Part 20

Any man who wishes to give all his love to a great undertaking must condemn himself to chastity. He cannot serve both humanity and the individual. The man who has a difficult mission to carry out, demanding all his strength up to the last of his days, cannot tie himself to a woman. Marriage means abandoning oneself to another being—but the Saviour must abandon himself to all other beings. The union of two souls is not enough for him—and it would make more difficult, perhaps impossible, union with all other souls. The responsibilities which come with the choice of a mate, the birth of children, the creation of a little community in the midst of the great community of the human race, are so heavy that they would be a daily hindrance to undertakings infinitely more serious. The man who wishes to lead other men, to transform them, cannot bind himself for all his life to one being alone. He would need to be faithless to his wife or to his mission. He loves all his brothers too much to love one only of his sisters. The Hero is solitary. Solitude is his penalty and his greatness. He renounces the pleasures of marital love, but the love which is in his heart, when communicated to all men, is multiplied into a sublimation of sacrifice surpassing all earthly joys. The man with no mate is alone, but is free; his soul, unhampered by common and material thoughts, can rise to the heights. He does not beget children of his own flesh, but he brings to a second birth the children of his spirit.

It is not given to every one, however, to resist and abstain. “He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.” The foundation of the Kingdom needs all men who will give all their souls to it; the lusts of the flesh, even when confined to legitimate marriage, are weakening for him who should give all his attention to the things of the spirit.

Those who will know the resurrection of the great day of triumph will have no further temptations. In the Kingdom of Heaven the joining of man and woman, even sanctified as it is by the permanence of marriage, will exist no more. Its real end is the creation of new human beings, but in that day Death will be conquered and the everlasting renewing of the generations will no longer be necessary. “For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.”

With this attainment of eternal and angelic life—the two promises and the two certainties of Christ—what has seemed endurable will become unthinkable, that which seemed pure will become vile, that which was holy will become imperfect. In that supreme and happy world all the trials of the human race will be over. A hasty mating with a stolen woman was enough for the primitive bestial man. Man rose to the higher level of marriage, to union with one woman alone; the saint rose higher yet, to voluntary chastity. But the man who has become an angel in Heaven, who is all spirit and love, will have conquered the flesh even in memory. In a world where there will be no poor, sick, unhappy or enemies, his love will be transfigured into a superhuman contemplation.

The cycle of births will then be closed. The Fourth Kingdom will be forever established. The citizens of the Kingdom will be eternally the same, themselves and no other through all the centuries. Woman will no longer bring forth her young with suffering. The sentence of exile will be revoked, the Serpent will be conquered; the Father will joyfully welcome his wandering son. Paradise will be found again and will never more be lost.

FATHERS AND SONS

Jesus was speaking in a house, perhaps at Capernaum, and men and women, all hungering for life and justice, all needing comfort and consolation, had filled the house, had pressed close around Him, and were looking at Him as they would look at their Father returned to them, their Brother healing them, their Benefactor saving them. They were so hungry for His words, these men and women, that Jesus and His friends had not stopped to take a mouthful of food. He had spoken for a long time, and yet they would have liked Him to go on speaking till nightfall, without ever stopping for an instant. They had been waiting for Him for so long! Their fathers and their mothers had waited for Him in wretchedness and dumb resignation for thousands of years. They themselves had waited for Him, year after year, in dull wretchedness. Night after night they had longed for a ray of light, a promise of happiness, a loving word. And now before them was He who was the reward of their long vigil. Now they could wait no longer. These men and these women crowded about Jesus like privileged and impatient creditors who finally have before them the Divine Debtor, for whom they have been eternally waiting; and they claimed their share down to the last penny. He certainly should be able to get along without eating bread just this one time—for centuries and centuries their fathers had been forced to go without the Bread of Truth; for years and years they themselves had not been able to satisfy their hunger for the Bread of Hope.

Jesus therefore went on talking to the people who had filled the house. He repeated the most touching figures of His inspiration, told the most persuasive stories of the Kingdom, looked at them with those luminous eyes which shone down into the soul as the morning sun penetrates the shut-in darkness of a house.

