Lessons from The Robe

If you believed that Jesus' supernormal power could heal the physical and mental sickness of those who merely touched his Robe, by what reasoning do you disbelieve that he could still a storm?  Once you impute to him supernormal power, what kind of impertinence consents to your drawing up an itemized list of the peculiar things he can and cannot do?  Yet this storm story was too, too much! ... This is an inanimate, insensible tempest!  No human being--however persuasive--could still a storm!  Concede Jesus that power, and you admit that he was divine!

Lloyd C. Douglas, a Lutheran minister, wrote The Robe in 1942.  It enjoyed immediate, widespread success, holding the number one spot on the New York Times Best Seller List for more than one year.  It was later made into a motion picture in 1953.

The robe from which the novel derives its title is the simple, seamless piece of apparel that belonged to Christ.  It falls into the possession of tribune Marcellus Gallio, who wins it while gambling with the other Roman soldiers at the foot of the cross.  Marcellus, in charge of the crucifixion of Jesus, is disturbed by the deed, especially when he realizes that he has put to death an innocent man. 

Later that day, at a banquet hosted by Pontius Pilate, a depressed Marcellus is cajoled into donning the dead Galilean's robe in a display of mockery.  He reluctantly does so and immediately is overcome with a mental paralysis.  He blankly asks of those around him, "Were you out there?" as the scene at Golgotha haunts him.

Aided by his loyal Greek slave, Demetrius, Marcellus seeks to recuperate in Athens, but is driven near to suicide.  At the last moment, it is the Robe itself that heals Marcellus: laying his hands upon the Robe restores his peace of mind and heart.  

Yesterday afternoon, its touch had healed his wounded mind.  How was he to evaluate this astonishing fact?  Perhaps it was more simple than it seemed: perhaps he was making it all too difficult.  He had shrunk from this Robe because it symbolized his great mistake and misfortune.  Now--compelled by a desperate circumstance to lay his hands upon the Robe--his obsession had vanished!  Was this effect purely subjective--or was the Robe actually possessed of magical power!

The act of carrying out a death sentence is enough to cause a nervous breakdown...but why was it only after putting on the Robe?  And how could the same Robe later fully restore him?  Marcellus is at a loss and undertakes a mission to Jerusalem and Galilee to learn more about this Jesus.

The bulk of the novel follows Marcellus' journey to faith.  Along the way he meets some of the apostles and recipients of Christ's healing power--including the woman with the bleeding who merely touched Christ's Robe and was healed.  At first Marcellus accepts Jesus as a wise teacher and new kind of leader who could usher in a kingdom of peace and brotherhood, so unlike the Roman Empire.  

But how to explain these miracles?  He himself experienced the power of the Robe.  He could not deny his own inexplicable healing.  Where does one draw a line...can you draw a line?  If Jesus can physically heal people, why not tame the tempest?  And if He can calm the wind and waves, what else must He be but divine?  

Marcellus is gradually led into greater knowledge of Christ: teacher, healer, savior.  For a long time, Marcellus assumes that Chris is dead; indeed, why would he think otherwise?  Then as his understanding and acceptance deepen, the Christians inform him: Christ is alive! 

We know Christ's story.  In some ways, the familiarity of that story is a danger.  At times, I forget how astounding it is.  A person, dead in a tomb...resurrected!  God killed on a cross and alive once again.  Marcellus' baulking at the incredibleness of it was refreshing.  

It is a reminder of His presence, too.  The Robe is a story about the person of Christ and how His presence changed people--sanctified and redeemed them.  These were people who sat with Him, heard His voice, broke bread with Him, got into a fishing boat with Him...  

How powerful the personality, the aura of Christ!  When Chris and I were on our honeymoon, we were blessed to meet the Prelate Bishop of Opus Dei, Javier Echevarria (may his soul rest in peace).  When he walked into the room, I immediately felt something.  I could feel the grace emanating from him.  His presence was powerful; he radiated Christ.  I can only imagine the effect Christ Himself had on those He saw and touched and spoke to.  Well, we know, don't we?  They left everything...everything...to follow Him.

Simon Peter asks Marcellus how he knew Jesus.  Marcellus' succinct reply: "I crucified him."  In the end, Marcellus pays his debt: he gives his life for Christ, witnessing to the Christian faith before the emperor.  Once he had faith, he had to act upon it, even if it meant martyrdom.  

As I typed my notes in preparing to write this post, I reflected that Douglas had to end his novel this way.  Marcellus crucified Christ; in return, Marcellus gives up his earthly life for Christ.  Then it struck me: I crucified Christ.  My sins were the nails driven into his flesh and the sword that struck His side.  It was me.  And in a sense, I--baptized, raised in the faith, recipient of sacramental grace--have much more culpability in knowingly committing my sins than Marcellus who was ignorantly following a command.  

I have a debt to pay.  

The Emperor Tiberius comments about the Christians:

 'There's more than one kind of courage, my child,' he soliloquized, 'and the most potent of all is the reckless bravery of people who have nothing to lose.' 

