Les Misérables, God's Mercy and Me

John 3:14-21 (4th Sunday of Advent, year b)

Les Misérables, the famous novel written by Victor Hugo, is a work soaked in the Christian theme of mercy. Mercy is particularly at work in the life of one of the main characters, Jean Valjean. His story can help us better understand the conversation about mercy we find in today’s Gospel between Jesus and Nicodemus. In this, Jesus explains how the Father has sent His Son to save us through the free gift of His life, rather than punish us for our sins. In His great mercy, God is not only patient with us sinners, waiting for us to convert, but seeks us out, always making the first move. In Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, three aspects of God’s mercy stand out.

1. By it’s very nature mercy is a freely given gift, something we cannot earn.
2. Mercy is a gift that, once accepted, is meant to change us.
3. Surprisingly, some people choose to refuse the gift of God’s mercy.

Looking more closely at the life of Jean Valjean helps us better appreciate these three aspects of God’s mercy.

When we first meet Valjean, he is recently released after spending 19 years in prison for stealing bread to feed a hungry child. His heart is hardened. Because of his past, Valjean is rejected wherever he goes; he cannot find decent work or a place to live. One day, an elderly Bishop warmly welcomes Valjean into his home, giving him food and a place to sleep. In return for this hospitality, Valjean robbed the Bishop of his silverware in the middle of the night. In the morning, Valjean was arrested and brought before the Bishop by the authorities. They explained that Valjean claimed the Bishop gave him the silverware. Because this is his second offence, Valjean certainly faces life imprisonment with no hope of parole. He is despondent. The Bishop then does something totally unexpected. He tells the guards to release Valjean, explaining that he told them the truth. The silverware was in fact a gift. More than this, he begins scolding Valjean for not taking the valuable silver candlesticks as well. Valjean is shocked and cannot comprehend the Bishop’s behaviour. When they are alone, the Bishop tells Valjean to go and make a new life for himself. He tells him that with these silver candlesticks he has ransomed his soul for God. He is to no longer to live in darkness but the light.

What the Bishop did for Valjean was a totally gratuitous act. It was in no way motivated by self interest. Valjean did nothing to deserve it. It was an act of pure mercy. The Bishop’s gesture is a reflection of what God has done for us. In His mercy, Jesus ransomed us from death to life by giving up His life. It is a total gift. We cannot earn it, only accept it. When we accept God’s mercy it changes our life.

This is exactly what happened to Valjean. He left the Bishop a changed man. After some time he became the mayor of a small town. He was renowned for his generosity to the poor. His self-sacrificing love is most evident when he adopts, at great risk and cost to himself, Cosette, the daughter of one of his workers who has died. During the course of Les Misérables we discover how the Bishop’s selfless act of love and mercy to Valjean transformed him to become someone who is also selfless, generous and loving. In the end, he becomes like the saintly Bishop.

The transformation of Valjean is a model for how we all should be transformed when we accept God’s mercy. God gives us His mercy freely so that in accepting it we become channels of love and mercy to those around use. This is the principle shown in the Gospel and mirrored in Les Misérables. Imagine for a moment if God’s love and mercy were not free, if we really thought that we had somehow earned it. If this were the case, then we would not show love and mercy freely to others. We would make them earn it from us. Jesus came into the world freely to give His life for us and save us. Jesus made Himself a gift for us, so that in accepting Him we would choose to make ourselves a gift for others. St. Athanasius explained it this way: “He became what we are, so that he might make us what He is". We know we have truly accepted God’s mercy for us when we become more merciful and loving to those around us.

It is difficult to appreciate how anyone could refuse God’s free gift of eternal life. Yet Jesus in the Gospel tells us that people will. The life of Valjean offers us a glimpse as to how this could be so. After Valjean has begun his new life, he is constantly pursued and harassed by his former jailor, Javert.  Javert is a man who lives by the letter of the law. In his world, even the slightest infraction must be punished to the full. He understands nothing of mercy. At a crucial moment in the story, Valjean is given the opportunity to kill Javert and be free of him forever. Instead, Valjean spares his life, expecting nothing in return. Valjean does for Javert what the Bishop did for him years ago. He shows him mercy. Now Javert has the chance to become a channel of grace and mercy himself. But this act of love breaks Javert. He cannot understand and appreciate Valjean’s action. He has never shown mercy to anyone in his life and now he refuses to accept it for himself. In the end he chooses to throw himself off a bridge into the river because he cannot live in a world where mercy and love can triumph over the law. Javert shows us what damnation means. People who go to Hell choose to go there because they refuse, until the end, to accept God’s free offer of mercy. Even now, we make life hell for ourselves and others when we refuse to show mercy to those around us.