Any one of us would give what remains of his life to be looked at by those eyes, to gaze for a moment into those eyes shining with infinite tenderness; to listen for a moment only to that thrilling voice, changing the Semitic vernacular into melodious music. Those men and women who are now dead, those poor men, those poor women, those wretched people who to-day are dust in the air of the desert, or clay under the hoofs of the camels, those men and those women whom in their lifetime no one envied, and whom we the living are forced to envy after their remote and obscure death; those men and those women heard that voice, saw those eyes.

But there came a stir and voices were heard at the door of the house: some one wished to come in. One of those present told Jesus, “Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee.” But Jesus did not stir, “Who is my mother or my brethren?” And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, “Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.”

My family is all here and I have no other family. The ties of blood do not count unless they are confirmed in the spirit. My father is the Father who made me like unto Him in the perfection of righteousness; my brothers are the poor who weep; my sisters are the women who have left their loves for Love. He did not mean with these words to deny the Virgin of Sorrows, of whose womb He was the fruit; He meant to say that from the day of His voluntary exile He belonged no more to the little family of Nazareth, but only to His mission as Saviour, to the great family of mankind.

In the new organization of salvation, spiritual affiliations surpass the simple relationships of the flesh. “If any come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” Individual love must disappear in universal love. We must choose between the old affections of the old mankind and the unique love of the New Man.

The family will disappear when men, in the celestial life, shall be better than men. In the world as it is, the family is an impediment for him who helps others to rise to higher things. “And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father which is in heaven.” He who leaves his family shall be infinitely rewarded. “And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children for the kingdom of God’s sake, Who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.”

Your Heavenly Father will never forsake you, your brothers in the Kingdom will never betray you; but the fathers and the brothers of earthly life might become your assassins. “And ye shall be betrayed both by parents and brethren and kinsfolks and friends; and some of you shall they cause to be put to death.”

And yet fathers at least should be faithful, because, according to Jesus, fathers have more duties toward their sons than sons toward their fathers. The Old Law recognizes only the first. “Honor thy father and thy mother,” said Moses. But he does not add, “Protect and love thy children.” Children seemed to Moses to be the property of those who had begotten them. Life in those times seemed so fair and precious that children were always thought to be in debt to their parents. They were to remain servants forever, everlastingly submissive. They should live only for old age, by the orders of old age.

Here also the divine genius of the Overthrower sees what is lacking in the old ideals and insists upon righting the balance. Fathers should give without sparing and without rest; even if the children are ungrateful, even if they abandon their father, even if they are unworthy in the eyes of the platitudinous sagacity of the world. The Paternoster is a prayer of sons to a Father. It is the prayer which every child might address to his father. He asks for daily bread; the remission of sins, pardon for his failings, and daily protection against evil.

And yet fathers, even when they give everything, are sometimes forsaken. If their sons leave them to throw themselves into evil ways, they must be forgiven as soon as they come back, as the Prodigal Son in the parable was forgiven. If they leave their fathers to seek out a higher and more perfect life—like those who are converted to the Kingdom—they will be rewarded a thousand times in this life and the next.

But from every point of view, fathers are debtors. The tremendous responsibility which they have accepted in giving life to a new human being must be met. Like the Heavenly Father, they must give to those of their children who ask and to those who keep silence, to the worthy and the unworthy, to those who sit about the family board and to those who are wanderers over the earth, to the good and to the bad, to the first and to the last. They must never become weary, not even with the children who flee from them, with those who offend against them, with those who deny them.

“Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?” Who will refuse to a son who departs asking nothing, the supreme gift of a love which asks no requital?

LITTLE CHILDREN

All men are children of the Son of Man, but no one could call Him father in the flesh. Among the disappointing joys of men perhaps the only joy which does not disappoint is to hold in one’s arms or on one’s knees a child whose face is rosy with blood which is also yours, who laughs at you with the dawning splendor of his eyes, who stammers out your name, who uncovers the springs of the lost tenderness of your childhood; to feel against your adult flesh, hardened by winds and the sun, this fresh smooth young flesh where the blood seems still to have kept some of the sweetness of milk, flesh that seems made of warm, living petals. To feel that this flesh is yours, shaped in the flesh of your mate, nourished with the milk of her breasts; to watch the birth and slow flowering of the soul in this flesh; to be the sole father of this unique creature, of this flower opening in the light of the world; to recognize your own aspect in his childish eyes, to hear your own voice through his fresh lips; to grow young again through this child in order to be worthy of him; to be nearer to him; to make yourself younger, better, purer; to forget all the years which bring us silently nearer to death, to forget the pride of manhood, the vanity of wisdom, the first wrinkles on the face, the expiations, the ignominies of life and to become a virgin again beside this virginity, calm beside this calmness, good with a goodness never known before; to be in short the father of a child of your own, this is certainly the highest human pleasure given to a man who has a soul within his clay.