Am I that brave?  Am I ready to die for Christ?  If I truly know Him in the deep, intimately personal way that the apostles did--then what is there to lose?

I believe Lord!  Help my unbelief!

Lessons from Shadows on the Rock

If the Count should go back with the ships next summer, and her father with him, how could she bear it, she wondered.  On a foreign shore, in a foreign city (yes, for her a foreign shore), would not her heart break for just this?  For this rock and this winter, this feeling of being in one's own place, for the soft content of pulling Jacques up Holy Family Hill into paler and paler levels of blue air, like a diver coming up from the deep sea. 

Willa Cather wrote Shadows on the Rock just four years after Death Comes for the Archbishop.  In some ways, the novels are quite similar: both are works of historical fiction that include real people as characters.  They also are written in Cather's distinct style, which lacks one unified, driving plot with conflict and resolution; instead, Cather focuses on short vignettes with strong characterization that bring her figures to life.

The works couldn't be more different, however, in their setting.  While Death Comes for the Archbishop is set in the American southwest in the 19th century, Shadows on the Rock's setting is Quebec, 1697. 

And what a setting it is!

It is amazing how Cather, having never lived in the late 17th century or in New France, can bring the French colony there to life in so many vivid details.  She must have meticulously studied the time period to recreate it so stunningly in her book.  I have never traveled to Quebec, but after reading Cather's novel, I feel as though I have just returned home from a trip there.  One can see the landscape of mountains of pine, feel the icy cold of a Quebec winter, hear the clanging of the Cathedral bell echoing through the night air...

When the sun had almost sunk behind the black ridges of the western forest, Cecile and Jacques sat down on the Cathedral steps to eat their gouter...Now they had the hill to themselves,--and this was the most beautiful part of the afternoon.  They thought they would like to go down once more.  With a quick push-off their sled shot down through constantly changing colour; deeper and deeper into violet, blue, purple, until at the bottom it was almost black.  As they climbed up again, they watched the last flames of orange light burn off the high points of the rock. 

Cather follows a year in the lives of Euclide Auclair and his daughter, Cecile.  Euclide is an apothecary and has come to Quebec in the service of the governor, Count de Frontenac.  A widower, he and his daughter have settled themselves into a warm, welcoming home--indeed, Quebec, so far and so different from their native land, has become their home.  

The book opens with Euclide watching the ships sail away on their return journey to France.  It is autumn in Quebec and they will have no news until June when the ships return.  Communication has ceased and one realizes the great vastness of space and distance that separated the French colonists from their fellow Frenchmen.  In the wilderness of pine that surround them, they cling to the rock of Quebec where they have made a home.  

Why, the priest wondered, were these fellows always glad to get back to Kebec?  Why did they come at all?  Why should this particular cliff in the wilderness be echoing tonight with French songs, answering to the French tongue?  He recalled certain naked islands in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence; mere ledges of rock standing up a little out of the sea, where the sea birds came every year to lay their eggs and rear their young in the caves and hollows... This headland was scarcely more than that; a crag where for some reason human beings built themselves nests in the rock, and held fast.

They cling to the rock ... and to the Rock--to the Church.  It is the Church that directs and guides of lives of the French colonists.  Cecile and her father have brought a creche from France, which Cecile excitedly displays on Christmas Eve.  Her friend, Jacques, brings a gift for the infant Jesus in the manger: a beaver, carved out of wood.  The beaver in the creche is the Catholic faith, brought to New France.  

The North American martyrs and some of their stories appear in Shadows on the Rock.  Their courageous example and the vibrant faith of those who followed them are some of the most powerful passages.  Cather writes about the elderly bishop Laval, who finds young Jacques, searching about the empty night streets for his mother (a prostitute).  The bishop takes the abandoned boy into his residence, has him bathed and rests Jacque in his own bed.  

She [Cecile] always felt a kind of majesty in his grimness and poverty.  Seventy-four years of age and much crippled by his infirmities, going about in a rusty old cassock, he yet commanded one's admiration in a way that the new Bishop, with all his personal elegance, did not.  One believed in his consecration, in some special authority own from fasting and penances and prayer; it was in his face, in his shoulders, it was he.

"It was he."  What a powerful line!  The power was his presence, of the grace and piety that authentically flowed out from him.  Come to find out, Bishop Laval is one of the many historical figures who appear in the book--Pope Francis canonized him 2014!

In another memorable vignette, Cecile and her father are paid a visit by a woodsman who works in the fur trade.  He recounts a harrowing experience of traveling through a massive snowstorm with a priest, in an effort to reach his dying brother.  

"Before daylight the wind died, but the cold was so bitter we had to move or freeze.  It was good snowshoeing that day, but with empty bellies and thirst and eating snow, we both had colic.  That night we ate the last of our lard.  I wasn't sure we were going right,--the snow had changed the look of everything.  When Father Hector took off the little box he carried that held the Blessed Sacrament, I said: 'Maybe that will do for us two, Father.  I don't see much ahead of us.'

