Jesus Of Nazareth Part 9

NATHAN: We were full of trouble and sadness since Jerusalem. Your words have strangely comforted us. But doubts remain in my mind.

STRANGER: What?

NATHAN: You've shown us that all these events had to come about; that all we witnessed in Jerusalem was announced by the prophets, and that Jesus was indeed the Messiah expected by Israel. But how will Israel be saved by this long foretold death?

CLEOPHAS: We the living, will we see in our own time the idols beaten down as predicted by Ezekial? And will we see Jesus reign over the Jews and the Gentiles as King David announced?

NATHAN: And is it true as Magdalene and Peter found his sepulchre empty, that we will see Jesus resurrected?

STRANGER: Men of little faith, wasn't it necessary that the Christ die the least honorable death so that you, his disciples and all those you will convert may no longer fear those who will persecute you. Because the most relentless enemy, if he can do everything to the body can do nothing to the soul. They can nail flesh to wood, but how will they murder the teaching, if the crucified flesh doesn't consent to blaspheme the spirit? Did the one of whose death you told me renounce life, blaspheme the spirit and curse his doctrine?

CLEOPHAS: He said only, "Everything is consummated."

STRANGER: No renunciation then. You must imitate him to that degree, You must communicate to your brothers the words of life, the secret of immortality. If you are still afraid, after having seen him die; if possessing the truth, you refuse to spread it, to divulge it, you will not be worthy to be called disciples even were it made the price of your repose, of great sufferings, of universal hate and all of your blood. And you won't be of the numbers of the elect of your kingdom. Know him! Elected for all the glory, you are elected for all the sorrow of the world. The world will never pay you for your works. Your task is to resurrect this Jesus in your faithful heart, first of all in your wounds and in your tears and in your teachings, and in your death. Thereafter, vanquishers of the sepulchre to stir it up, imperishable, among the immense conflagration of souls illuminated by your hands from the flame that he himself ignited in your hearts. Make of the world a burning coal of inextinguishable light, where men, on an immense altar no longer sacrifice characteristic animals of the old Law, but the inner idols, those of the flesh and the intelligence and the three great luxuries. As for me, I too have seen the horrifying and prodigious misery of mortal man; and seeing it, I measured Satan. And if your testimony is true of the life, actions, and death of Jesus of Nazareth, I tell you that Death and Satan are overthrown; that the salvation of man has come. A man had to come, who, by lowering himself over the abyss, who by experiencing all the evil, all the poverty, all the sorrow of life, a man that Satan tested in his flesh, in his heart, in his intelligence, a man who dared to struggle with all the temptations of the world, by drinking the chalice to the dregs, by draining all the bitterness of death, by sounding even to vertigo all the infirmities of man, by weeping when confronting childhood misery, the wife and its poor love which is an admission of distress, lame manhood, black and despairing, and all the terrible powerlessness, and all the terrible and ridiculous pride of this chaos and this vanity, the human man! He appeared, according to your testimony, and said, "Man is nothing, G.o.d is everything, and between Man and G.o.d, I will be the intermediary." And he named G.o.d "Our Father"

and untangled the confused skein of our destinies. He rediscovered the thread and twine of life which reunites man to G.o.d, and through which Life, the air, the light, nourishment are communicated to the shadowy child. Nothing lives in man; everything lives in G.o.d. And all will pa.s.s except this word; heaven and earth will pa.s.s and this word will not pa.s.s. Recognize this and you will live; your feet are still in darkness but your face is bathing in light. And this Jesus who was made all man, and did not succ.u.mb to the shame of being a man, and knew how to find G.o.d again, it seems to me that you would be able, by his very living even in the phantom of his person and his mortal features to discern the face of the Eternal, who made man and this man in particular according to the Eternal plan and who won't drag the human race through the mud only to return to the mud. O disciples, didn't he say to you, watching his death, he had broken the bread thus, that he blessed it thus, and that he had given to those who shared it a supreme meal?

CLEOPHAS AND NATHAN: Lord!

(The Stranger vanishes.) CLEOPHAS AND NATHAN: Him! It was him! Disappeared.

NATHAN: O Cleophas! My heart burned hearing him.

CLEOPHAS: Joy! Joy! He's resurrected.

NATHAN: Christ is resurrected! O Cleophas! Say it! Say it! Speak! Sing!

CLEOPHAS: And if he had to die NATHAN: There is no more death! There is life, my brother.

CLEOPHAS: Love! Truth! There's G.o.d!

NATHAN: And all men, all the millions of men that must be led to G.o.d.

CLEOPHAS: To joy. O blind men that we were.

NATHAN: I seen now! Brother, it's necessary that all our brothers know the news.

CLEOPHAS: And if they crucify us ?

NATHAN: We will be imitating him to that point.

CLEOPHAS: What does death matter?

NATHAN: What does life matter?

CLEOPHAS: There's an eternal life.

NATHAN: Which doesn't know death! Where Christ reigns.

CLEOPHAS: Where Christ reigns!

CURTAIN.