Recently Pope Francis made a very unexpected announcement. He declared that the coming year would be an Extraordinary Jubilee Year. These holy years are special moments in the Church when we are encouraged in a particular way to grow closer to God. The last Jubilee Year was 2000. Pope Francis announced that this coming Jubilee Year would a Holy Year celebrating the Mercy of God.  During this year, Pope Francis calls all of us to a greater appreciation and acceptance of God’s mercy in our own life. More importantly, he wants to ensure that the Church and each one more fully become channels of mercy to those around us. As we prepare to start this year, we can ask ourselves a simple question: who am I more like, Jean Valjean or Javert?

How you can overcome procrastination

John 2:13-25 (3rd Sunday of Lent, year B)

It prevents us from doing our income tax. It keeps us busy with small distractions, stopping us from getting to work on a challenging project. It makes us put off a difficult conversation. It is a barrier blocking us from breaking sinful habits. Procrastination: the tendency to delay unpleasant but important tasks. When we procrastinate, we fool ourselves into thinking the hard work will get done on its own. Procrastination doesn’t make sense because nothing gets done one its own. It holds us back from becoming a better person. Why, then, do we do it? Why do we put tasks that we know are important on the backburner?

We procrastinate because doing difficult things requires us to expend a large amount of energy for an extended period of time. Since this is exhausting and even painful, we avoid expending our willpower for as long as we can. The psychologist Roy Baumeister proved how exhausting the use of willpower is in an interesting experiment. He formed two groups of students. He placed the first group in front of an oven in which delicious smelling cookies were baking. On top of the stove he put a bowl filled with radishes. He told the students that they could eat as many radishes as they wanted. The cookies, however, were strictly off limits. Then the students were left alone for thirty minutes. The students in the second group, on the other hand, were allowed to eat as many cookies as they wanted for thirty minutes. After the time period was up, the students from both groups had to try solving a difficult math problem. The students who were forbidden from eating the cookies gave up on the problem twice as fast as the students who pigged out on the cookies. Exercising self control had drained their energy! Doing difficult, necessary things is unpleasant because it takes so much energy. For this reason we put them off.

Though we cannot eliminate our tendency to procrastinate, it is something that we must work against so that it doesn't have an adverse effect on our life. Jesus’ behaviour in the memorable story of the cleansing of the Temple teaches us important lessons in how to overcome procrastination.

First, we need to clearly identify the problem and decide to do something about it. Jesus recognizes that the way people are using the Temple is unacceptable. The Temple was meant to be the place where people could encounter the Living God and worship Him. It was the most holy place in all of Israel. By Jesus’ time, however, the Temple’s purpose had become corrupted. It became a place to make money. Many others recognized the problem. Cleansing the Temple in order to restore it’s proper dignity and purpose was an incredibly intimidating and unpleasant task. It would upset many powerful people. While everyone else procrastinated and put off doing the right thing, Jesus alone both identified the problem and took the necessary action.

St. Paul tells us that each one of us is a temple (1 Cor 6:19). We are meant to serve, worship and glorify God. Like the Temple in Jerusalem, however, we have departed from this purpose by allowing sin, anger, unforgiveness and bad habits to invade our temple. We are in need of cleansing. Take a moment and try to think of one particular problem area in your life that you have the power to change. A bad habit. A relationship you need to pay more attention to. A lack of prayer. The first step in overcoming procrastination is clearly identifying the challenge you would like to overcome.

Overcoming this problem - cleansing our temple - requires us to take strong, deliberate action. During my summers in High School, I worked at a fishing resort located in the interior of British Columbia, far away from the Internet and electricity. I did many different jobs. What I did the most was wash dishes. The baking pans were the hardest to get clean. I dreaded doing them. I would try to make the job easier by letting the pans soak in water or by trying to use some fancy cleaning agent. In the end there was no easy way to do the work. If I wanted to clean the pans I had to roll up my sleeves, get out the steel wool and start scrubbing. Overcoming sin, bad habits and other problem areas in our life is very similar to this. We put off doing the hard work. We procrastinate. We fool ourselves into thinking things will get better on their own. We think that if we say the right prayers God will make us better in our sleep. God will help us improve, but not without our cooperation. In order to fight our tendency to procrastinate, we need to take bold, deliberate, strong action. Jesus does just this when He cleanses the Temple. His behaviour can seem shocking. He is angry, aggressive, unweilding, and determined. If we want to cleanse our own temple, we must follow His example. The saints did this, sometimes to dramatic effect. St. Benedict, for example, famously threw himself into a thorn bush to fight a lustful temptation! Overcoming evil in the way we act and think requires strong willpower, perseverance and at times some anger and aggression.

In order to successfully resist procrastinating and complete a difficult task, a deadline can be extremely helpful. Why do we eventually file our taxes, finish our homework, or complete a project at work? Often it is because of a deadline. During His ministry, Jesus was working against a deadline. He knew the authorities would turn on Him. Jesus zealously worked to accomplish His Father’s mission in a short period. Lent is the perfect time to do some unpleasant but necessary task because it gives us a definite deadline. Bring to mind again that problem area in your life. What is one concrete way you can cleanse your temple? What is the challenge you want to overcome with God’s help? Whatever your personal project is, set the end of lent as your deadline. Follow the example of Jesus and take some bold, deliberate steps to change. If we do this, when Easter comes we can truly rejoice.