'Never fear, Antoine,' says he, 'while we carry that, Someone is watching over us...'"

Not all of the stories are of canonized saints or life-or-death ventures through the wilderness.  Many are just the ordinary details of day-to-day life--timeless feelings and experiences: a sense of home and rootedness, the order of routine and familiarity.  One of my favorite passages from the book is when Cecile goes on a small trip to visit Ile d'Orleans.  While initially excited about the adventure beyond Quebec, Cecile finds herself homesick and longing for the comfortable familiarity of her father and own bed.

She lay still and stiff on the very edge of the feather bed, until the children were asleep and she could hear the smith and his wife snoring in the next room...Cecile got up very softly and dressed carefully in the dark.  There was only one window in the room, and that was shut tight to keep out mosquitos.  She sat down beside it and watched the moon come up,--the same moon that was shining down on the rock of Kebec.  Perhaps her father was taking his walk on Cap Diamant, and was looking up the river at the Ile d'Orleans and thinking of her.  She began to cry quietly.  She thought a great deal about her mother, too, that night; how her mother had always made everything at home beautiful, just as here everything about cooking, eating, sleeping, living, seemed repulsive.

I remember with such clarity sleeping over at a friend's house and, like Cecile, gazing out the bedroom window while my friend peacefully slept.  All I could think about was the feeling of my own home and family.  No matter that this friend lived only about five minutes away; I missed everything about home.  

Characters and their stories come in and out of the Auclairs' life in the course of the year.  What is lacking in typical plot in Shadows on the Rock is made up for in the powerful resonance of the stories and images presented.  

Quebec in 1697 is so very distant from 2017.  But Cather makes it real, pertinent, and even familiar.  It is her writing, yes.  And it is also that Quebec was built on the Rock that still is strong today, whatever new world one may be exploring: you can still find home in the Church, which directs, protects, and guides our lives.

Cecile did not always waken at the first bell, which rang in the coldest hour of the night, but when she did, she felt a peculiar sense of security, as if there must be powerful protection for Kebec in such steadfastness, and the new day, which was yet darkness, was beginning as it should.  The punctual bell and the stern old Bishop who rang it began an orderly procession of activities and held life together on the rock, though the winds lashed it and the billows of snow drove over it.

Lessons from Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy

"They tell me that often the worst criminals make the best nuns ... Because, they have known the depths.  'Out of the depths, I cried to Thee'..." 

Having read Rumer Godden's In This House of Brede, I was eager to reenter the world of the religious convent.  Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy is similar in that a substantial portion of the novel takes place within the community of the Dominican Sisters of Bethany.  Godden, in her engaging, vividly descriptive way inserts the reader into the daily life of the nuns, as well as the liturgical year of the Church.

Yet, Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy also focuses on two other, very different communities.

The novel can be divided into three different time periods within the life of the protagonist.  First, Elizabeth Fanshaw is a young, sheltered English girl serving as a driver in WWII.  On the night of the liberation of Paris, she pursues her own liberation, commencing a night of celebration and passion.  Elizabeth meets Patrice, falls in love with him, and then quickly learns he is the owner of a brothel.  She becomes Lise Ambard, prostitute and, eventually, Madam of the Rue Duchesne.

In the second period, Lise is convicted of murder and sentenced to prison.  She is known as "La Balafree" (the scarred one) due to the scar she bears on her face, a wound inflicted when she intervened in a fight between Patrice and another man.  

While in prison, Lise meets the Sisters of Bethany, whose special charism is to minister to convicts.  In fact, many of the nuns are former convicts themselves!  (Interestingly, this order of nuns actually exists: two Sisters of Bethany were advisors to Godden and the community benefited financially from the sale of her novel.)  When Lise has served her term, she takes on her third and final name: Sister Marie Lise of the Rosary.  

Lise becomes entangled in the first community of the brothel, hoping to find the freedom to pursue love.  Instead, she finds herself in a self-serving, abusive, and destructive environment.  She has entered a prison of her own doing and any effort to free herself--or those around her--are futile.

Ironically, it is within the walls of prison that Lise begins to glimpse freedom.

I never saw it, thought Lise.  Long before I went to prison, I was in a prison ... 

Finally, as she enters the religious life, Lise achieves the freedom she has sought: a freedom obtained only through self-surrender to God and to others.  Freedom requires submission.  Lise is most free when she lays her freedom at the feet of Christ. 

"Then...Madame Lise, where are you going?"

"Where I shall find just what we have both left," said Lise.  "Walls--or, perhaps, not walls, bounds that I musn't cross without leave.  Rules I musn't break.  Times to keep, silence, work, and where I must be obedient, poor."

"You mean--another prison?"

"Not prison, freedom.  That's the paradox.  I believe it will be such freedom as I can't imagine now."

