lack of understanding of this episode. Every one or nearly every one
remembers only those words: “Her sins are forgiven, for she loved much.”
An attentive reading of the text shows that this ordinary interpretation
is the opposite of the truth. It is thought that Jesus forgave her sins
because she had loved many men, or because she had shown her love for
Him with her perfume and her kisses. The parable of the two debtors
makes it clear that the meaning of Jesus’ words, badly quoted and even
more completely misunderstood, is entirely the contrary. The woman had
sinned greatly and because of her repentance she was wholly pardoned;
and because her pardon was great she greatly loved Him who had saved
her, who had forgiven her; the nard and her tears and her kisses were
the expression of that grateful love. If before going into the house
that evening the sinning woman had not already become transformed by
virtue of her pardon, she would not have obtained from Jesus forgiveness
for her past life spent in evil, not by using all the perfumes of India
and Egypt nor by all the kisses of her lips, nor by all the tears of her
eyes. Christ’s forgiveness was not the reward for those acts of homage;
those acts were her thank-offerings for her forgiveness already
received; and they were great because her forgiveness was great, as her
forgiveness had been great because great had been her sin.
Jesus would not have repelled the sinning woman even if she had still
been a sinner, but if He had not been sure of her conversion He would
not perhaps have accepted those tokens of love; from now on even the
most rigorous Pharisaical precepts permitted Him to speak with her: “Thy
faith hath saved thee; go in peace.”
Simon could think of no answer; but from the side of the disciples a
rough, angry voice was raised, well known to Jesus. It was the voice of
Judas: “Why was this waste of the ointment made, why was not this
ointment sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor?” And the
other disciples, so the Evangelists say, approved the words of Judas,
and murmured against the woman. Judas was the man who held the purse;
the basest of them all had chosen the basest element,—money.
Money was pleasing to Judas, pleasing in itself and pleasing in its
possibility of power. He spoke of the poor, but he did not think of the
poor, to whom Jesus had distributed bread in the country-solitudes, as
well as to his own companions, too poor as yet to conquer Jerusalem and
to found the empire of the Messiah where Judas hoped to be one of the
masters. And he was envious as well as grasping; envious as all misers
are. That silent anointing which was the consecration of the King and
the Messiah, those honors offered by a beautiful woman to his Leader,
made him suffer; the everlasting jealousy of man against man, when a
woman is concerned, was mingled with the disappointment of his cupidity.
But Jesus answered the words of Judas as He answered the silence of
Simon. He did not affront those who had affronted Him, but he defended
the woman at His feet. And Jesus said, “Let her alone; why trouble ye
her? she hath wrought a good work on me. For ye have the poor with you
always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not
always. She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my
body to the burying. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel
shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath
done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.”
The inexpressible sadness of this prophecy escaped perhaps those who sat
about Him. They could not be persuaded that Jesus, in order to overcome,
should be overcome: that in order to triumph eternally He must die. But
Jesus felt the day drawing near, “But me ye have not always, she is come
to anoint my body to the burying.” The woman listened in terror to this
confirmation of her presentiment and another burst of tears rained down
from her eyes. Then with her face hidden in her loosened hair, she went
away as silently as she had come.
The disciples were silent, not convinced, but abashed. To hide his
chagrin Simon filled the guest’s cup with better wine, but in the yellow
light of the lamps the silent table seemed a banquet of ghosts among
whom had passed the shadow of death.
“WHO AM I?”
And yet the disciples knew. Those words of death were not the first they
had heard from Jesus’ lips. They should have remembered that day, not
long before, when on a solitary road near Cæsarea, Jesus had asked what
people said of Him. They should have remembered the answer which flashed
out like sudden flame, the impetuous outcry of belief from Peter’s
heart; and the splendor which had shone on three of them on the summit
of the mountain; and the exact prophecies of Christ as to the manner of
His death.
They had heard and they had seen, and still they hoped on,—all but one.
The truth shone out in them at moments like lightning-flashes in the
dark. Then the night fell blacker than ever. The new man in their hearts
who recognized Jesus as the Christ, the man born for the second time,
the Christian, disappeared to give way to the Jew, deaf and blind, who
saw nothing beyond the Jerusalem of bricks and stone.
