When I was ordained, the rector of our seminary gave me the gift of a book written in 1959 by a Japanese Catholic author named Shusaku Endo. The book is called, Wonderful Fool. I did my best not to be insulted by the implications of a gift with that title!
The book is one of Fr. Bill’s favorites and when I read it I understood well why he liked it so much, and why it actually made a very appropriate gift for a newly ordained Holy Cross priest.
The novel is set in the 1950s, about twelve years after the end of the Second World War, and it tells the story of Gaston Bonaparte – a bona fide descendant of Napoleon himself.
Gaston is a failed French seminarian who travels to Japan seeking his destiny. He ultimately tries to bring the Gospel to the squalor of Tokyo’s slums and in so doing he finds his own personal Gethsemane and Golgatha.
When Gaston arrives in Japan, in steerage on a third-rate steamer no less, he makes contact with an old pen pal Takamori, and his sister Tomoe. Gaston’s poor and disheveled appearance is a bitter disappointment to his hosts and his behavior causes them constant embarrassment. He is a large, ugly man – described by Tomoe, as “horse-faced” – and he gives the impression of being a clumsy, bumbling oaf.
He is a stranger in a strange land, an outsider whose language and way of thinking set him apart in every possible way. But what’s more, he spends his time in Tokyo not sightseeing but making friends with street children, stray dogs, prostitutes, and gangsters. To the reader, it’s clear that Gaston does this because he is entirely pure of heart. He has a very simple love for others, and a slightly naïve trust in others’ innate goodness.
Shusaku describes him this way: “Simple Gaston was constitutionally incapable of harboring resentment or hated towards anyone. Even as a child, no matter what trick his companions played on him or how cruelly they treated him, he was of such a temperament that he could not hate his persecutors. To hate was for him the most odious of tasks. Instead, he was quickly moved to trust in the goodwill and friendship of others, or at least to want to trust in them.”
While making friends with Tokyo’s stray dogs, beggars and prostitutes, Gaston encounters a mob hit man, pointedly named Endo after the author himself. He is a cold, ruthless man at the polar opposite end of the moral spectrum from Gaston. Endo is determined to exact revenge on another criminal he served with during the war. Underestimating the moral and physical courage of Gaston, he tries to make the foreigner his unwitting accomplice.
But Gaston doggedly follows him in the certain belief that he can get at the goodness inside Endo and save both him and his target from destruction. I won’t give away the ending, but leave it to say that Gaston’s climatic and heroic acts on behalf of those two criminals finally earn him the reverence of Takamori and Tomoe that his kindness and tenderness should have warranted in the first place.
Shusaku narrates the conversion that comes upon Tomoe at the end of the novel:
“For the first time in her life Tomoe came to the realization that there are fools and there are fools. A man who loves others with open-hearted simplicity, who trusts others, no matter who they are, even if he is deceived or even betrayed – such a man in the present-day world is bound to be written off as a fool. And so he is. But not just an ordinary fool. He is a wonderful fool. He is a wonderful fool who will never allow the little light which he sheds along man’s way to go out. It was the first time this thought had ever occurred to her.”
Friends, in today’s Gospel, when Jesus clears the Temple of the vendors and moneychangers, the leaders of the Jews ask Him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” And in our second reading, from the Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul repeats and expands this by saying, “Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom.”
But in responding to the Jews in today’s Gospel, the only sign Jesus offers them is the sign of His Cross. He predicts the Crucifixion – the destruction of the temple of His body – promising that the impossible will indeed happen: that on the third day He will rise again.
And so St. Paul answers in his epistle, “we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those of us who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”
Brothers and sisters, there are still many, many people today who imagine that the Cross is utter foolishness; that true suffering can never have any real value or offer any redemption.
Such people can’t make any real sense of the sacrifices we make during Lent, let alone understand why we would strive to give to those in need without their proving to be ‘worthy;’ or why we strive to forgive our enemies; or why we would submit ourselves to the dictates of an ancient Law that we heard about in our first reading.
Many people think we are crazy to endure suffering in faith, we are naïve to offer trust and forgiveness even to our enemies, and we are mindless and unthinking to adhere to the teachings of the Church. Put simply, we who proclaim the Cross of Christ are still thought of as fools!
But friends, we are wonderful fools if we are truly fools for Christ and His Gospel; if our foolishness, like that of Gaston Bonaparte, is an emulation of Christ’s ‘foolishness;’ if we are thought of as fools for living out Christ’s prodigal love for all people, even those who tortured and killed Him, even those who cynically mocked and ignored Him.
Brothers and sisters, if during this Lenten season, our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving results in our closer discipleship with Christ, and therefore also results in more people thinking of us as fools, then we will have found the wonderful foolishness of God which is wiser than all human wisdom.
Then, at the end of Lent and throughout our lives, we will be truly prepared to invite all of our brothers and sisters to join us in laughing like fools when we see the folly of the Cross turned into the glory of the Resurrection.
No comments:
Post a Comment