Les Miserables – put on love

Les Miserables – put on love

The genius of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece Les Misèrable captured the imagination of the people in his time and certainly in our own. A didactic work on behalf of the oppressed poor of France, this mythological magnum opus gives us a window into human nature. Hugo called it ‘ a religious work’ and wrote for 17 years to pen what he believed to be an avenue into the heart of an accessible God most visibly incarnated in the person of Monseigneur Bienvenue, the bishop of Digne.

I suspect that Hugo intentionally named his hero 'bienvenue,' which means 'welcome.' I grew up in a French household and attended a school taught by French religious sisters. I used the word 'bienvenue’ as a daily response to the phrase ‘merci beau coups,’ and continue to use ‘bienvenue’ rather than the more contemporary ‘de rien.’ I prefer the word ‘welcome.’ I find that word wholly embodied in the person of Hugo’s priest. Monseigneur Bienvenue’s characteristics personify Christian hospitality: he quite literally puts on Christ and wears love as his cloak. Every one of Monseigneur Bienvenue’s words and deeds employ St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians (3:12-21):  heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, forgiveness, peace, wisdom and thanksgiving. All these qualities emerge in the bishop of Digne as a result of his baptism. He wears Christ.

Monseigneur Bienvenue gives over his presbyteral mansion of many rooms for use as a hospital and lives instead in simple and more humble quarters. He leaves his doors unlocked. He plants and lovingly tends a flower garden, believing that "the beautiful is as useful as the useful -- perhaps more so." When Jean Valjean appears at the rectory, Monseigneur Bienvenue offers ultimate Christian hospitality in the familial fellowship of food, a bed, a warm fire and conversation. The priest addresses Valjean, a convict of 19 years as 'monsieur'. That respectful title feels like the sun on Valjean's heart.  "Every time he said the word monsieur, with his gently solemn and heartily hospitable voice, the man's countenance lighted up. ‘Monsieur’ to a convict is a glass of water to a man dying of thirst at sea. Ignominy thirsts for respect." Spot on, Victor.

When Valjean steals the bishop's silver, this impoverished mercenary finds mercy rather than condemnation from his victim, the bishop. A wary Valjean, whose prior experience of humanity afforded him no hope of such gracious compassion, finds dumbfounding clemency in the priest's purchase of Valjean's soul for God. In just one night, the bishop of Digne changes the person of Jean Valjean's for all eternity and alters the future of Fantine, Cosette and Marius. Bienvenue puts on love and changes the course of people forever without ever knowing the outcome of his actions.

Many people experienced the stage version of Les Misèrable and many more will see the new and well directed film version that contains soul-searing performances and wonderful artistic design. Perhaps more than a few people will now delve into Victor Hugo's book, which provides the glorious language for the lines and musical lyrics of the stage and film version.

Les Misèrable is a timeless classic that resonated with the people in Hugo's time and continues to proffer innumerable parrallels to our own post-modern culture. Hugo's description of Jean Valjean suggests a plausible representation of people whom we meet all too often in the daily news.

“And then, human society had done him nothing but injury; never had he seen anything of her, but this wrathful face which she calls justice and which she shows to those whom she strikes down. No man had ever touched him but to bruise him. All his contact with men had been by blows. Never, since his infancy, since his mother, since his sister, never had he been greeted with a friendly word or a kind regard. Through suffering on suffering he came little by little to the conviction, that life was a war; and that in that war he was the vanquished. He had no weapon but his hate. He resolved to sharpen it in the galleys and to take with him when he went out.”

We know far too well the horrific outcomes of hatred, of bullying, of loneliness and the misery issued by words and deeds that wound, crucify and bleed life from human hearts searching for kindness, friendship, sensitivity. We hear frequently of terrible violence that inevitably leads us to the story behind the story of the perpetrators who often times have searched for tenderness in the world and found callous thoughtlessness in its stead. So many hearts long to be loved, held and shown a small kindness. Sadly, that longing can often be found among people within their own families. What should be the richest soil of family that welcomes and nurtures the seeds of love, mercy and justice often times mutates into a topsoil of hardheartedness, bitterness and irreconcilable differences that prevents the seeds of holiness - wholeness - from taking root within the fertile loam of affection. Rather than putting on love, some prefer to put on an armor of wrath, coldness and irreverence.

Where can we expect to discover and learn kindness, mercy, justice and compassion? Some fortunate individuals learn these virtues throughtheir lived experience within a loving household comprised of people who show mutual affection, humor and wholehearted support and fidelity. They put on love, live love and teach love from that knowledge. We learn what we live. However, far too many people know the deep poverty of deprevation in matters of affection, dignity, common courtesy, and social awareness, love of God and love of neighbor. Look around you and pay attention to the people you encounter; the lack of joy is palpatable in so many. People literally starve for kindness. What evil events throughout history may have been altered through love’s embrace?

Everyone possesses the key to change someone's destiny, just as Monseigneur Bienvenue changed Valjean. Hugo tells us that everyone's soul "contains a primitive spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world, immortal in the next, which can be develeoped by good, kindles, it up, and made resplendently radiant, and which evil can never entirely extinguish."

Through just one act of kindness, we could change a life. It’s that simple. Put on love. The action might be something as simple as giving up one's place in grocery line or offering someone priority in traffic with a smile and a wave. We all can be Monseigneur Bienvenue, making the world a little better with unpretentious acts of kindness, beginning with the people in our own families. We may even get a tiny glimpse of the ripple effects of our compassion in our lifetime. And we may not. But we trust that our actions, made holy by the grace of God will extend to create a kindlier world. France needed many revolutions to gain a just society. Hugo's story contains the potential to be far more than just good theater. Here is the voice of God telling us how to live.

Would that all people would know tender words spill from the heart of the human family of community to bolster one another through the life’s inevitable hardships and unexpected blows. Whether traditional or contemporary, “The family is, in a sense, a school for human enrichment. The family is the place where different generations come together and to help one another to grow in wisdom and harmonize the rights of individuals with other demands of social life; as such it constitutes the basis of society.” Gaudiem et Spes (Constitution on the Church in the Modern Word - Joy and Hope), 52.

“Love each other dearly always. There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another,” Valjean tells Cosette and Marius before he dies. He can only say this because someone loved him into life. Someone put on love and changed his course. May we all become Monseigneur Bienvenue in the year ahead.

Happy New Year.