The question which Jesus had put to the Twelve on the road in Cæsarea
must have been the beginning of their complete conversion to the new
truth. What need did Jesus have to know what others thought of Him? Such
a curiosity springs up only in doubtful souls, in those who do not know
themselves, in the weak who cannot read in their own hearts, in the
blind who are not sure of the ground on which they stand. For any one of
us such a question is legitimate, but not for Jesus. No one of us knows
really who he is, no one knows with any certainty what is his real
nature, his mission, and the name which he has a right to call his own,
the eternal name which fits our destiny. The name which was given to us
in infancy, together with the salt and water of baptism, the name set
down on the municipal register, and written in the records of birth and
of death, the name which the mother calls with so much gentleness in the
morning, which the sweetheart murmurs with so much desire at night, the
name which is cut for the last time on the rectangle of the tomb, that
is not our real name. Every one of us has a secret name which expresses
our invisible and authentic essence, and which we ourselves will never
know until the day of the New Birth, until the full light of the
resurrection.
Few of us dare to ask ourselves, “Who am I?” and there are still fewer
who can answer. The question “Who art thou?” is the most tremendous, the
most weighty which man can put to man. Other human beings are for each
of us a sealed mystery even in the moments of supreme passion, when two
souls desperately essay to become one. We are all of us a mystery even
to ourselves. Unknown to others, we live among others unknown to us.
Much of our wretchedness comes from this universal ignorance. Here is a
man who acts like a king and believes himself a king and in the absolute
he is really only a poor servant, predestined from the beginning of time
to dependent mediocrity. Here is another dressed and acting like a
judge; look at him well; he is born a dry-goods dealer, his real place
is in the country fair. That man there who writes poetry has not
understood his inner voice; he should be a goldsmith, because gold which
can be turned into coin suits his taste, and he is attracted by
filigree, mosaics, chasing, imitation jewels. This other man who is at
the head of an army ought to be teaching school. What an expert and
eloquent professor he might have become! And that fellow there, shouting
in the public places, heading a revolution, calling on the people to
revolt, is a gardener who has mistaken his calling; the red of tomatoes,
long lines of onions, garlic, and cabbages would be the fit reward of
his true mission. This other man here, on the contrary, who, cursing his
fate, prunes his grape-vines and spreads the manure on the cultivated
earth, should have studied in law-books the art of quibbling: no one can
invent sophisms and verbal tricks as he can, and even now, how much
eloquence he pours out in humble duels about money matters, this poor
“leading lawyer” exiled to barns and furrows.
These errors concern us because we do not know, because we have not
spiritual eyes strong enough to read in the heart which beats inside our
own breasts, and the hearts which beat under the flesh of our neighbors,
so irrevocably remote from us. Everything is in confusion because of
those Names which we do not know, illegible for us, known to genius
alone.
THOU ART THE CHRIST
But what did Jesus care what was said of Him by the men of the lake and
of the cities, Jesus who could read in their souls the thoughts hidden
even to themselves? Long before that day Jesus alone knew with ineffable
certainty what His real name was, and what was his superhuman nature. As
a matter of fact He did not ask that He might know, but, now that the
end was near, that His faithful followers might know, His real name, at
last—even they.
“Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others,
Jeremias or, one of the Prophets.”
What were these things to Him, these rudimentary guesses of the poor and
the ignorant? He wished the definite answer to come from His Disciples,
destined as they were to follow His work and to bear witness to Him
among the peoples and the centuries. Even at the last He did not wish to
impose by force a belief on those who had seen His life close at hand
and had heard Him speak. The recognition of His superb human mission,
that name which not one of them up to that time had pronounced (as if
they were afraid of it, as if it were too dangerous a secret to speak
aloud), that recognition on the part of the Twelve should be free and
spontaneous, should burst out, an impetuous confession of love, from one
of those souls, should be pronounced by one of those mouths.
“But whom say ye that I am?” And then there came to Simon Peter the
great light that was almost too great for him, and made him First to all
eternity. He could not keep back the words, they came to his lips almost
involuntarily in a cry of which he himself the moment before would have
believed himself incapable: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living
God. Thou hast the word of eternal life, and we believe and are sure
that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.”