The image of rosary beads follows Lise through these various periods of her life.  Godden, characteristic of her writing style, does not offer a linear progression of events.  Instead, Lise's story unfolds back-and-forth from past to present.  All three communities appear at once as the reader slowly understands what precipitated the events of Lise's life.

At first, this kind of narrative is a bit confusing.  However, it makes for a suspenseful revelation of the climax.  And it also symbolically reveals the action of God's grace in one life: how an event of the past, an evil event, can become the working of something much greater; that God can bring tremendous good out of the darkest of sin.  

We can never escape the past; it is part of our present.  But our past can be the means of our redemption.

This was an engaging, fast-paced read with a beautiful message of hope for all of us sinners: God can take us from the deepest depths and raise us to become saints.  The sorrowful mysteries of the rosary show us the penalty of our sins, but "where sin increased, grace abounded all the more" (Romans 5:20).  From the sorrow of our sins God pours forth the glorious joy of His forgiveness, mercy, and redemption.

Lessons from The Idiot

How far can compassion go, then?

Russian novelist Dostoyevsky published The Idiot serially from 1868-9, just two years after his famous Crime and Punishment.  The close proximity of the publications was influential: many saw The Idiot's protagonist as an inversion of the one in Crime and Punishment.  While the latter was a criminal, in the former Dostoyevsky strove to create what he described as a "positively beautiful man."

Indeed, Prince Myshkin is a man of outstanding compassion, simplicity, humility, gentleness, and forgiveness.  His virtues make him the hero of the novel.  Yet, to many, they also make him an "idiot."  (Myshkin's epilepsy--a medical condition that Dostoyevsky had himself--also contributed to his appearance as an idiot.)  

Myshkin's childlike naivety frequently becomes a source of amusement for those within his social circle.  He is derided as a fool--an overly generous, forgiving fool--who allows others to take advantage of him.  His straight-forward, unfiltered conversation is perplexing to some and outlandish to others.

A perfect child, and even quite pathetic; he has fits of some illness; he's just come from Switzerland, straight from the train, strangely dressed ... he's almost like a child, though he's cultivated. 

Dostoyevsky's purpose in developing Myshkin's character was to create a Christ-like figure and to place him in a materialistic, corrupt, and frequently fake society.  Would Myshkin's exemplary virtue elevate the society around him?  Or would he be dragged down in the dredges himself?

The question is aptly illustrated in a portrait that serves as a powerful symbol in the novel: The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb by Holbein.  Dostoyevsky viewed the painting first-hand and was captivated by its vivid, stark depiction of death.  There is no glorification here; Christ's flesh is painted as the dead, decaying flesh of any human being.  

One of the characters describes the painting:

In the picture this face is horribly hurt by blows, swollen, with horrible, swollen, and bloody bruises, the eyelids are open, the eyes crossed; the large, open whites have a sort of deathly, glassy shine.  But strangely, when you look at the corpse of this tortured man, a particular and curious question arises: if all his disciples, his chief future apostles, if the women who followed him and stood by the cross, if all those who believed in him and worshipped him had seen a corpse like that ... how could they believe, looking at such a corpse, that this sufferer would resurrect?

How could one believe, seeing the realism of death and every indication of defeat?  It makes Christ's death on the cross seem like an act of self-destruction.  And that is precisely the path many of the characters of the novel tread, most notably Nastasya Philippovna.  

As a young child, Nastasya was left without any parent.  An older, wealthy gentleman became her guardian, who later sexually abused Nastasya as an adolescent.  Four years serving as his concubine seared her soul with shame and guilt.  

When Myshkin meets Nastasya, he perceives her innocence, despite society's condemnation of her as a fallen woman.  Nastasya is attracted by his compassion and assurances of hope, but cannot escape the road to self-destruction.  Myshkin offers salvation; all she can see is a dead Christ.  And so, time after time, Nastasya takes the action that validates her (mis)self-conception: that she is destroyed.

Nastasya sees her fallenness with such intensity that she cannot see past the tomb to Easter Sunday.  She forgets there is a Resurrection--for Christ, and for her.

In such an instance, how far should Myshkin's compassion go?  

Nastasya is pulled between the path of salvation (represented by Myshkin) and that of destruction, which lies with a gentleman named Rogozhin.  Rogozhin's feelings for Nastasya are violently passionate.  His jealousy is as pointed and sharp as the tip of the knife he hides in a drawer.  

When Nastasya prepares to leave with Rogozhin, Myshkin--moved by pity--proposes to her.  

"I will consider that you are doing me an honor, and not I you.  I am nothing, but you have suffered and have emerged pure from such a hell, and that is a lot.  Why do you feel ashamed and want to go with Rogozhin?...I...love you...Nastasya Filippovna.  I will die for you, Nastasya Filippovna."

His offer is rejected, but Myshkin's compassion is undeterred.  At the climax of the novel, Myshkin is once again presented with the opportunity to save Nastasya.  The stakes are higher for Myshkin, as doing so causes him to sacrifice the romantic relationship he was developing with another character, Aglaya.  Aglaya is from an upstanding family, a young and pure girl who fills Myshkin with happiness.

