Part 15

“Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” Those who will try to enter will fail, because the master of the house, when he has shut his door, will no longer recognize any one.

Until the great day, until it is too late, “Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.” Even hard, slothful, obstinate men give way to persistent entreaty. If even men are not always insensible to pleadings how much surer will be the response from a Father who loves us?

A man at midnight knocks at the door of a friend and wakens him. Through the door he says to him, “Friend, lend me three loaves; For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.” But the other, still half asleep, replies, “Trouble me not: for I am tired, and I do not wish to arise. And here in my bed I have my children who are asleep and if I get up I will wake them and chill them.” But the other will not give up, and knocks again on the door and raises his voice and begs with clasped hands that the other one will do him this service, for he has no other friends near, and the hour is late and his guest hungry and waiting for him. And he storms so at the door that his friend gets out of bed and lets him come in and gives him as many loaves as he needs. The friend was weak, but good-hearted. And even the bad-hearted do as he does. There was in a certain city a judge who cared for no one, a morose and scornful man who wanted to do everything as it suited him best. A widow went every day before him and asked for justice, and although her cause was just the judge always sent her away and would not do what she wished. But the widow patiently endured all his repulses and did not weary in her importunity. And finally the judge to get rid of this woman who wore him out with her supplications, pleadings, and prayers, gave the sentence and sent her in peace.

But no more must be asked than can be expected. He who has accomplished his task will eat and drink but will not have any special place of honor, nor will he be better served than his brother, and certainly not so well as his superior. When the servant, having been in the field sowing or pasturing the cattle, comes back to the house, the master does not call him to eat at his own table, but first is served himself and afterwards gives the servant the meal which is due him. This is a Parable which Jesus meant for His Apostles, who were already disputing about who would have the highest place in the Kingdom. “Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not. So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which were commanded you, say: We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.”

The only thing which counts is the actual doing. There are those who say “yes” to orders but who after this do nothing. Such men shall be condemned more severely than those who refused openly and then afterwards, repentant, obeyed. A father had two sons and said to the older, “Son, go work to-day in my vineyard.” And the son answered, “I go, sir,” but instead of going to work in the vineyard he lay down in the shade to sleep. And the father said to the second, “Go too and work with your brother.” But the son answered, “No, to-day I wish to rest because I am not well.” But later, thinking of the old man who could not do the work himself any longer, he took back his refusal, overcame his indolence and went to the vineyard and worked with a will till evening.

To listen to the word of the Kingdom is not enough. To consent verbally and to live just as before, without effort to change the heart, is less than nothing. “Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will show you to whom he is like; He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock, and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded upon a rock. But he that heareth and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great.”

The same teaching is in the Parable of the Sowing, “A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the wayside; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it, and some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up and bare fruit an hundredfold.” This is the Parable which the Twelve were incapable of understanding. Jesus was obliged to explain it Himself. The seed is the Word of God. Those by the wayside are they that hear, then cometh Satan and taketh the Word out of their hearts lest they should believe and be saved. They on the rock are they which when they hear receive the Word with joy, and these have no root which for a while believe and in time of temptation fall away. And that which fell among thorns are they which when they have heard go forth and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. But that on the good ground are they which in an honest and good heart having heard the Word keep it and bring forth fruit with patience. But it is not enough to hear it merely, to understand it, to practice it. He who has received it should not keep it to himself. Who is the man who having a lamp hides it under the bed or covers it with a vessel? The light should stand high in the center of the room that they which enter in may see it and be lighted.