At last from Peter the Rock there sprang forth the wellspring which from
that day to this has quenched the thirst of sixty generations of men. It
was his right and his reward. Peter had been the first to follow Christ
in the divine wanderings: it was for him to be the first to recognize in
the wanderer the Proclaimer of the Kingdom, the everlasting and lawful
sovereign of that Kingdom, the Messiah whom all men had been awaiting in
the desert of the centuries, who had finally come and was there Himself,
clothed in flesh, standing before their eyes, with His feet in the dust
of the road.
The pure King, the Son of Justice, the Prince of Peace, the Son of Man
sent by God, the Saviour, the Anointed, whom the prophets had foretold
in the twilight of sorrow and affliction; who had been seen by
apocalyptic writers descending upon the earth like lightning, in the
fullness of victory and glory; for whom the poor, the wounded, the
hungry, the afflicted, had been waiting from century to century, as dry
grass waits for rain, as the flower waits for the sun, as the mouth
awaits the kiss, and the heart, consolation; the Son of God and of Man,
the Man who hid God in human flesh, the God who cloaked His divinity in
Adam’s clay, it is He, the dear Brother of every day, who looks quietly
into the astounded eyes of those chosen ones!
The period of waiting is done; ended is the vigil! Why had they not
recognized Him until that day? Whence did it come in those simple souls,
the first notion of the true name of Him who so many times had taken
them by the hand, and had spoken for their ears to hear? They could
never think that one of them—a common man like them, a workman and poor
as they were—could be the Saviour Messiah announced and awaited by
saints and by the centuries. With the intellect alone they could never
have discovered Him, nor with the mere bodily senses, nor with the
teachings of the scriptures; only with the inspiration, the intuition,
the sudden flaming illumination of the heart, as it happened that day in
the soul of Peter. “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona; for flesh and
blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in Heaven.”
Fleshly eyes would not have been able to see what they saw without a
revelation from on high.
But weighty consequences flow from the choice of Peter for this
proclamation. It is a reward which calls for other recompense, “Thou art
Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of Hell
shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the
kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be
bound in Heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be
loosed in Heaven.”
Weighty words from which have emerged, through the patient germination
of long centuries, helped by the fire of faith and by the blood of
witnesses, one of the greatest Kingdoms which men have ever established
upon the earth; the only one of the old kingdoms which still lives on in
the same city which saw the rise and fall of the proudest and most
pompous of earthly kingdoms. For these words many men suffered, many
were tortured, many were killed. To deny or uphold, to interpret or
cancel these words, thousands of men have been killed in city squares
and in battles; kingdoms have been divided, societies have been shaken
and rent, nations have waged war, emperors and beggars have given their
all. But their meaning in Christ’s mouth is plain and simple. He means
to say, “Thou, Peter, shalt be hard and staunch as a rock, and upon the
staunchness of thy faith in me, which thou wast the first to profess, is
founded the first Christian society, the humble seed of the Kingdom.
Against this Church which to-day has only Twelve citizens but which will
be spread to the limits of the earth, the forces of evil cannot prevail,
because you are the Spirit and the Spirit cannot be overcome and dimmed
by Matter. Thou shalt close forever—and when I speak to thee I am
speaking to all those who shall succeed thee united in the same
certainty—the Gates of Hell; and thou shalt open to all those who are
chosen the Gates of Heaven. Thou shalt bind and thou shalt unloosen in
my name. What thou shalt forbid after my death shall be forbidden
to-morrow also for that new humanity which I will find on my return;
what thou shalt command shalt be justly commanded because thou wilt be
only repeating in other words what I have told and taught thee. Thou
shalt be, in thy person and in that of thy legitimate heirs, the
shepherd of the interregnum, the temporary and provisional guide who
shalt prepare, together with comrades obedient to thee, the Kingdom of
God and of Love.
“In requital for this revelation and for this promise I lay on you a
hard command: to keep silence; for the present you must tell no one who
I am. My day is near, but has not yet come; you will be witness to
events which you do not expect, which will even be the contrary of what
you expect. I know the hour in which I shall speak and in which you
shall speak. And when we break our silence, my cry and your cry shall be
heard in the most distant realms of Heaven and Earth.”
SUN AND SNOW
A man’s voice, the voice of Peter the Rock, had called Him the Son of
Man; another voice issuing from a cloud was to call Him the Son of God.