Nevertheless, Nastasya accepts Myshkin's proposal to marriage and a wedding date is set.

The groom is motivated by pity, like that one would experience for a sick child.  The bride is partly filled with vindictive pride, eager to prove that she is just as worthy of Myshkin as anyone else.  She is also riddled with the conviction that, underneath it all, she is unworthy of anyone.

As the wedding nears, a friend pragmatically advises Myshkin:

"She deserves compassion?  Is that what you want to say, my good Prince?  But for the sake of compassion and for the sake of her good pleasure, was it possible to disgrace this other, this lofty and pure girl [Aglaya], to humiliate her before those arrogant, before those hateful eyes?  How far can compassion go, then?  That is an incredible exaggeration!  Is it possible, while loving a girl, to humiliate her so before her rival, to abandon her for the other one, right in front of that other one, after making her an honorable proposal yourself ... ?"

Was Myshkin's sacrifice redemptive?

In short, no.  Nastasya could not leave the path of self-destruction.  Though love, compassion, and forgiveness were extended to her, waiting for her at the head of the church aisle, on her wedding day she ran into the arms of Rogozhin ... and straight to her death.  

While I championed Myshkin for the majority of the novel and thoroughly liked his character, I, too, thought him an idiot on occasion.  It seemed as though his compassion veered into enabling at times.  He would not stop trying to save Nastasya, even though his efforts produced the same result time after time.  

Myshkin risked everything and the result?  Nastasya was murdered, Aglaya married an impostor who didn't love her, Rogozhin was found guilty and sent to hard labor in Serbia, and Myshkin lapsed into mental insanity from which he wasn't expected to recover.

The novel is a tragedy; there is no happy ever after for the characters.  One must speculate Dostoyevsky's message to the reader.  Did Myshkin's compassion go too far, to the point where he unwittingly contributed to the self-destructive behavior?  For that, one may well call him an idiot.

But it may be, too, that society is the idiot.  They could not understand Myshkin's compassion.  Aglaya was consumed with jealousy and left Myshkin, unable to comprehend his feelings toward Nastasya.  Likewise, those around Myshkin were perplexed by his behavior.  Instead of supporting him in his efforts to save Nastasya, they rebuked and derided him.  

For me, it is a reminder that, though Myshkin is the hero and the "positively beautiful man," he remains that: a man.  It takes more than a man to redeem.  We need a God-man.   

Lessons from Wuthering Heights

The second question, I have great interest in; it is this--Is Mr. Heathcliff a man?  If so, is he mad?  And if not, is he a devil?

A poll was taken in England to determine the greatest love story.  Coming in at #1 was Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.

It was Brontë's sole published work, printed only one year before her death in 1847.  

The story centers on the relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine (Earnshaw) Linton.  When Catherine was a young girl, her father found Heathcliff orphaned in Liverpool and brought him to live with the family on their estate on the moors.  

Catherine's older brother, Hindley, immediately resented his father's affection for the newcomer, resulting in his subsequent abuse and mistreatment of Heathcliff.  This only escalated once Hindley became the master of Wuthering Heights.  Catherine and Heathcliff became close companions as they sought refuge from the bleakness of their home life on the wild, untamed moors.

The turning point of the plot occurs when Catherine decides to marry Edgar Linton, a decision based on Linton's prominent social standing and Heathcliff's lack of one.  Marrying Heathcliff, Catherine claims, will degrade her.  

Heathcliff, agonized over Catherine's choice, sets his course on revenge--on Hindley for his years of abuse and on Linton for marrying his soulmate.  When Catherine dies, Heathcliff is plunged into misery and seeks out her ghost, even digging up her coffin to glimpse her corpse.

"...Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest, as long as I am living!  You said I killed you--haunt me, then!  The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe--I know that ghosts have wandered on earth.  Be with me always--take any form--drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!  Oh, God! it is unutterable!  I cannot live without my life!  I cannot live without my soul!" 

It is understandable that Heathcliff would latch onto Catherine, the only source of kindness and support he knew.  The few happy childhood recollections he must have had, scattered among plentiful moments of abuse, were with her.  

But, as I finished reading the novel, I was left flabbergasted by that designation: the greatest love story.  Was this a love story?  Was Heathcliff a romance novel hero?

The devil masquerades as an angel of light: Lucifer literally means "light-bearer."  So I assert that one could call Heathcliff a romance hero as much as one can call the devil an angel.  

Indeed, there seems to be more literary evidence for Heathcliff being a demon than any hero.  Consider this:

* As a child, Heathcliff vows revenge on Hindley.  When Nelly, the servant and book's principle narrator, chides him and explains that it is God's job to punish the wicked, Heathcliff rebukes her, saying, "No, God won't have the satisfaction that I shall."  Heathcliff desires to take the position and power of God, a truly Satanic characteristic.