What are the first three things you will do in heaven?

Mark 9: 2-10 (2nd Sunday of Lent, year B)

My 95 year old grandma (if you're reading this, hi Oma!) likes reading mystery novels, specifically ones about a cat that solves murders. Whenever she starts a new book, she does something interesting. After reading the first chapter, she flips to the end of the book and reads the last chapter. Sound strange? She has her reasons. First, she doesn't know if she will live long enough to read the end. Second, she doesn't want to waste her time reading books with a bad ending. Third, if the ending is promising it gives her incentive to go back and read the whole novel. Contrary to what I would think, knowing the book’s finale helps her persevere in reading it all. When she feels like giving up because the reading is burdensome, she reminds herself of the great ending, and how good it will be to arrive at the last chapter and relive it. This gives her the strength to continue reading.

In His Transfiguration, Jesus does something similar for Peter, James and John. Jesus shows His disciples how the story will end so that they will have courage for what lies ahead. After the Transfiguration, Jesus will begin making His way towards Jerusalem where the authorities will turn on Him, arrest Him, beat Him and have Him crucified. In order to strengthen His disciples, Jesus gives them a sneak peek at His final victory. In the Transfiguration, Jesus predicts His own resurrection and His appearance is changed. His clothes becomes dazzling white. It is as though Jesus gives us a glimpse of His resurrected, glorified body. Alongside Jesus appears Moses, the one through whom God gave the law, and Elijah, the greatest of all the prophets. This shows that Jesus is the true Saviour, the fulfillment of the law and all that the prophets had spoken of in the past. When Jesus’ disciples hear the voice from heaven, they receive confirmation of His identity. This carpenter from Nazareth is indeed the Son of God! In the end, He will be victorious - He will rise again! Jesus allows His followers to see the end of the story to give them hope, strength and courage in the face of the struggles that lie ahead.

In order to better bear the hardships in our own life, it is helpful to remind ourselves of the end of our own story: heaven. Remembering that we will one day be with God and those we love in perfect, eternal happiness is a source of hope and strength in times of trial. It gives meaning and purpose to all that we do until then. This principle was powerfully described by Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist and holocaust survivor, in his book Man’s Search for Meaning. While suffering in a concentration camp, Frankl’s trained mind observed the behaviour of the other prisoners. He saw that although all prisoners were subjected to the same torment, some gave up and soon died, whereas other struggled on and lived longer. Frankl determined that those who continued trying to survive were the ones who had found meaning in the midst of their suffering. Particularly, the hope that they would one day be reunified with those they loved spurred them on. Frankl experienced this personally. Remembering his beloved wife and the fact that they might someday be together again gave him the hope and courage to continue. We all suffer and can feel like giving up at times. Reminding ourselves that one day we will be perfectly happy in heaven enlivens us the the midst of our own struggles.

In order for the hope of heaven to empower us, however, we need to become much more concrete about what we expect to find in heaven. We are too vague about what the end of our story is. We see heaven as some spiritual, bodiless, reality in which we are praying all the time. We are not excited about heaven because our idea of heaven is not very exciting! Our belief in the resurrection of the body means that heaven is a physical reality. We will live in a physical world much like this one, only purified of all evil. Recently I heard a talk by the author John Eldredge that really got me thinking. In order to make heaven a more tangible reality, he challenged everyone to answer this question: “what are the first three things you will do in heaven?” I tried to come up with an answer. Here are the first three things I will do when I get to heaven.

1. Have a beer with Jesus. This isn’t just because I imagine that the beer in heaven will be awesome. I look forward to the conversation we will have. I imagine it will be like one I have with my best friends. These are conversations that alternate effortlessly between moments of laughter and being serious. I want to rejoice with Jesus about  the victory of good over evil. I want to hear Jesus tell me that I have done well and that inspite of my mistakes He is proud of me.
2. Meet all the cool people in heaven. I want to see members of my family and friends who have gone before me. I want to meet the incredible Saints: Peter, Nicholas, Francis, Ignatius and Mother Theresa. That will be awesome!
3. Go water skiing. As a child, I loved going water skiing. Skipping across the glassy water and taking in the beautiful scenery was a pure joy. Unfortunately, I had to stop water skiing when I got too heavy for the boat to pull me! Since I assume that under-powered engines will not be an issue in heaven, I very much look forward to doing this again.

In trying to answer these questions, heaven became much more real and concrete for me. It is therefore easier to hope to be in heaven. Thinking about the end of my story becomes something that more readily fills me with strength and courage in difficult times.

Try to answer this question for yourself. What are the first three things that you will do in heaven?