Very high is the three-peaked mountain of Hermon, covered with snow even
in the hot season, the highest mountain of Palestine, higher than Mount
Tabor. The Psalmist says, “It is the dew of Hermon that descends upon
the mountains of Zion.” Jesus became incarnate light on this mountain,
the highest mountain in the life of Christ, that life which marks its
different stages by great heights—the mountain of the Temptation, the
mountain of the Beatitudes, the mountain of the Transfiguration, the
mountain of the Crucifixion.
Three Disciples alone were with Him: he who was called Peter, and the
Sons of Thunder,—the man with the rugged, mountainous character, and the
stormy men—fitting company for the place and hour. He prayed alone,
apart from them, higher than all of them, perhaps kneeling in the snow.
All of us have seen in winter how the snow on a mountain makes any other
whiteness seem dull and drab. A pale face seems strangely dark, white
linen seems dingy, paper looks like dry clay. The contrary of all this
was seen on that day up in the gleaming, deserted height alone in the
sky.
Jesus prayed by Himself apart from the others. Suddenly His face shone
like the sun and His raiment became as white as snow in the sunshine,
white “as no fuller on earth can white them.” Over the whiteness of the
snow a more brilliant whiteness, a splendor more powerful than all known
splendors, outshone all earthly light.
The Transfiguration is the Feast and the Victory of Light. Jesus still
in the flesh—for so short a time!—took on the most subtle, the lightest
and most spiritual aspect of matter. His body awaiting its liberation
became sunlight, the light of Heaven, intellectual and supernatural
light; His soul transfigured in prayer shone out through the flesh,
pierced with its flaming whiteness the screen of His body and His
garments, like a flame consuming the walls which close it in, and
flashing through them.
But the light was not the same on His face and on His raiment. The light
of His face was like the sun; that of His garments was like the
brilliance of snow. His face, mirror of the soul, took on the color of
fire; His garments, mere material stuff, were white like ice. For the
soul is sun, fire, love; but the garments, all garments,—even that heavy
garment which is called the human body,—are opaque, cold, dead; and can
shine only by reflected light.
But Jesus, all light, His face gleaming with quiet refulgence, His
garments shining white—gold sparkling in the midst of silver—was not
alone. Two great figures, returned from death, gleaming like Him, stood
by Him, and spoke with Him, Moses and Elias. The first of the Prophets,
men of light and fire, came to bear witness to the new Light which
shines on Hermon. All those who have spoken with God remain radiant with
light. The face of Moses when he came down from Mt. Sinai had become so
resplendent that he covered it with a veil, lest he dazzle the others.
And Elias was caught up to Heaven in a chariot of fire drawn by fiery
steeds. John, the new Elias, announced the baptism of fire, but his face
was darkened by the sun and did not shine like the sun. The only
splendor which came into his life was the golden platter on which his
bloody head was carried, a kingly gift to Herod’s sinister concubine.
But on Hermon there was One whose face shone more than Moses’ and whose
ascension was to be more splendid than that of Elias,—He whom Moses had
promised and who was to come after Elias. They had come there beside
him, but they were to disappear thereafter forever. They were no longer
necessary after this last revelation. From now on the world can do
without their laws and their hopes. A luminous cloud hid the glorious
three from the eyes of the obscure three, and from the cloud came out a
voice: “This is my beloved Son: hear him.”
The cloud did not hide the light, but increased it. As from the
tempest-cloud, the lightning darts out to light up suddenly all the
country; from this cloud already shining in itself, flamed out the fire
which burned up the Old Covenant and confirmed to all eternity the New
Promise. The column of smoke which guided the fleeing Hebrews in the
desert towards Jordan, the black cloud which hid the ark in the day of
desolation and fear, had finally become a cloud of light so brilliant
that it hid even the sunlike splendor of the face which was soon to be
buffeted in the dark days, close at hand.
But when the cloud disappeared, Jesus was once more alone. The two
precursors and the two witnesses had disappeared. His face had taken on
its natural color. His garments had their everyday aspect. Christ, once
more a loving brother, turned back to his swooning companions. “Arise,
and be not afraid.... Tell the vision to no man, until the son of man be
risen again from the dead.”
The Transfiguration forecasts the Ascension; but to die in shame always
precedes rising in glory.