* When Heathcliff returns to Wuthering Heights after Catherine has married Linton, Nelly remarks, "I felt that God had forsaken the stray sheep there to its own wicked wanderings, and an evil beast prowled between it and the fold, waiting his time to spring and destroy."

* Heathcliff, in enacting his revenge on Linton, determines to marry Linton's younger sister, Isabella.  When Catherine hears of his plans, she says to Heathcliff, "...I won't repeat my offer of a wife: it is as bad as offering Satan a lost soul.  Your bliss lies, like his in inflicting misery."   (Not exactly the words of lovers, are they?)

* Linton tells Heathcliff that his presence is a "moral poison."

* Heathcliff visits Catherine when she is ill, their final meeting before her death.  When Catherine casts herself into his arms, fainting, Nelly approaches to check on her mistress.  Heathcliff grasps Catherine greedily, "foaming like a mad dog," preventing Nelly from interfering.  He acts like a man possessed, whose heaven lies in his arms and whose hell is life without her.  

* Heathcliff is described as a most "diabolical man."

* When one of the narrators, Lockwood, arrives for the first time to Wuthering Heights, he finds it guarded by fierce, gnarling dogs.  These two "hairy monsters" bent on viscousness are like hounds of hell.  And Heathcliff is the master of this hellish estate.

* When Bronte was writing, the dangerous, smoking factory-towns in England frequently symbolized hell.  For example, poet William Blake wrote of England's "dark Satanic Mills."  Where did Heathcliff originate from?  No one knew his parentage or history; all they knew was that he came from a factory-town.

Catherine describes that she and Heathcliff are one: they are the same soul.  If that is the case, the are the same demonic soul.  Illustratively, Catherine is also described in Satanic terms.  She relates a dream she had in which she was unhappy in heaven and the angels flung her out.  Catherine didn't mind, however--she wanted to be brought back to the moors, a place of chaos, disorder, and death (many people drowned in the pools or became lost in the wilderness).  

Well might Catherine deem that Heaven would be a land of exile to her, unless, with her mortal body, she cast away her mortal character also.  Her present countenance had a wild vindictiveness in its white cheek, and a bloodless lip and scintillating eye...   

Heathcliff even inquires of her if she is possessed by a demon.  "She showed herself, as often was in life, a devil to me!" Heathcliff exclaims to Nelly.

With this abounding evidence, I wonder how anyone can claim the relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine constitutes the greatest love story.  There is little true affection between them, scant moments of tenderness.  Their happy moments lie solely in childhood, to which we have only the briefest of glimpses through Catherine's diary.  The rest of the time, they act in a completely selfish, harmful manner.

Maybe it is a "love" story in the same vein that the relationship between a girl and a vampire--who always teeters on killing his beloved through overwhelming lust--is a "love" story.  Or consider the immensely popular Fifty Shades of Grey, where a BDSM relationship is considered a "love" story.  

Even more astounding than the designation of "greatest love story" was an essay I read about Wuthering Heights.  Martha Nussbaum wrote "Wuthering Heights: the Romantic Ascent."  In her article, Nussbaum asserts that of all the characters, it is Heathcliff who is most Christian.  

No, even more: Heathcliff, she states, is a Christ-like figure.  Every other character keeps his or her love guarded and limited, protecting his or her heart.  Heathcliff, on the other hand, pours himself out for Catherine.  Nussbaum points to a scene immediately after Catherine's death, when Heathcliff smashes his head against the wood of a tree, pouring out his blood for love of the departed.

"...Heathcliff's entirely unguarded love is linked, by contrast, with a deeper sort of generosity and the roots of a truer altruism.  There is no character but Heathcliff in this novel who really sacrifices his life for the life of another...he is in a genuine if peculiar sense, the only Christian among Pharisees, and--with respect to the one person he loves--a sacrificial figure of Christ himself, the only one who sheds his own blood for another.  The novel suggests that only in this deep exposure is there true sacrifice and true redemption."

This interpretation of Heathcliff is completely perplexing and disturbing to me.  Christ allowed Himself to be crucified by others for the sake of humanity's greater good; Heathcliff willfully destroyed himself--physically and spiritually--in a manner that did nothing to help Catherine and potentially damned his soul.  

How could Nussbuam overlook the long and horrifying list of atrocities committed by Heathcliff?  It is too long to detail here, but let me just mention Heathcliff's deceitful treatment of Isabella Linton, whom he married and immediately thereafter verbally, emotionally, physically, and sexually abused.  He also seized his young son, raising him and keeping him alive with the sole motivation of wanting to inherit the boy's property.  He held characters captive, forced a marriage, and may have had a hand in murder.  

For his whole life Heathcliff nursed a grudge and vindictively sought revenge.  And after all the evil he committed, Heathcliff had no sorrow or regret.

"...as to repenting of my injustices, I've done no injustice, and I repent of nothing--I'm too happy, and yet I'm not happy enough." 

