Part 19
Jesus loved the poor; He loved them for the compassion which He felt for them; He loved them because He felt them nearer to His soul, more prepared to understand Him than other men. He loved them because they constantly gave Him the happiness of service, of giving bread to the hungry, strength to the weak, hope to the unhappy. Jesus loved the poor because He saw that if they were justly treated they would be the most legitimate inhabitants of the Kingdom. He loved the poor because they rendered the renunciation of the rich easier by the stimulus of charity; but most of all He loved the poor men who had been rich and who for the love of the Kingdom had become poor. Their renunciation was the greatest act of faith in His promise. They had given that which considered absolutely is nothing, but in the eyes of the world is everything, for the certainty of sharing in a more perfect life. They had been obliged to conquer in themselves one of the most profoundly rooted instincts of man. Jesus, born a poor man among the poor, for the poor, never left his brothers. He gave to them the fructifying abundance of His divine property. But in His heart He sought the poor man who had not always been poor, the rich man ready to strip himself for His love. He sought him, perhaps He never found him. But He felt this longed-for, unknown brother man tenderly nearer to his heart than all the docile seekers who crowded about Him.
THE DEVIL’S DUNG
Note well, you men who are yet to be born! Jesus was never willing to touch a coin with His hand. Those hands of His which molded the clay of the earth as a cure for blind eyes, those hands which touched the contaminated flesh of lepers and of the dead, those hands which clasped the body of Judas, so much more contaminated than clay, than leprosy, than putrefaction, those white pure healing hands which nothing could sully, never suffered themselves to be touched by one of those metal disks which carry in relief the profiles of the proprietors of the world. Jesus could mention money in His parables; He could see it in the hands of others, but touch it—no! To Him who scorned nothing, money was disgusting. It was repugnant to Him with a repugnance that was like horror. All His nature was in revolt at the thought of a contact with those filthy symbols of wealth.
But one day even Jesus was constrained to look at a piece of money. They asked Him if it was permitted to the true Israelite to pay the tribute, and He answered at once, “Show me the tribute money.” They showed it to Him, but He would not take it. It was a Roman coin stamped with the hypocritical face of Augustus. But He wished to seem not to know whose face it was. He asked, “Whose is this image and superscription?” They answered, “Cæsar’s.” Then He threw into the faces of the wily interrogators the answer which silenced them, “Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”
Give back that which is not yours, money does not belong to us. It is manufactured by the powerful for the needs of power. It is the property of kings and of the kingdom, of that other kingdom which is not ours. The king represents force and is the protector of wealth; but we have nothing to do with violence and reject riches. Our Kingdom has no potentates and has no rich men; the King of our Heaven does not coin money. Money is a means for the exchange of earthly goods, but we do not seek for earthly goods. What little is necessary for us, a little sunshine, a little air, a little water, a piece of bread, a cloak, will be given freely to us by God and by God’s friends. Tire yourselves out, you other people, all your lives to gather together a great pile of those round minted tokens. We have no use for them. For us they are definitely superfluous. Therefore we give them back; we give them back to him who has had them coined, to him who has had his portrait put on them, so that all should know that they are his.
Jesus never needed to give back any money because He never possessed any. He gave the order to His disciples not to carry bags for offerings on their journeys. He made one single exception, and that a fearful one. The Gospel tells us that one apostle kept the common purse. This disciple was Judas, and even Judas felt himself forced to give back the payment for his betrayal before disappearing in death. Judas is the mysterious victim sacrificed to the curse of money. Money carries with it, together with the filth of the hands which have clutched and handled it, the inexorable contagion of crime. Among the unclean things which men have manufactured to defile the earth and defile themselves, money is perhaps the most unclean. These counters of coined metal which pass and repass every day among hands still soiled with sweat or blood, worn by the rapacious fingers of thieves, of merchants, of misers; this round and viscid sputum of the Mint, desired by all, sought for, stolen, envied, loved more than love and often more than life; these ugly pieces of stamped matter, which the assassin gives to the cut-throat, the usurer to the hungry, the enemy to the traitor, the swindler to his partner, the simonist to the barterer in religious offices, the lustful to the woman bought and sold, these foul vehicles of evil which persuade the son to kill his father, the wife to betray her husband, the brother to defraud his brother, the wicked poor man to stab the wicked rich man, the servant to cheat his master, the highwayman to despoil the traveler; this money, these material emblems of matter, are the most terrifying objects manufactured by man. Money which has been the death of so many bodies is every day the death of thousands of souls. More contagious than the rags of a man with the pest, than the pus of an ulcer, than the filth of a sewer, it enters into every house, shines on the counters of the money-changers, settles down in money-chests, profanes the pillow of sleep, hides itself in the fetid darkness of squalid back-rooms, sullies the innocent hands of children, tempts virgins, pays the hangman for his work, goes about on the face of the earth to stir up hatred, to set cupidity on fire, to hasten corruption and death.