Jesus, whom no one called Father, was drawn to children as to sinners. Lover of the absolute, He loved only extremes. Complete innocence and complete downfall were for Him pledges of salvation. Innocence because it does not need to be cleansed; abject degradation because it feels more keenly the need to be cleansed. The people in danger are those midway; men half depraved and half intact; men who are foul within and wish to seem upright and just; those who have lost with their childhood their native purity and do not yet recognize the filthiness of their inner depravity.

Jesus loved children with tenderness and sinners with compassion; the pure and those who stood in dire need of purification. His hand willingly caressed the floating hair of the newly weaned child and did not draw back from the perfumed tresses of the prostitute. He drew near to sinners because they often had not the strength to come to Him; but He called children to Him because children know by instinct who loves them, and run willingly to him. Mothers brought their children to Him to have Him touch them. The Disciples, with their habitual roughness, cried out on them—and Jesus once more was obliged to reprove them, “Suffer little children, and forbid them not to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” “Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.”

The Disciples, bearded men, proud of their authority as mature men and as lieutenants of their future Lord, could not understand why their Master consented to waste time with children who could not yet speak plainly and could not understand the meaning of grown people’s words. But Jesus set in their midst one of these children and said: “Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.... And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

Here, too, the transposition of values is complete. In the Old Law, the child was to respect the grown man, to revere and imitate the old man. The little child was to take the grown person as his model. Perfection was supposed to lie in years of maturity, or, better yet, in old age. The child was respected only as containing the hope for future manhood. Jesus reversed these ideas; grown people were to take their example from little children, elders were to try to become like infants, fathers were to imitate their sons. In the world as it was, as it is, controlled by force, where the only valued art is the art of acquiring riches and overcoming others, children are at the most only human larvæ. In the New World announced by Christ, which will be governed by fearless purity and innocent love, children are the arch-types of happy citizens. The child who seems an imperfect man is thus more perfect than the grown man. The man who imagines that he has come into the fullness of his time and of his soul is to turn back, despoil himself of his complacent complexities and return to his first youth. From having been imitated he becomes an imitator, from his position as first he becomes last.

Jesus reaffirms His own likeness to a child, and declares with no hesitation that He is identical with the children who seek Him out, “And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.” The saint, the poor man, the poet, present themselves under this new form which sums them all up: the child, pure and candid as the saint, bare and needy as the poor man, marveling and loving like the poet.

Jesus loves children not only as unconscious models for those who wish to attain the perfection of the Kingdom, but as the actual mediums of truth. Their ignorance is more illumined than the doctrines of learned men; their ingenuousness is more powerful than the intellect which shows itself in reasoning words. Only a clear and untarnished mirror can reflect the images of the revelation.

“I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” Their own wisdom stands in the way of the wise, because they think they understand everything. Their own intelligence is an impediment for the intelligent, because they are not capable of understanding any other light than that of the intellect. Only the simple can understand simplicity, the innocent, innocence, the loving, love. The revelation of Jesus, open only to virginal souls, is all humility, purification and love. But man, as he grows older, becomes more complicated, more corrupt, prouder, and learns the horrible pleasure of hatred. Every day he goes further from Paradise, becomes less capable of finding it. He takes pleasure in his steady downfall and glories in the useless learning which hides from him the only needful truth.

To find the new Paradise, the Kingdom of innocence and love, it is needful to become like children who have already what others must strive and struggle to regain.

Jesus seeks out the company of sinners, of men and women, but He feels Himself with his true brothers only when He lays His hands on the heads of the children whom the Galilean mothers bring to Him as an offering.

MARTHA AND MARY

Women also loved Jesus. He who had the form and flesh of a man, who left His mother and never had a wife, was surrounded all His life and after His death by the warmth of feminine tenderness. The chaste wanderer was loved by women as no man was ever loved, or ever can be loved again. The chaste man, who condemned adultery and fornication, had over women the inestimable prestige of innocence.