Emily's sister, Charlotte (author of Jane Eyre), wrote in the forward to Wuthering Heights, "Heathcliff, indeed, stands unredeemed; never once swerving in his arrow-straight course to perdition..."

How anyone could call Heathcliff a Christ-like figure is bewildering to me.  But love is very misunderstood today--many things masquerade as love, but are far from authentic.

I suppose, perhaps, someone could argue that it is "romantic" that Heathcliff's feelings for Catherine were so passionate and boundless, he was willing to destroy himself as a result of his affection for her.  But I argue that this is a very disordered understanding of love.  Love, having as its source Love itself, cannot lead to damnation.  

The novel closes with the scene of Catherine and Heathcliff's graves, lying side-by-side.  The moor is silent and peaceful, the narrator implying that so are the souls of those whose names are engraved on the tombstones.  

But I think differently.  

Heathcliff and Catherine have died and their poisonous effect on the members of their families is ended: there is finally peace at Wuthering Heights.  

Yet, some have claimed to spy the ghosts of Heathcliff and Catherine wandering about the moor.  

This seems to indicate that their souls have not found eternal rest in the heavenly homeland.  Instead they roam the wilderness of the moors.  Perhaps that is what their souls desired: Catherine, after all, dreamed she would not be happy in heaven.  

God does not send any soul to hell.  Those in hell choose it.  And perhaps that is the eternal choice Heathcliff and Catherine made, together. 

I guess some people consider that romantic.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Wuthering Heights and the way it made me reflect--it was a multi-dimensional, complex novel.  

I would certainly recommend it to others, but definitively not as a romance.

Lessons from Helena

...despite her placid habit of life and her decisive manner, she was troubled always with the suspicion that there was still something to be sought which she had not yet found... 

I was having a conversation with an agnostic who was grappling with understanding God and what seemed to be God's injustice. He proposed a hypothetical situation to me: a soldier on a battlefield who moves to cover an opening and promptly dies from gunfire. Meanwhile a nearby soldier survives and goes on to live a long, prosperous, happy life after the war. 

The first soldier who died--what was the purpose of his life? Did God create him merely for the explicit purpose of filling a hole on the battlefield? If so, where is the justice in that? Why should one man die and another live? That soldier didn't win the war or go on to become president or create a new invention. He lived for the reason of ... filling a hole? How could that be just? How could a good God do that?

This conversation took place more than ten years ago and I have never forgotten it, probably because I carry a degree of regret about it. I didn't have an answer or explanation. I didn't know what to say. From the inquirer's perspective, I could completely see his point. It didn't seem fair. Why create someone who would die with such a meaningless purpose?

This memory can to me unexpectedly while reading Evelyn Waugh's Helena. Waugh lauded it his favorite work. A hagiography, Helena reads very differently from the other Waugh novel I have read, Brideshead Revisited. 

The book follows Helena's life from her childhood as a British king's daughter (based on an unlikely legend), her marriage to Constantius Chlorus, the birth of their son Constantine, years spent alone after she was divorced, to her time as Empress Dowager when Constantine ruled.

Helena spends her life surrounded by those who wield great power and influence. Her husband and son seek to rule the empire. In earthly terms, there was no higher aspiration.

His need was simple; not today, not tomorrow, but soon, sometime before he grew too old to make proper use of it, Constantius wanted the World. 

Yet despite the laud and fanfare, Helena knows better than anyone the consequences and implications of such power. Members of the royal family are murdered for fear of conspiracy or challenge. Helena even learns that Constantine has approved of the murder of Crispus, his son and her grandson.

The problem, as Waugh explains through the observant voice of Helena, is power without grace.

One might assert that God gave these leaders a higher calling in life, a more significant purpose, than others. But is such an assertion true? It was certainly a harder path to tread. Waugh is critical of Constantine, but sympathetic as well. Constantine is no Nero--though often failing, his intentions seem to be noble. 

Helena, in a particularly profound prayer to the Magi, intercedes for her son and those who are powerful in the world, since such authority can pose a substantial obstacle to sanctity.

"For His sake who did not reject your curious gifts, pray always for all the learned, the oblique, the delicate. Let them not be quite forgotten at the Throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom." 

And what of Helena? What of her purpose? 

It was realized in the very twilight years of her life when Helena traveled to the Holy Land in search of Christ's cross. When the pieces of wood were excavated from the ground and venerated as the holy cross on which mankind was redeemed, Helena's purpose was finally fulfilled.

No one who watched that day, while the Empress calmly divided her treasure, could have discerned her joy. Her work was finished. She had done what only the saints succeed in doing; what indeed constitutes their patent of sanctity. She had completely conformed to the will of God. Others a few years back had done their duty gloriously in the arena. Hers was a gentler task, merely to gather wood. That was the particular, humble purpose for which she had been created. And now it was done. So with her precious cargo she sailed joyfully away. 

