
charity to be done secretly; when the disciples recognize that He is the
Christ, He charges them not to repeat it; after the Transfiguration He
bids the three keep silence, and when He teaches He uses parables which
all men are not capable of understanding.
On further thought, on really considering the matter, it is apparent
that Jesus has nothing of the esoteric. He has no secret doctrine to
impart to a few acolytes. His words are public and open. He always
speaks in the public squares of cities, on the beaches of lakes, in the
Synagogue, in the midst of the people. He forbids speaking of His
miracles in order that He may not be confused with wizards and
exorcists; He commands to do good secretly in order to keep vainglory
from destroying merit; He does not wish the Twelve to proclaim Him the
Christ before His entry into Jerusalem, the public inauguration of His
Messiahship; and He speaks in parables to be better understood by the
simple who listen more willingly to a story than to a sermon, and
remember a narration better than an argument.
Three of the Evangelists report a speech of Jesus, which seems to
contradict this view. “Unto you,” He is speaking to the disciples, “it
is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, but to others it
is not given; therefore I speak to them in parables that seeing they
might not see, and hearing they might not understand.”
But Jesus means only to say this, “You understand these mysteries, but
the many do not understand them, although they have ears and spirits
like yours. And to them that they may understand I speak in
parables,—that is, in a figurative language of facts because it is
easier and more familiar.” You teach children with fables and the simple
with stories, and “the many” have remained like the simple and the
childish. To overcome the slowness of their minds I use words adapted to
their nature. They are all fancy, and little intellect; and the parables
are an appeal to the imagination more than to the reasoning powers. I do
not employ them therefore to hide the truth, but the better to reveal it
to those who could not see it in a purely rational form. For if then
they do not understand, it is the fault of their obstinacy, which often
closes the eyes and ears of the soul.
Jesus had no mysteries to dissemble. It was His wish that all, even the
most humble and ignorant, should understand Him. The parables were not
made to hide His teaching from the profane, but to make it more explicit
and understandable to every one. That sometimes even the intelligence of
the Twelve is inferior to this task is a melancholy conclusion by no
means unknown to Jesus.
The marvelous content of His message has cast into the shade His poetic
originality, not less marvelous. Jesus never wrote—once only He wrote on
the sand, and the wind destroyed forever His handwriting—but in the
midst of a people of powerful imagination, of the people who wrote the
Psalter, the story of Ruth, the book of Job, the Song of Songs, He would
have been one of the greatest poets of all times. His victorious
youthfulness of spirit, the racy, popular language of the country where
He grew up, the books He had read, few but among the richest of all
poetry—His loving communion with the life of the fields and of animals
and above all His divine and passionate yearning to give light to those
who suffer in the dark, to save those who are being lost forever, to
carry supreme happiness to the most unhappy (because true poetry does
not catch its fire from the light of the lantern but at the light of the
stars and of the sun, is not found in the writings left behind by
great-grandfathers, but in love, in sorrow in the deeply moved soul);
these things combined made of Jesus a poet, an inventor of living and
eternal images with which he achieved a miracle on which the Evangelists
make no comment,—the miracle of communicating the highest truth by the
means of stories so simple, familiar, full of grace that after twenty
centuries they shine with that unique youth which is eternity. Some of
these stories are only idyllic or epic restatements of revelations which
at other times He expounded in abstract words; but there are some which
express things never said in any other form in His teaching. The
parables are the imaginative comments on the Sermon on the Mount, such
as could be made only by a poet who merits the title of divine more
truly than any other poet ever born.
YEAST
City ladies do not make their own bread, but old countrywomen and
housewives know what yeast is. A handful of dough from the last baking
as big as a child’s hand, wet with warm water and put into the new
dough, raises even as much as three measures of flour.