All women, who are not mere females, kneel before him who does not bow before them. The husband with all his legal love and authority, the satyr with all his mistresses, the eloquent adulterer, the bold ravisher, have not so much power over the spirit of women as he who loves them without touching them, he who saves them without asking for even a kiss as reward. Woman, slave of her body, of her weakness, her desire and of the desire of the male, is drawn to him who frees her, to him who cures her, to him who loves her and asks no more from her than a cup of water, a smile, a little silent attention.

Women loved Jesus. They stopped when they saw Him pass, they followed Him when they saw Him speaking to His friends, they drew near to the house where He had gone in, they brought their children to Him, they blessed Him loudly, they touched His garment to be cured of their ills, they were happy when they could serve Him. All of them might have cried out to Him, like the woman who raised her voice in the midst of the multitude: “Blessed is the womb that bare ye, and the paps which thou hast sucked.”

Many followed Him to death. Salome, mother of the Sons of Thunder; Mary, mother of James the less; Martha and Mary of Bethany.

They would have liked to be His sisters, His servants, His slaves; to serve Him, to set bread before Him, to pour Him wine, to wash His garments, to anoint His tired feet and His flowing hair. Some of them were fortunate enough to be allowed to follow Him, and knew the still greater good fortune of helping Him with their money ... “and the twelve were with him, And certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary, called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, And Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance.” Women, in whom piety is a native gift of the heart before it is acquired through desire for perfection, were, as they have always been, more generous than men.

When He appears in the house of Lazarus, two women, the two sisters of the man brought back from death, seem distracted with joy. Martha rushes towards Him to see what He needs, if He wishes to wash, if He wishes to eat at once, and, bringing Him into the house, she leads Him to the couch that He may lie down, puts over Him a blanket lest He be cold, and runs with a pitcher to get fresh cool water. Then, on her return, she sets to work to prepare for the pilgrim a fine meal, much more abundant than the ordinary dinner of the family. With all haste she lights a great fire, goes to get fresh fish, new-laid eggs, figs and olives; she borrows from one neighbor a piece of new-killed lamb, from another a costly perfume, from another richer than she, a flowered dish. She pulls out from the linen-chest the newest table-cloth, and brings up from the wine-cellar the oldest wine. And while the wood snaps and sparkles in the fire and the water in the kettle begins to simmer, poor Martha, bustling, flushed, hurrying, sets the table, runs between the kneading-trough and the fire, glances at the waiting Master, at the street to see if her brother is coming home, and at her sister, who is doing nothing at all.

For when Jesus passed the sill of their house, Mary fell into a sort of motionless ecstasy from which nothing could arouse her. She sees only Jesus, hears nothing but Jesus’ voice. There is nothing else in the world for her at that moment. She cannot have enough of looking at Him, of listening to Him, of feeling Him there, living, close to her. If He glances at her, she is happy to be looked at; if He does not look at her, she fixes her eyes on Him; if He speaks, His words drop one by one into her heart, there to remain to her death; if He is silent, she draws from His silence a more direct revelation. And she is almost troubled by the bustling and stepping about of her sister. Why should Martha think that Jesus needs an elaborate dinner? Mary is seated at His feet and does not move even if Martha or Lazarus call her. She is at the service of Jesus, but in another way. She has given Him her soul, only her soul, but such a loving soul! And the work of her hands would be inopportune and superfluous. She is a contemplative soul, an adorer. She will take action only to cover the dead body of her God with perfumes. She would move quickly enough if He should ask of her all her life-blood. But the rest, all this business of Martha, is only material activity which is no concern of hers.

Women loved Him and He requited this love with compassion. No woman who turned to Him was sent away disconsolate. The sorrow of the widow of Nain made Him sorrow, so that He brought to life her dead son; the prayers of the Canaanite woman, although she was a foreigner to Him, wrought on Him to cure her daughter; the unknown woman which had a “spirit of infirmity” eighteen years, and was bowed together and could in no wise lift herself, was cured, although it was on the Sabbath day and the rulers of the synagogue cried, “Sacrilege!” In the first part of His wanderings He cured Peter’s wife’s mother of fever and the Magdalene of evil spirits. He brought to life the daughter of Jairus, and cured that unknown woman who had suffered for twelve years from a bloody flux.