Life of Christ

by Giovanni Papini

But in order to make us believe that Christianity existed before Christ, those who deny Jesus, have found a rival to Jesus even in Rome, in the very palace of the Cæsars. Seneca, the director of conscience to young gentlemen, leader of the fashionable cult of reformed stoicism; the abstract aristocrat never moved by the troubles of the poor; the proprietor who despises riches, and clutches them tightly, who affirms the equality between free and slave, and owns slaves; the talented anatomist of scruples, of evils, of active vices, and complacent virtues; he who canalized the old doctrine of Chrisippus, dull but clear, towards the estuary of preciosity; moral Seneca they claim was a Christian without knowing it during Christ’s very lifetime. Thumbing over his works (many were written after the death of Christ, for Seneca waited till he was sixty-five years old before committing suicide), they have found that “the wise man does not avenge but forgets affronts,” and that “to imitate the Gods we should do good also to the ungrateful because the sun shines equally on the wicked and the seas bear up the pirate ship,” and finally that “We must succor our enemies with a friendly hand.” But the “forgetting” of the philosopher is not “forgiveness”; and “succor” can be philanthropy but is not love. The imperious, the stoic, the Pharisee; the philosopher proud of his philosophy, the righteous man complacent over his righteousness, can despise the affronts of the small, the pricks of enemies, and through pride of magnanimity and to win admiration can deign to give a loaf to a hungry enemy in order to humiliate him more harshly from the heights of perfection. But that bread was prepared with the leaven of vanity and that would-be friendly hand could never have dried a tear or dressed a wound.

The world of antiquity did not know love. It knew passion for a woman, friendship for a friend, justice for the citizen, hospitality for the foreigner; but it did not know love. Zeus protected pilgrims and strangers; he who knocked at the Grecian door was not denied meat, a cup of wine, and a bed. The poor were to be covered, the weak helped, the mourning consoled with fair words; but the men of antiquity did not know love, love that suffers, that shares another’s sorrow, love for all who suffer and are neglected, love for the poor, the lowly, the outlawed, the maligned, the downtrodden, the abandoned; love for all, love which knows no difference between fellow-citizens and strangers, between fair and foul, between criminal and philosopher, between brother and enemy.

In the last canto of the Iliad we see an old man, a mourner, a father who kisses the hand of his most terrible enemy, of the man who has killed his sons, who has just killed his most loved son. Priam, the old king, head of the rich, ruined city, father of fifty sons, kneels at the feet of Achilles, the greatest hero, and the most unhappy among the Greeks, son of the Sea-Goddess, avenger of Patroclus, slayer of Hector. The white head of the kneeling old man is bowed before the proud youth of the victor, and Priam mourns for the slain, strongest, fairest, most loved of all his fifty sons, and kisses the hand of the slayer! “Thou also,” he says, “hast a grey-haired, failing, defenseless, far-distant father. In the name of thy father’s love, give me back at least the dead body of my son.”

Achilles, the fierce, the wild, the slaughterer, puts the suppliant gently on one side and begins to weep; and both of them, the two enemies, the conqueror and the conquered, the father bereft of his son and the son who will never see his father again, the white-haired old man and the golden-haired youth both weep, drawn together for the first time by sorrow. The others round about gaze at them silent and astounded: we ourselves after thirty centuries are shaken by their grief.

But in the kiss of Priam there is no pardon, there is no love. This king humbles himself to obtain a difficult and unusual favor. If a God had not inspired him he would not have stirred from Ilium; and Achilles does not weep for dead Hector, for weeping Priam, for the powerful man who is brought to humble himself, for the enemy who is brought to kiss the hand of the slayer. He weeps over his lost friend; over Patrocles, dearer to him than all other men; over Peleus, left at Phthia; over his father, whom he will never more embrace, for he knows that his young days are numbered. And he gives back to the father the dead body of his son—that body which he has dragged for so many days in the dust—because it is the will of Zeus, not because his hunger of vengeance is stilled. Both of them weep for themselves; the kiss of Priam is a harsh necessity, the restitution of Achilles is obedience to the Gods. In the noblest heroic world of antiquity there is no place for that love which destroys hate and takes the place of hate, for love stronger than the strength of hate, more ardent, more implacable, more faithful, for love which is not forgetfulness of wrong, but love of wrong, because wrong is a misfortune for him who commits it rather than for him who suffers. There is no place for love for enemies in the world of antiquity.

Jesus was the first to speak of such love, to conceive of such love. This love was not known till the Sermon on the Mount. This is the greatest and the most original of Jesus’ conceptions. Of all His teachings this was the newest to men, this is still His greatest innovation. It is new even to us, new because it is not understood, not imitated, not obeyed; infinitely eternal like truth.

THOU SHALT LOVE

“Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in Heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect.” A few bare, plain words! But they are the Magna Charta of the new race, of the third race, of men not yet born. The first race was that of the animal without law, and its name was War; the second were barbarians tamed by the Law, whose highest perfection was justice. This is the race living now, and justice has not yet conquered War, and the Law has not yet supplanted animality. The third is to be the race of real men, not only upright but holy, not like beasts but like God.

Jesus had just one aim: to transform men from beasts to saints by means of love. Circe, the enchantress, the Satanic consort of the old mythologies, converted heroes into beasts by means of animal pleasures. Jesus is the anti-Satan, the anti-Circe, He who saves from animality by a force more powerful than pleasure. This undertaking, which seems hopeless to all animals barely risen above animality and to beings just entering upon real humanity, must be based on the imitation of God. To approximate sanctity one must look toward divinity: “Be holy because God is holy. Be perfect because God is perfect.”

This is not the first time that this appeal has been made to the heart of man. Satan said in the Garden: “You will be as gods.” Jehovah said to His judges: “Be gods, be just as God is just.” But now there is no question of being wise like God, nor is it even enough to be just, like God. God is now more than wisdom and justice. With Jesus, He becomes our Father, becomes love. His earth gives bread and flowers even to the homicide; he who takes His name in vain sees the glorious sun every morning, the same sun which warms the clasped hands of the laborer praying in the field. A true father loves the son who turns from him as he loves the son who seeks him out; a father cherishes the child who obeys him in his house, or who vomits him out with his wine. A father can be saddened, can suffer, can mourn, but no sinning man is capable of making a father become like to himself. No one can induce a father to take revenge.