Bread, already holy on the family board, becomes on the table of the Church the everlasting body of Christ. Money too is the visible sign of a transubstantiation. It is the infamous Host of the Demon. He who loves money and receives it with joy is in visible communion with the Demon. He who touches money with pleasure touches without knowing it the filth of the Demon. The pure cannot touch it, the holy man cannot endure it. They know with unshakable certainty its ugly essence, and they have for money the same horror that the rich man has for poverty.
THE KINGS OF THE NATIONS
“Whose is this image?” asks Jesus when they put the Roman money before his eyes. He knows that face, He knows, as they all do, that Octavius by a sequence of extraordinary good luck became the monarch of the world with the adulatory surname of Augustus. He knows that falsely youthful profile, that head of clustering curls, the great nose that juts forward as if to hide the cruelty of the small mouth, the lips rigorously closed. It is a head, like those of all kings, cut off from the body, cut off below the neck; sinister image of a voluntary and eternal decapitation. Cæsar is the king of the past, the head of the armies, the coiner of silver and gold, fallible administrator of insufficient justice. Jesus is the King of the future, the liberator of servants, the abdicator of wealth, the master of love. There is nothing in common between them. Jesus has come to overthrow the domination of Cæsar, to undo the Roman Empire and every earthly empire, but not to put Himself in Cæsar’s place. If men will listen to Him there will never be any Cæsar again. Jesus is not the heir who conspires against the sovereign to take his place. He has come peaceably to remove all rulers. Cæsar is the strongest and most famous of His rivals, but also the most remote, because his force lies in the slothfulness of men, in the weakness of peoples. But One has come who will awaken the sleeping, open the eyes of the blind, give back strength to the weak. When everything is fulfilled and the Kingdom is founded—a Kingdom which needs no soldiers nor judges nor slaves nor money, but only renewed and living souls—Cæsar’s empire will vanish like a pile of ashes under the victorious breath of the wind.
As long as Cæsar is there, we can give back to him what is his. For the new man, money is nothing. We give back to Cæsar, vowed to eternal nothingness, that silver nothingness which is none of ours. Jesus is always looking forward with passionate longing to the arrival of the second earthly Paradise and He takes no heed of governors because the new land which He announces will not need governors. A people of holy men who love each other would have no use for Kings, law-courts and armies. On one occasion only does He speak of kings, and then only to overturn the common established idea. “The Kings of the Gentiles,” He says to His disciples, “exercise lordship over them, and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so, but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.” It is the theory of perfect equality in human relationship. The great is small, the master is servant, the King is slave. Since, according to Christ’s teachings, he who governs must become like him who serves, the opposite is true, and he who serves has the same rights and honors as he who governs. Among the righteous, there may be some more ardent than others; there may be saints who were sinners up to the last day; there may be other innocent ones who were citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven from their birth. Different planes of spiritual greatness may exist as variations of the perfection common to all; but to the end of time every category of superior and inferior, of master and subordinate, shall be abolished. Authority presupposes, even if it is badly wielded, a flock to lead, a minority to punish, bestiality to shackle; but when all men are holy, there will be no more need for commands and obedience, for laws and punishments. The Kingdom of Heaven can dispense with the commands of Force.