Helena's purpose was actually the purpose of all of us: to do the will of God. Therein lies the explanation to the hypothetical situation that introduced this post. It came to me suddenly as I read Waugh's writing. 

The question isn't whether the soldier had a long life, a happy life, a life with all the possibilities and adventures another may enjoy. It centers on the question: was the soldier doing what God desired him to do?

If the answer is yes, then filling the hole and sacrificing his life on the battlefield is precisely the greatest thing that that soldier could do.

The value and purpose of one's life is not determined by earthly standards. If such were the case, Constantius Chlorus--ruler of the great Roman Empire--would be honored and recalled with more respect and adulation than his wife, who found some pieces of wood.  Instead, his wife is venerated around the world as St. Helena.  

"I want to do what God wants." It should be the desire that directs our lives. Helena became a saint by doing what God desired. That is our purpose, too, and though it may differ in how it is individually lived out--as a world leader, a finder of wood, a soldier who fills a hole--the end result is identically perfect and eternal: heavenly triumph.

Lessons from Emma

To understand, thoroughly understand her own heart, was the first endeavor. 

When Jane Austen prepared to write her novel Emma, she determined to create a protagonist "whom no one but myself will like much."  As such, Emma Woodhouse is wealthy, beautiful, proud, spoiled, self-centered, and vain.  

The real evils of Emma's situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself; these were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to her many enjoyments. 

Despite this characterization, Emma may be my favorite Austen heroine thus far.  She is very flawed.  Her vices are clearly articulated and on display.  Emma's vices are also very engaging: they drive the plot and anticipation builds as her flaws bring the action to a climax.  

Her wrongdoing and defects make Emma is so very human.  In her follies and stumbles--caused by her own doing--I see myself.  Though she has faults, Emma remains a very sympathetic character: she is a caring individual, who desires to do what is right (though she often fails) and feels remorse when she errs.  So, at least for me, Emma was a character I could thoroughly understand in all her blunders and for whom I could cheer.

Emma's source of undoing is her efforts at matchmaking.  As the novel opens, Emma boasts of having brought about the marriage of her doting tutor.  She thus desires another match-making endeavor and sets her eyes upon Harriet Smith, a young girl with unknown parentage whose naïveté and humble background make her unmatched for Emma's social circle--a fact Emma promptly disregards.  

Thus sets the course for the rest of the story as Emma steers Harriet from one suitor to another, doing her best to arrange things just so, but repeatedly causing misinterpretations and romantic blunders.  

The principle people that surround Emma are as blind to her wrongdoing as she.  Her father can see only good in his daughter.  With such an approving audience, it is regretfully understandable why Emma is so assured of herself and ignorant of any possible misdeed.  As her father lauds,

With all dear Emma's little faults, she is an excellent creature.  Where shall we see a better daughter, or a kinder sister, or a truer friend?  No, no; she has qualities which may be trusted; she will never lead any one really wrong; she will make no lasting blunder; where Emma errs once, she is in the right a hundred times.

The only one who has the gumption to confront Emma is their longtime family friend Mr. Knightley.  When he confronts Emma on one occasion, Mr. Knightley explains,

This is not pleasant to you, Emma--and it is very far from pleasant to me; but I must, I will--I will tell you truths while I can, satisfied with proving myself your friend by very faithful counsel, and trusting that you will some time or other do me greater justice than you can do now.

In his counsel and correction, Mr. Knightley proves his love for Emma.  For love is not flattery, but honesty.  While other possible suitors encourage Emma's inflated self-image, Mr. Knightley gently humbles her and directs her to a higher course.  It is Mr. Knightley who truly loves Emma because he challenges her to be a better version of herself and calls her out when she settles for something lower.  

Indeed, love is honesty.  Emma's principle downfall occurs because she is convinced that she can arrange, manipulate, and direct love.  But to attribute that power to herself is a lie.  One can perhaps arrange a date or ask for another's phone number, of course.  However, a person cannot force or connive love.  To do so complicates something that should be simple.  Love is organic, mysterious, and a gift--because its source is Love.  

And that may constitute Emma's chief vice: she is not honest with herself.  The praise and adulation she has always had heaped upon her have formed a deep blindness for Emma.  She lacks self-knowledge.  Yet, how well do any of us know ourselves?  We see the splinter in the other's eye; we can't detect the wooden beam in our own.  That is why, as the opening quote illustrates, understanding one's own heart is the first step toward honesty.  

While Emma sets out to arrange other peoples' love, she is entirely ignorant of the love she holds in her own heart for someone.  That truth, the truth of love that should scream louder than anything, is muffled by her self-assurance.

With insufferable vanity had she believed herself in the secret of everybody's feelings; with unpardonable arrogance proposed to arrange everybody's destiny.  She was proved to have been universally mistaken; and she had not quite done nothing--for she had done mischief.

Watching Emma's transformation from blindness, realization, repentance, and honesty is a journey for self-reflection.  For though she sought to make a character no one would like, I believe Austen actually created a character most like all of us.