A Lord traveling into a far country left to each of his servants ten talents with the understanding that they should use the money to good purpose. And when he came back he reckoned with them. And the first delivered to him twenty talents, because with the first ten he had earned ten other talents. And the Lord made him steward over all his goods. And the second delivered him fifteen talents, for he had not been able to earn more than five more. But the third presented himself timorously and showed him, wrapped up in a napkin, the ten talents which he had received. “Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed: And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talents in the earth.” And the Lord answered, “Thou wicked and slothful servant, I will judge thee by thine own words. Take the talents and give them to him who has twenty.” But he has already plenty. “I say unto you,” answered the Lord, “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” And the unprofitable servant was cast into outer darkness, where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth. He who has received the Word ought to double his wealth. He has received so great a treasure that if he leaves it useless, he deserves to have it taken away from him. From him who does not add to it shall be taken away even that which he has, and unto him who has doubled his treasures shall be given even more. Those who do not use the treasure of the Word are not poverty-stricken men who need gifts because they are destitute, but faithless and slothful husbandmen, to whom was entrusted the most fruitful field in all the universe. Happy the steward whom the Master shall find attentive to act justly and to give to all their rightful part of the harvest. But if the steward begins to oppress the serving men and women and thinks only of eating and getting drunk he will be scourged and punished when the Master returns, just punishment for the faithless!

The servant who does not know what the Master wishes done, and so, not knowing, does not carry out His wishes, shall be less punished than he who knew, and still does the contrary, for he shall be driven out of the house where he gave orders. The bearers of the Word have no excuse if they are not the first to obey God’s wishes. From him to whom much was given, much shall be required.

THE PRODIGAL SON

A man had two sons. His wife was dead, but he still had these two sons, only two. But two are always better than one. If the first is away from home, the second is still there; if the younger fall ill, the older works for two; if one should die ... even children die, even the young die, and sometimes before the old ... if one of the two should die, there is at least one left who will care for the poor father.

This man loved his sons, not only because they were of his blood but because he had a loving heart. He loved them both, the older and the younger; perhaps the younger a little more than the older, but so little that he did not realize it himself. Fathers and mothers often have a weakness for the youngest because he is the smallest, he is the sweetest, he is the last baby, and after his birth there was never another one, so that his boyhood, still so recent, so prolonged, stretches out to the sill of his young manhood like a lingering halo of tenderness. It seems only yesterday that he was a baby at the breast, that he took his first stumbling steps, that he sprang up to embrace his father, or sat astride his knees.

But this man was not partial. He loved his sons like his two eyes and his two hands, equally dear, one at the left, one at the right, and he saw to it that both were happy. Nothing lacked for either one.

And yet, even in the case of sons of one father, it almost never happens that two brothers have the same tastes or even similar tastes. The older was a serious-minded young man, sedate, settled, who seemed already grown up and mature, a husband, the head of a family. He respected his father, but more as master than as father, without any impulsive show of affection. He worked faithfully, but he was hard and captious with the servants; he went through all the religious forms, but did not let the poor come about him. Although the house was full of all possible good things, yet for them there was never anything. He pretended to love his brother, but his heart was full of the poison of envy. When people say “to love like a brother” they say the contrary of what ought to be said. Brothers very rarely love each other. Jewish history, not to speak of any other, begins with Cain, goes on with Jacob’s cheating Esau, with Joseph sold by his brothers, with Absalom, who killed Amon, with Solomon who had Adonijah killed: a long bloody road of jealousy, opposition and betrayal. It would be more correct to say “a father’s love,” rather than a brother’s.

The second son seemed of another race. He was younger and was not ashamed to be young. He splashed about and made merry in his youth as in a warm lake. He had all the desires, the graces, and the defects of his age. He was fitful with his father. One day he hurt him, the next, put him into the seventh heaven; he was capable of not saying a word for weeks together and then suddenly throwing himself on his father’s neck in the highest spirits. Good times with his friends were more to his taste than work. He refused no invitations to drink, stared at women and dressed better than other people. But he was warmhearted; he gave money to the needy, was charitable without boasting of it, never sent away any one disconsolate. He was seldom seen at the synagogue, and for this and for other reasons the middle-class people of the neighborhood, timid, colorless people, religious and self-seeking, did not think well of him and advised their sons to have nothing to do with him. So much the more because the young man wanted to spend more than his father’s resources allowed him—a good man, they said, but weak and blinded—and because he talked recklessly and said things which were not fitting for the son of a good family brought up as he ought to be. The little life of that little country hole was repugnant to him; he said it was better to look for adventure in rich countries, populous, far away, beyond the mountains and the sea, where the big, luxurious cities are, with marble buildings and the best wines and shops full of silk and silver, and women dressed in fine clothes like queens fresh from aromatic baths who lightly give themselves for a piece of gold.