In the Kingdom of Heaven men will not hate each other and will no longer desire riches; every reason and need for government will disappear immediately after these two great changes. The name of the path which conducts to perfect liberty is not Destruction but Holiness. And it is not found in the sophistries of Godwin, or of Stirner, or Proudhon, or of Kropotkin, but only in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
SWORD AND FIRE
Every time that the sycophants of the powerful have desired to sanctify the ambition of the ambitious, the violence of the violent, the fierceness of the fierce, the pugnacity of the pugnacious, the conquests of the conquerors, every time that the paid sophists or frenzied orators have tried to reconcile pagan ferocity with Christian gentleness, to use the Cross as the hilt of the sword, to justify blood spilt through hatred by the blood which flowed on Calvary to teach love; every time, in short, that people wish to use the doctrine of peace to legitimatize war, and make Christ surety for Genghis Khan or for Bonaparte or even through refinement of infamy, the outrider of Mahomet, you will see them quote, with the inexorable punctuality of all commonplaces, the celebrated gospel text, which everybody knows by heart and very few have ever understood.
“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” Some more learned add, “I am come to send fire on the earth.” Others rush forward to present the decisive verse, “The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.”
What angel of eloquence, what supernatural enlightener, can ever reveal to these hardened quoters the true meaning of the words which they repeat with such light frivolity? They do not look at the words which come before and after; they pay no attention to the occasion on which they were spoken. They do not imagine for a moment that they can have another meaning from the common one.
When Jesus says that He has come to bring a sword,—or as it is written in the parallel passage of Luke, “Discord,” He is speaking to His Disciples who are on the point of departing to announce the coming of the Kingdom. And immediately after having spoken of the sword, He explains with familiar examples what He meant to say: “For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three.” The sword therefore does not mean war; it is a figure of speech which dignifies division. The sword is what divides, cuts in two, disunites; and the preaching of the gospel shall divide men of the same family. Because among men there are those deaf and those who hear, those who are slow and those who are quick, those who deny and those who believe. Until all are converted and “brothers in the Word,” discord will reign on earth. But discord is not war, is not massacre. Those who have heard and believe—the Christians—will not assault those who do not hear and do not believe. They will, it is true, take up arms against their refractory and stubborn brothers, but these arms will be preaching, example, pardon, love. Those who are not converted perhaps will begin real warfare, the warfare of violence and blood, but they will begin it exactly because they are not converted, precisely because they are not yet Christians. The triumph of the Gospel is the end of all wars, of wars between man and man, between family and family, between caste and caste, between people and people. If the Gospel at first is the cause of separations and discord the fault is not in the truths taught in the Gospel but in the fact that these truths are not yet practiced by all.
When Jesus proclaims that he comes to bring fire, only a literal-minded barbarian can think of murderous and destructive fire, worthy auxiliary of human warfare. “What will I if it be already kindled!” The fire desired by the Son of Man is the fire of purification, of enthusiasm, the ardor of sacrifice, the refulgent flame of love. Until all souls are burning and consumed in that fire, the word of the Gospel will be but useless sound, and the Kingdom still far away. To renew the contaminated and hateful family of men, a wonderful outburst of grief and of passion is needed. The complacent must suffer, the cold must burn, the insensible must cry out, the tepid must flame like torches in the night. All the filth accumulated in the secret life of men, all the sediments of sin which make of every soul an offensive sewer, all the corruption which shuts the ears and suffocates the hearts, must be burned up in this miraculous spiritual fire, which Jesus came to kindle in our hearts.
But to pass beyond this wall of flame there is need for strength of soul and a boldness not possessed by all, possessed only by the valorous; and thus Jesus can say, “The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force.” The word violent has as a matter of fact in the text the evident meaning of “strong,” of men who know how to take doors by assault without hesitating or trembling. “Sword,” “fire,” “violence,” are words which are not to be taken in the literal sense, so pleasing to the advocates of massacres. They are figurative words which we are forced to use to reach the torpid imagination of the crowds. The sword is the symbol of the divisions between those first persuaded and those who are last in believing; fire is purifying love; violence is the strength necessary to make oneself over and to arrive on the threshold of the Kingdom. Any one who understands this passage in any other way either does not know how to read, or is determined to misread.
