The Paradox ParExcellence
Sleep, baby, do not weep,
Sleep celestial Babe.
Up above your head
The tempests shall not dare to rage!
A lullaby, adapted from Italian. But He is not born to sleep. The tempests raged. He never ‘moved’. How can He sleep in the reeky stable where the donkey brays, precursor of all the donkeys who will bray against Him to no avails? How can He sleep when the shuffling steps of Herod’s assassins draw near? How can He sleep upto that last night when He will agonize under the olive trees of Gethsemane and the sleeping bodies of the Eleven.
Mother Mary cannot sleep either. In the evening soon after the houses of Bethlehem disappear in the darkness and the first lamps are lighted, the mother has to steal away like a fugitive. All this to snatch a life from the Power monger king and to enkindle hope in the homosapiens. Behold her press upon her breast her son, the man-God, her hope, her sorrow.
Joseph, Mary’s husband takes the child and His Mother towards the west. They cross the old land of Canaan and come by, easy stages to the Nile, to that country of Mizraim which had cost so many tears to their ancestors fourteen centuries before. Yes, Jesus the Lord of the universe who will continue and demolish the work of Moses, the first redeemer. The first savior of the Israelites, had been miraculously saved by God, but he, in turn, redeemed his people from the Egyptian yoke. He led them, in spite of all the odes and ordeals, from Egypt to Canaan. Nevertheless, now the great Redeemer is in danger of His very life. In fact He came to die, but not now, but after having conquered sin and death. His victory over death would be won by teaching that greed, pride and impurity are sins and that spiritual purity, honesty and justice are the sole ways of redemption and that this spiritual purity which is the only romantic which preserves humanity from death and decay.
The worshippers of mud and of animals, the servants of riches and the Beast could not redeem themselves. Their tombs, high as mountains, though decked out like queen’s palaces. White and fair to see, as those of the Pharisees, guard only ashes dust again returning to dust even as the dead bodies of the animals. How can death be conquered by copying, life in the wood and stone. Stone crumbles away and turns to dust, wood rots and turns to dust and both of them are mud-eternal mud.
To be continued