There in the country you had to obey orders and work hard, and there was no outlet for gypsy-like and nomadic tastes. His father, although he was rich, although he was good, measured out the drachma as if they were talents. His brother was vexed if he bought a new tunic or came home a little tipsy; in the family all they knew was the field, the furrow, the pasture, the stock; a life that was not a life but one long effort.

And one day (he had thought of it many times before, but had never had the courage to say it) he hardened his heart and his face and said to his father, “Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me, and I will ask nothing more of thee.”

When the old man heard this, he was deeply hurt, but he made no answer, and went away into his room that his tears should not be seen, and for a while neither of them spoke any more of this matter. But the son suffered, was sullen, and lost all his ardor and animation even to the fresh color of his face. And the father, seeing his son suffer, suffered himself, and yet suffered more at the thought of losing him. But finally paternal love conquered self-love. The estimations and valuations of the property were made, and the father gave to both his sons their rightful part and kept the rest for himself. The young man lost no time, he sold what he could not carry away, gathered together a goodly sum, and one evening, without saying anything to any one, mounted his fine horse and went away. The older brother was rather pleased by his departure; the younger would never have the courage to come back; so now he was the only son, first in command, and no one would take away the rest of his inheritance from him.

But the father secretly wept many tears, all the tears of his old wrinkled eyelids. Every line of his old face was washed with tears, his aged cheeks were soaked with his grieving. His son was gone and he needed all the love of the remaining son to make up for the sorrow of the separation.

But he had an intuition that perhaps he had not lost his son forever, his second-born, that before his death he would have the happiness to kiss him again; and this idea helped him to endure the loneliness.

In the meantime the young man drew rapidly near to the rich city of revels where he meant to live. At every turning of the road he felt of the money-bags which hung at either side of his saddle. He soon arrived at the city of his desire and began his feasting. It seemed to him that those thousands of coins would last forever. He rented a fine house, bought five or six slaves, dressed like a prince, and soon had men and women friends who were guests at his table, and who drank his wine till their stomachs could hold no more. He did not economize with women and chose the most beautiful the city contained, those who knew how to dance and sing and dress with magnificence, and undress with grace. No presents seemed too fine or too rich to please those bodies which abandoned themselves with such voluptuous softness, and which gave him the wildest, most torturing pleasure. The little provincial lord from the dull country, repressed in the most sensual period of his life, now vented his voluptuousness, his love of luxury, in this dangerous life.

Such a life could not go on forever: the money bags of the prodigal son were not bottomless—no money bags are—and there came a day when there was neither gold nor silver, and not even copper, but only empty bags of canvas and leather lying limp and flabby on the brick floor of his room. His friends disappeared, the women disappeared, slaves, beds and dining-tables were sold. With the proceeds he had enough to buy food, but only for a short time. To complete his misfortune, a famine came on the country and the prodigal son found himself hungering in the midst of a famine-stricken people. The women had gone off to other cities where the situation was better; the friends of his drunken night-revels had hard work to look out for themselves.

The unfortunate man, stripped and destitute, left the city, traveling with a lord who was going to the country where he had a fine estate. He begged him for work, till the lord hired him as swine-herd because he was young and strong and hardly any one was willing to be a swine-herd. For a Jew nothing could be a greater affliction than this. Even in Egypt, although animals were adored there, the only people forbidden to enter the temples were swine-herds. No father would have given his daughter to wife to a swine-herd and no man for all the gold in the world would have married the daughter of a swine-herd.

But the prodigal son had no choice and was forced to lead the herd of swine out to the pasture. He was given no pay and very little to eat, because there was only a little for any one; but there was no famine for the hogs, because they could eat anything. There were plenty of carob beans and they gorged themselves on those. Their hungry attendant enviously watched the pink and black animals rooting in the earth, chewing beans and roots, and longed to fill his stomach with the same stuff and wept, remembering the abundance of his own home and his festivals in the great city. Sometimes overcome with hunger he took one of the black bean-husks, from under the grunting snouts of the pigs, tempering the bitterness of his suffering with that insipid and woody food. And woe to him if his employer had seen him!