Jesus is the man of Peace. He has come to bring Peace. The Gospels are nothing but proclamations and instructions for Peace. The very night of His birth celestial voices sang in the sky the prophetic augury: “Peace on Earth to men of good will.” On the Mount one of the first promises which flowed from the heart and from the lips of Christ is that directed to the peacemakers, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” When the apostles are ready to depart on their mission He commands them to wish peace to all the houses where they enter. To the disciples, to His friends, He counsels, “Have peace one with another.” Drawing near to Jerusalem, He looks at it pityingly and exclaims, “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace!” and the terrible night on the Mount of Olives, while the mercenaries armed with swords are binding Him, He pronounces the supreme condemnation of violence, “For all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” He understands the evils of discord, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.” And in His talk on the last things, in the grand apocalyptic prophecy, He announces among the terrible signs of the end together with famine, earthquakes and tribulation, also wars. “And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars.... For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.”
For Jesus discord is an evil; war is a crime. His God is not the old Lord of Battles. The apologists for great massacres confuse the Old and the New Testament. But the New is new exactly because it transforms the Old.
Only when considered as a punishment can war be thought of as divine. War is the terrible retribution of men who have recourse to war; it is the cruelest manifestation of the hatred which broods and boils in human hearts, the hatred which drives men to take up arms to destroy one another. War is at the same time a crime and its own punishment.
But when hate is abolished in every heart, war will be incomprehensible: our most terrible punishment will disappear together with our greatest sin. Then at last will arrive the day longed for by Isaiah when, “they shall beat their swords into plow-shares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
That day announced by Isaiah is the day on which the Sermon on the Mount shall become the only law recognized on earth.
ONE FLESH ONLY
Jesus sanctions the union of man and woman even in the flesh. As long as kings remain, we are to give back to them the coins stamped with their names; as long as men are not like angels the human race must perpetuate itself.
The Family and the State, imperfect expedients compared with heavenly beatitude, are necessary during our terrestrial probation; and since they are necessary they should at least become less impure and less imperfect. As long as rulers exist, at least the man who rules should feel himself the equal of the man who serves. As long as marriage exists, the union between man and woman should be eternal and faithful.
In marriage Jesus sees first of all the joining of two bodies. On this point He ratifies the metaphor of the Old Law, “So then they are no more twain, but one flesh.” Husband and wife are one body, inseparable. This man shall never have another woman; this woman shall never know another man until death divides them. The mating of male and female, when it is not the expression of careless wantonness, or furtive fornication, when it is the meeting of two healthy virginities, when it is preceded by free choice, by a chaste passion, by a public and consecrated covenant, has an almost mystic character which nothing can cancel. The choice is irrevocable, the passion is confirmed, the compact is for eternity. Within the two bodies clinging to each other with bodily desire, there are two souls which recognize each other and find each other in love. Their flesh becomes one flesh; their two souls become one soul.
The two have been fused into one, and from this communion will be born a new creature formed of the essence of both, which will be the visible form of their union. Love makes them like God, creators of a new and miraculous creation.
But this Duality of the flesh and of the spirit—the most perfect among imperfect human relations—should never be disturbed or interrupted. Adultery corrupts it, divorce destroys it. Adultery treacherously corrodes the union; divorce repudiates it definitely. Adultery is a secret divorce founded upon untruth and betrayal; divorce followed by another marriage is sanctioned adultery.
Jesus always condemns adultery and divorce in the most solemn and absolute manner. His whole nature holds unfaithfulness in horror. There will come a day, he warns people, in speaking of heavenly life, in which men and women will not marry; but up to that day marriage should have at least all the perfections possible to its imperfection. And Jesus who always goes below the surface of things does not call adulterer only the man who robs his brother of his wife, but also the man who looks at her in the street with lustful eyes. The man who has underhand relations with another man’s wife is an adulterer, but no less an adulterer is he who, having put aside his own wife, marries another. On one occasion alone, He seems to admit the possibility of divorce to the husband of an adulteress; but the crime of the repudiated wife could never justify the crime which the betrayed man would commit in taking another wife.
Confronted with a law so absolute and so rigorous, even the Disciples took alarm. “If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry. But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.”
Marriage is a concession to human nature, and to the propagation of life. “All men cannot receive this saying,” are not capable of remaining chaste, virgin, and alone, but only “they to whom it is given.” Perfect celibacy is a grace, a reward of the victory of the spirit over the body.