Part 13
And He did not reject the sick. Jesus is no self-tormentor, no flagellant. He does not believe that pain is necessary to conquer evil. Evil is evil and must be driven away, but pain also is evil. Sorrow of the soul is enough for salvation: why should the body suffer also, needlessly? The old Jews thought of sickness as a punishment: Christians believe it above all as an aid to conversion.
But Jesus does not believe in vengeance taken on the innocent, and does not expect that true salvation can be won by ulcers or by hair shirts. Render unto the body that which is the body’s due, and unto the soul that which is the soul’s. He likes the friendly supper-table; He does not refuse good old wine; and He does not send away women who pour perfumes on His head and on His feet. Jesus can fast many days; He can be satisfied with a bit of bread, with half of a broiled fish; and He can sleep on the ground with His head on a stone; but till it is unavoidable He does not seek out want, hunger and suffering. Health seems to Him a good thing and the innocent pleasure of dining with friends; a cup of wine drunk in good company, the fragrance of a vase of nard, seem good and acceptable to Him also when such things cause no suffering to others.
If a sick man accosts Him, He cures him. Jesus comes not to deny life, but to affirm it, to institute a happier and more perfect life. He does not purposely seek out the sick. His mission is to drive away spiritual suffering, to bring spiritual joy. But if, by the way, it happens to Him to drive out also suffering of the flesh, to quiet pain, to restore, along with the health of the soul, the health also of the body, He cannot refuse to do it. He shows Himself adverse to it, for the most part, because His aim is higher; and He would not wish to appear in the eyes of the people like a vagabond wizard, or like the worldly Messiah whom most men were expecting. But since He wishes to conquer evil, and there are men who know Him capable of conquering all evils, His love is forced to drive out also those of the body.
When, on the road trodden by men of health, there come towards Him groups of lepers, repellent, disfigured, horrible lepers, and when He sees that swollen lividness, the scaly skin showing through the torn clothes, that scabby, spotted, cracked skin, the withered, wrinkled skin which deforms the mouth, half-closes the eyes, and puffs up the hands; wretched, suffering ghosts, shunned by every one, separated from every one, disgusting to every one, who are thankful if they have a little bread, a saucer for their water, the roof of an old shed for a hiding-place; when painfully bringing out the words through their swollen, ulcerated lips they beg Him, whom they know to be powerful in word and deed, beg Him, their only hope in their despair, for health, for a cure, for a miracle, how could Jesus shun them, as other men did, and ignore their prayer?
And the epileptics, who writhe in the dust, their faces twisted in a set spasm, the froth on their lips; those possessed of devils who howl among the ruined tombs, evil dogs of the night, disconsolate; the paralytics, trunks which have just enough feeling left to suffer, dead bodies inhabited by an imprisoned and suppliant soul; and the blind, the awful blind, shut up from their birth in the night—foretaste of the blackness of the tomb—stumbling in the midst of the fortunate men who go their way freely, the terrified blind, who walk with their heads held high, their eyes staring, as if the light could reach them from the depths of the infinite, the blind, for whom the world is only a series of more or less harsh surfaces, among which they grope; the blind, eternally alone, who know the sun only by its warmth, by the heat on their bodies! How could Jesus answer “No” to such wretchedness?
THE ANSWER TO JOHN
Jesus heals the sick, but He is in no way like a wizard or an exorcist. He has no recourse to incantation, to amulets, to smoke, veils and mystery. He does not call to His aid the powers of Heaven or Hell. For Him a word is enough, a strong cry, a gentle accent, a caress. His will is enough, and the faith of the petitioner. To them all He puts the question, “Dost thou believe I can do this?” and when the cure is accomplished, “Go, thy faith hath made thee whole.” For Jesus the miracle is the union of two wills for good, the living contact between the faith of the healer and the faith of the one healed. “Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence, to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you.” Those who have no faith, not even as much as the thousandth part of a grain of mustard seed, swear that no man has this power, and that Jesus is an impostor.
In the Gospels the miracles are called by three names: “Dunameis”—forces; “Terata”—marvels; “Semeis”—signs. They are signs for those who remember the prophecies of the Messiah; they are “marvels” for those who look for proofs that Christ is the Messiah; but for Jesus and in Jesus there are only “Dunameis,” mighty works, victorious lightning-flashes from a superhuman power. The healings of Jesus are two-fold; they are healings not only of bodies but of souls, and it is soul-sickness which Jesus wishes especially to heal, so that the Kingdom of Heaven may be founded also on the earth.
