Here Comes the Sun King

Carlos Caso-Rosendi

The last was a cold night. There was no snow on the ground and yet, the leafless trees, the dry grass and the quiet landscape gave me that absolute sense of winter. Looking out of my window I thought that winter is truly filled with hope. We face the cold days and nights knowing very well that the wonders of spring are there, silently waiting to emerge and fill the world with life.

I find a parallel when I contemplate our current political and economic landscape. Americans have never seen it so bad. Winter has set over our land, a hard season has come upon us. We went through bleak times before. It was not easy after the Civil War, or during the Great Depression. But even then, there was a certain dignity and a sense of moral order. We were poor only for a season. We were deprived only of material things. Days of glory were ahead of us. Days of enormous sacrifice to be lived with courage. We faced them the best we could, instinctively knowing that we had a deep reservoir of greatness, the inheritance of our forefathers, the great men who gave us a free nation under God.

I was lost in those thoughts when I opened the Bible in this passage of the Gospel According to St. John:

Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. There they made him a supper; Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at table with him. Mary took a pound of costly ointment of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was to betray him), said, "Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?" This he said, not that he cared for the poor but because he was a thief, and as he had the money box he used to take what was put into it. Jesus said, "Let her alone, let her keep it for the day of my burial. The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me." When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came, not only on account of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus also to death, because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus. The next day a great crowd who had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!" And Jesus found a young ass and sat upon it; as it is written, "Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on an ass's colt!"

The force of John's words and the barren cold landscape outside my window seemed to have something in common. I decided to meditate on that strange parallel and I found a small treasure of hopeful thoughts. Lazarus was alive at the table, after being dead in a tomb. There is the miracle man, recovered to have supper with his family, his sisters, his friends. Jesus is there too. Life is good.

Lazarus has two sisters, Martha and Mary. One can see in both of them the generosity of the grateful. Industrious Martha is taking care of the banquet. Repentant Mary is pouring a pound of precious perfume on Jesus' feet. Finding nothing worthy of touching the feet of her Master, Mary uses her own hair to wipe the precious ointment. This exquisite form of communion remains only hers to this day. No one was ever able to repeat that act this side of Heaven. The perfume fills the room with the sweet fragrance of the oriental nard. One can imagine that the moment was perfect for all reclined at the table: Lazarus is alive, Mary is back at the feet of the Lord, and Martha is busy serving everyone. Life surrounds Jesus in this miniature image of Heaven. Yet not all are happy. The Iscariot—the traitor—laments the loss of the costly ointment. Of course he can't say "Why didn't you give me the money!" He needs a better motive other than his own greed. So he uses the poor for an excuse, saying: "Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?"

John—the divine—annotates for posterity the real motivations of Judas: the Iscariot is a thief and a liar. He coveted the money and the whole heavenly image of a room filled with the free gift of life, escapes his senses.

I had a small snippet of a revelation while reading that passage: we shall always have the poor with us, and the poor can always count on scoundrels to use their plight as an excuse to get riches or power. The French revolutionaries launched the terror that killed way more poor people than rich and noble men. Lenin and Stalin killed many millions of poor mujiks. Castro's dungeons are filled not with filthy rich capitalists but merely with filthy poor men and women, their freedom stolen by traitors and liars.

Jesus has disciples to this day but so does the Iscariot.

Along with Judas there are others contemplating the scene. The religious leaders of the day are jealous of the life-giving power of the Galilean Teacher. They plan to kill Lazarus, their hearts unmoved by his resurrection and the moral renewal that Jesus instills in otherwise lost sinners like the repentant Magdalene. They want to snuff the life out of Lazarus and Jesus. Over the whole happy scene of this last public supper of Jesus, there looms the shadow of the Cross erected by envy and hate.

The following Sunday, the poor of Jerusalem will acclaim Jesus as their King. He comes among them riding the colt of an ass, a humble understated way to say "I am poor, I am one of you, I belong to you."

I thought that our country was for a while a happy place under God, where people gave life in many different ways. This land gave us the firmness our feet needed to walk straight, her soft tilled soil caressed our hands. The sun raised and set many times over her fertile plains where these new, imperfect but ever improving brotherhood of man dared to set an example of hope for all the world. Life was given in many forms: as hard, dignifying work given generously in farms and factories, while many busy loving hands like Martha's, fed and cared for millions of families at home. The land of plenty had many generous wombs ready to believe that there was an even better tomorrow. Under God there was life and there was plenty. When we were call to give our lives in distant shores, we were willing to do it because we knew instinctively that our freedom was worth the sacrifice. We had been given much and we were willing to give much. That was real hope. Hope was an everyday affair. With hope we dared to live. With hope we were willing to meet every challenge.

Still, not everyone was happy. In time a new kind of people started to emerge in the midst of all the accomplishments of the American experiment. They had always been with us, but they were not like us. You see them everyday, everywhere. Little by little they managed to convince a good number of us that there was something wrong with America. There is always a bit of truth in every lie. Yes, America was never perfect. Nothing in this world is perfect. However, America had (and still has) the ability to perfect herself and emerge stronger after every trial and tribulation. We could do it because we were—like the Magdalene—"under God" always looking up to the perfect ideal that God is. Always striving to be His worthy sons and daughters in spite of our imperfections.

The disciples of the Iscariot are never very original. Two thousand years later they still use the poor as an excuse to achieve the same goals: to reach power to dominate and plunder... the poor. Neither the French Revolution, nor the Third Reich or even less, the Bolshevik Revolution were able to end poverty. They instead ended the life of many poor people. They did that because they are enemies of life and in every society known to man, life and creativity have been the privilege of the working classes. The rich families of Italy, Ireland or France are not the composers of their great folk musical heritage, or the creators of their traditional cuisines. Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts failed to create what perhaps is the most enduring American contribution to the human heritage: that business of poor Negroes and Jews (and now everyone else's) we call "jazz". Life is the product of poverty. The rich and powerful can only collect it and, in rare occasions, enjoy it.

The poor that received Jesus in Jerusalem were not deceived by any smooth talk. Instead they recognized in Him the shrewdness and wisdom of the simple peasant. That simple wisdom is gained not in any school but in the daily contact with the divine things: sun, sea, rivers, wind, and the fertile soil of our mother earth.

The political and religious leaders of that time, with the help of the Iscariot, conspired to take the life of Jesus to prevent Him from becoming King. Christ's act of giving life to Lazarus offended them the most. It is not a coincidence that our leaders today have decided to be enemies of life. They imagine that somehow they can perpetuate their control by murdering the poor in the womb or even after birth or late in life. When Jesus said that we were not going to have Him but that we would have the poor in His stead, he revealed a profound truth: that the poor can be agents of life just as He had been an agent of life. It is the poor, the working men and women, who make a nation come alive by creating and sustaining the culture in every generation. The poor don't need to be saved, they are the saviors and the creators because God is made manifest in them. May be that is why the political left has decided to kill the poor in the womb. A policy of "better dead than poor" seems to be a growing consensus among the political class.

In the days to come, we will see the forces of darkness in action. There will be a serious intent to crush life by soiling our Constitution with increasingly wicked laws designed to facilitate the work of the ungodly among us. Expect persecution. Prepare for true sacrifices. It is all part of a redemption process. We will have to face hard choices. Many will be lead astray and seduced by the promises of the enemies of life. But the wicked shall not prevail.

After the ordeal we will receive Our King one more time. We will see the sun shine again over this generous land because we trusted in Him and He will not abandon us to the designs of our enemies. Be ready to fight for life. Be ready to give life and shine like a star in the next American Renaissance.

Here comes the Sun King. Come Lord Jesus and bless our land.