I SHALL SUFFER MANY THINGS
Jesus had known that He must soon die a shameful death. It was the
reward for which he was waiting and no one could have defrauded Him of
it. He who saves others is ready to lose himself; he who rescues others
necessarily pays with his person (that is, with the only value which is
really his and which surpasses and includes all other values); it is
fitting that he who loves his enemies should be hated even by his
friends; he who brings salvation to all nations must needs be killed by
his own people; it suits human ideas of the fitness of things that he
who offers his life should be put to death. Every benefaction is such an
offense to the native ingratitude of men that it can be paid for only by
the heaviest penalty. We lend ears only to voices which cry out from the
tombs, and reserve our scanty capacity for reverence for those whom we
have assassinated. The only truths which remain in the fleeting memory
of the human race are the truths written in blood.
Jesus knew what was awaiting Him at Jerusalem, and as later was said by
one worthy to portray Him, His every thought was colored by the thought
of death. Three times they had already tried to kill Him; the first time
at Nazareth when they took Him up on the summit of the mountain where
the city was built and wished to cast Him down; the second time in the
Temple, the Jews, offended by His talk, laid their hands on stones to
stone Him; and a third time at the feast of the Dedication in
winter-time, they took up the stones of the street to silence Him. But
for these three times he escaped because His hour was not yet come.
He kept His certainty of death in His own heart for Himself alone until
His last hours. For He did not wish to sadden His Disciples who would
have shrunk from following a condemned man, a man who in His own heart
knew Himself at the point of death. But after the triple consecration as
Messiah—Peter’s cry, the light of Hermon, the anointing of Bethany—He
could no longer keep silence. He knew too well the ingenuous complacency
of the Twelve. He knew that when the rare moments of enthusiasm and
illumination were gone, their thoughts were often the common thoughts of
common people, human even in their highest dreams. He knew that the
Messiah for whom they were waiting was a victorious restorer of the Age
of Gold and not the Man of Sorrows. They thought of Him as a king on his
throne and not as a criminal on the gallows; triumphant, receiving
homage and tribute, not spat upon, beaten, and insulted; come to raise
the dead and not to be executed like an assassin.
Lest the Disciples should lose this new certainty of Christ’s
Messiahship on the day of His ignominy, Christ knew that He must warn
them. They must learn from His own mouth that the Messiah would be
condemned, that the Victorious One would disappear in a dreadful
downfall, that the King of all kings would be insulted by Cæsar’s
servants, that the Son of God would be crucified by the ignorant, blind
servants of God.
Three times they had tried to put Him to death; three times after
Peter’s recognition He announced to the Twelve His imminent death. And
there were to be three kinds of men who were to bring about His death:
the Elders, the High Priests and the Scribes. The Elders were the
Patricians, the aristocrats, the lay delegates of the Hebrew
middle-classes, they represented authority and wealth, and Christ had
come to transform authority into service and to condemn the rich and
their treasures. The High Priests represented the Temple, and He had
come to destroy the Temple. The Scribes were the doctors of law, of
theology, the interpreters of the Book, the masters of the Scriptures,
and represented the authority of word and of tradition; and He had come
to transform the Word and to regenerate the tradition. These three
orders of men never could forgive Him even after they had sent Him to
Golgotha.
And there were to be three accomplices to His death: Judas who betrayed
Him, Caiaphas who sentenced Him, Pilate who permitted the execution of
the sentence. And there were to be three sorts of men to execute the
penalty: the guards who arrested Him, the Hebrews who cried “Crucify
Him!” before the procurator’s house, the Roman soldiers who nailed Him
on the cross.
There were to be three degrees of His afflictions, as He Himself told
the disciples. First He was to be spurned and outraged, then spit upon
and beaten, and finally killed. But they were not to fear nor to weep.
As life has its reward in death, death is the promise of a second life.
After three days, He was to rise from the tomb, never more to die.
Christ was to be victorious not over earthly kingdoms, but over death.
He does not bring golden treasures, nor abundance of grain, but
immortality to all those who obey Him, and the cancellation of all sins
committed by men. He was to buy this immortality and this liberation by
imprisonment and death. The price was hard and bitter, but without those
few days of His Passion and burial He could not have secured centuries
and centuries of life and freedom for men.