Most sickness is two-fold, mental and physical, and lends itself with singular exactitude to metaphors and allegory. Jesus cured the maimed, the halt, the fevered, a man with the dropsy, a woman with an issue of blood. He healed also a sword-wound—Malchus’ ear struck off by Peter on the night of Gethsemane—this only in order that His law ... “do good to those who wrong you” ... might be observed to the very last. But Jesus healed more often those possessed by devils, the paralytics, the lepers, the blind, the deaf-mutes. The old name for mental diseases is possession by devils; even Professor Aristotle believed in possession by devils. It was believed that lunatics, epileptics, hysterical patients, were invaded by malign spirits. The contradictory and often merely verbal explanations of the moderns does not invalidate the fact that demoniacs, in many cases, are such in the real sense of the word. This learned and popular explanation lent itself admirably to that allegorical and figurative teaching of which Jesus was so fond. He wished to found the Kingdom of God and supplant that of Satan. It was part of His mission to drive out demons. The difference between bodily disorders and actual malign obsessions was of no importance: between bodily infirmities and spiritual infirmities there is a parallelism of nomenclature, based on real affinity. There is a likeness between the maniac and the epileptic, between the paralytic and the slothful, the vile and the leprous, the blind and he who cannot see the truth, the deaf and he who will not listen to the truth, the cured and the resurrected.
When John, shut up in prison, sent two disciples to ask Jesus if He were the awaited prophet, or whether they should await another, Jesus answered them, “Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached.” Jesus did not separate the gospel from miraculous cures. They are similar deeds; by that answer he meant that he had cured bodies in order that the souls might be better disposed to receive the gospel.
Those who did not see the light of the sun can now see the light of truth; those who did not hear even the words of men can now hear the words of God; those who were possessed of Satan are freed from Satan; those who were foul and ulcerated are clean as children; those who could not move, who were strengthless and shrunken, now follow my footsteps; those who were dead to the life of the soul have risen at a word from me ... and the poor, after the Good News, are richer than the wealthy. These are my credentials, my letters proving my legitimacy.
Jesus, Healer and Liberator, is not what the bad faith of His modern enemies wish to imagine Him, in order to gild once more their comfortable paganism and to protect it against asceticism. “He is the God,” they say, “of the sick, the weak, the dirty, the wretched, the strengthless, the servants.” But all that Christ does is to give health, strength, purity, wealth, and liberty. He draws near to the sick precisely in order to drive away their sickness; to the weak to lift them out of their weakness; to the dirty in order to cleanse them; to slaves in order to free them. He does not love the sick only because they are sick: He loves health, just as the men of antiquity did, and He loves it so greatly that He longs to give it back to those who have lost it. Jesus is the prophet of happiness, the promiser of life, of life that is worthier to be lived. The miracles are only pledges of His promise.
TALITHA QUMI
“The dead shall arise!” This is one of the signs which are to suffice for John the Baptist in prison. To the good sister, to the hard-working Martha, Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth, and believeth in me, shall never die.” The resurrection is a rebirth in faith, immortality is the permanent affirmation of this faith.
The Evangelists know three resurrections, historical events narrated with a sober but explicit statement of the evidence. Jesus raised up three who were dead: a young lad, a little girl, and a friend.
He was entering Nain, “the beautiful” set on a little hill some miles from Nazareth, and met a funeral procession. They were carrying to the grave the young son of a widow. She had lost her husband a short time before; this son alone had been left to her; now they were carrying away the son in turn for burial. Jesus saw the mother walking among the women, weeping with the amazed and smothered grief of mothers which is so profoundly moving. She had only two men in all the world who loved her; the first one was dead, the second was now dead; one after the other, both of them disappeared. She was left alone, a woman alone without a man. Without a husband, without a son, without a help, a prop, a comfort. Gone the love that was a memory of youth, gone the love that was hope for declining years. Gone both those poor, simple loves. A husband can console his wife for the loss of their son; a son can make up for the loss of a husband. If only one had been left! Now her lips were never to know another kiss.
Jesus had compassion on this mother; her grief was like an accusation. “Weep not,” he said.
He went to the side of the cataleptic and touched him. The boy was lying there stretched out, wrapped in his shroud, but with his face uncovered, set in the stern paleness of the dead. The bearers halted; all were silent; even the mother, startled, was quiet.
“Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.” And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And He delivered him to his mother. He “delivered” him because he was now hers. Jesus had taken him from the land of death to give him back to her who could not live without him, that a mother might cease from weeping.
Another day as he was returning from Gadara, a father fell at His feet. 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.