His dress was a dirty slave’s smock which smelt of manure, his foot-gear a pair of worn-out sandals scarcely held together with rushes; on his head a faded hood. His fair young face, tanned by the sun of the hills, was thin and long, and had taken a sickly color between gray and brown.

Who was wearing now the spotless home-spun clothes, which he had left in his brother’s chests? Where now were the fair silken tunics dyed purple which he had sold for so little? His father’s hired servants were better dressed than he, and they fared better than he.

Returned to his senses, he said to himself, “How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!” Until now he had brushed away the idea of going home as soon as it had appeared. How could he bear to go back in this condition and give in to his brother after having despised his home, after having made his father weep? To return without a garment, unshod, without a penny, without the ring—the sign of liberty—uncomely, disfigured by this famished slavery, stinking and contaminated by this abominable trade, to show that the wise old neighbors were right, that his serious-minded brother was right, to bow himself at the knee of the old man whom he had left without a greeting, to return with opprobrium as a ragged fellow to the spot from which he had departed as a king! To come back to the soup-plate into which he had spit—into a house which contained nothing of his!

No, there was something of his always in his home, his father! If he belonged to his father, his father belonged also to him. He was his creation, made of his flesh, issued from his seed in a moment of love. Though hurt, his father would never drive away his own flesh and blood. If he would not take him back as son, at least he would take him back as a hired servant, as he would any stranger, like a man born of another father. “I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.” I do not come back as son but as servant, a worker, and I do not ask love from you, for I have no more right to that, but only a little bread from your kitchen.

And the young man gave back the hogs to his master, and went towards his own land. He begged a piece of bread from the country people, and wept salt tears as he ate this bread of pity and charity in the shadow of the sycamores. His sore and blistered feet could scarcely carry him. He was barefoot now, but his faith in forgiveness led him homeward step by step.

And finally one day at noon he arrived in sight of his father’s house; but he did not dare to knock, nor to call any one, nor to go in. He hung around outside to see if any one would come out. And behold, his father appeared on the threshold. His son was no longer the same, was changed, but the eyes of a father even dimmed by weeping could not fail to recognize him. He ran towards him and caught him to his breast, and kissed him and kissed him again, and could not stop from pressing his pale, old lips on that ravaged face, on those eyes whose expression was altered but still beautiful, on that hair, dusty but still waving and soft, on that flesh that was his own.

The son, covered with confusion and deeply moved, did not know how to respond to these kisses, and as soon as he could free himself from his father’s arms he threw himself on the ground and repeated tremulously the speech he had prepared. “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son.”

But if the young man had brought himself to the point of refusing the name of son, the old man never felt himself more father than at this moment; he seemed to become a father for a second time, and without even answering, with his eyes still clouded and soft, but with the ringing voice of his best days, he called to the servants:

“Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet.”

The son of the master should not return home wretchedly dressed like a beggar. The finest garment should be given him, new shoes, a ring on his finger, and the servants must wait on him because he, too, is a master.

“And bring hither the fatted calf; and kill it, and let us eat and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.”

The fatted calf was kept in reserve for great feast days: but what festival can be greater for me than this one? I had wept for my son as dead and here he is alive with me. I had lost him in the world and the world has delivered him back to me. He was far away and now is with me, he was a beggar at the doors of strange houses, and now is master in his own house; he was famished and now he shall be served with a banquet at his own table.

And the servants obeyed him and the calf was killed, skinned, cut up and put to cook. The oldest wine was taken from the wine-cellar, and the finest room was prepared for the dinner in celebration of the return. Servants went to call his father’s friends and others went to summon musicians, that there should be music. And when everything was ready, when the son had been bathed, and his father had kissed him many times more—almost as if to assure himself with his lips that his true son was there with him and it was not the vision of a dream—they commenced the banquet, the wines were mixed and the musicians accompanied the songs of joy.

The older son was in the field, working, and in the evening when he came back and was near to the house he heard shouts and stampings and clapping of hands, and the footsteps of dancers. And he could not understand. “Whatever can have happened? Perhaps my father has gone crazy or perhaps a wedding procession has arrived unexpectedly at our house.”