Giovanni Papini

“ Money which has been the death of so many bodies is every day the death of thousands of souls. More contagious than the rags of a man with the pest, than the pus of an ulcer, than the filth of a sewer, it enters into every house, shines on the counters of the money-changers, settles down in money-chests, profanes the pillow of sleep, hides itself in the fetid darkness of squalid back-rooms, sullies the innocent hands of children, tempts virgins, pays the hangman for his work, goes about on the face of the earth to stir up hatred, to set cupidity on fire, to hasten corruption and death. ”

“ Thus died a God, who had cooled the blood of the feverish, had given the water of life to the thirsty, who had raised up the dead from their tombs, who had quickened the paralyzed, cast out demons from obsessed souls, who had wept with the weeping, who, instead of punishing the wicked, had made them to be born again into a new life, who had taught with poetic words and proved by miracles that glorious aspiration—the life of perfect love—which raging beasts sunk in stupor and in blood would never have been capable of discovering for themselves. ”

“ It was the beginning of liberation, almost a relief to that humanity which was the greatest burden of His expiation.
Then from His lips wet with tears, wet with sweat, wet with blood, arose a new prayer: “O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done. Not my will, but thine, be done.”
Gone now was any trace of cowardly shrinking; the will, that is the individual, abdicated in the obedience which alone can assure the freedom of the universal. He is no longer a man, but Man; the Man one with God, “I wish that which Thou wisheth.” ”

“ Cæsar is the strongest and most famous of His rivals, but also the most remote, because his force lies in the slothfulness of men, in the weakness of peoples. But One has come who will awaken the sleeping, open the eyes of the blind, give back strength to the weak. When everything is fulfilled and the Kingdom is founded—a Kingdom which needs no soldiers nor judges nor slaves nor money, but only renewed and living souls—Cæsar’s empire will vanish like a pile of ashes under the victorious breath of the wind. ”

“ He loved with equal love the tiny seed which you can scarcely see on the palm of your hand and the ancient fig tree, casting its shade over the poor man’s house; the birds of the air which sow not neither do they reap; the fish silvering the meshes of the nets to feed His faithful; and raising His eyes in the sultry evenings of gathering storm, He saw the lightning flashing out of the east and shattering the darkness of the night, even into the west.
But Jesus did not read only in the open many-colored book of the world. He knew that God spoke to men through angels, patriarchs and prophets. ”

“ What right have we to hate our enemies, when we ourselves have been guilty of the same fault for which we think we have the right to hate them; when we ourselves have been guilty of hatred? What right have we to hate them, even if they have done wrong, even if we believe them wicked, when we ourselves nearly always have done the same wrong actions, have been defiled with the same pitch? What right have we to hate them if nearly always we are responsible for their hate? We, who with the endless errors of our monstrous self-love, have forced them to hate us? ”

“ The wretchedness of such indigence is so terrible that they are reduced to pick up the stones that are found in the mud of the earth, and grope about in filth. Theirs is a poverty so repugnant that not even the poor succeed in bestowing on them the charity of a smile.
Richness is a curse like work, but a harder and more shameful curse. He who is marked with the sign of wealth has committed, perhaps unconsciously, an infamous crime, one of those mysterious and unimaginable crimes which are nameless in human language. ”

“ The wealth of Egypt was in mud, in the rich snake-breeding mud which the Nile rolled out each year upon the desert. Death was the obsession of Egypt. The soft, prosperous people of Egypt would not accept death, denied death, thought they could conquer death with graven images, with embalmings, with sculptured representation of flesh-and-blood bodies. The rich, portly Egyptian, son of mud, adorer of the sacred bull, and the dog-headed god, could not resign himself to dying. ”

“ Like a hyena scenting from far the stench of carrion, like a raven always croaking out the same cry, like a hungry wolf howling on the mountain top, the prophet goes up and down the streets of Israel followed by suspicion and malediction. Only the poor and the oppressed bless him; but the poor are weak and the oppressed can only listen in silence. Like all loud truthtellers, who disturb the slumbering majority, who unsettle the sordid peace of the masters, he is avoided like a leper, persecuted like an enemy. Kings can barely tolerate him, priests regard him as an enemy, the rich detest him. ”

“ The complacent must suffer, the cold must burn, the insensible must cry out, the tepid must flame like torches in the night. All the filth accumulated in the secret life of men, all the sediments of sin which make of every soul an offensive sewer, all the corruption which shuts the ears and suffocates the hearts, must be burned up in this miraculous spiritual fire, which Jesus came to kindle in our hearts. ”

“ When Jesus said He had come to bring war and not peace, He meant war to evil, to Satan, to the world, to evil which is wrong, to Satan who is Death, to the world which is an eternal battle. He means, in short, war against war. The peacemakers are those who wage war upon war, those who placate, those who bring about concord. The origin of every war is self-love, love which becomes love of riches, pride of possession, envy of those more wealthy, hatred for rivals; and the new law comes to teach hatred for oneself, contempt for measurable goods, love for all creatures, even for those who hate us. ”

“ With Jesus, He becomes our Father, becomes love. His earth gives bread and flowers even to the homicide; he who takes His name in vain sees the glorious sun every morning, the same sun which warms the clasped hands of the laborer praying in the field. A true father loves the son who turns from him as he loves the son who seeks him out; a father cherishes the child who obeys him in his house, or who vomits him out with his wine. A father can be saddened, can suffer, can mourn, but no sinning man is capable of making a father become like to himself. No one can induce a father to take revenge. ”

“ The pure King, the Son of Justice, the Prince of Peace, the Son of Man sent by God, the Saviour, the Anointed, whom the prophets had foretold in the twilight of sorrow and affliction; who had been seen by apocalyptic writers descending upon the earth like lightning, in the fullness of victory and glory; for whom the poor, the wounded, the hungry, the afflicted, had been waiting from century to century, as dry grass waits for rain, as the flower waits for the sun, as the mouth awaits the kiss, and the heart, consolation ”

“ So many times with me you have begged bread in poor men’s houses; and all your lives you are to beg it in my name: you will have the moldy hard crusts which dogs refuse, the dry bits left at the bottom of the dish, the crusts gnawed by children and old people which they have let fall upon the hearth. But you know want, and nights of fasting and the pale face of poverty. But you are strong; you have the powerful jaws of those who eat hard bread. You will not lose courage, if no place is made for you at the tables of the well-to-do. ”

“ A man’s thought is bound with a thousand threads to his soul even more closely than a child to a parent’s heart. It is infinitely precious, delicate, fragile, and the newer it is, the harder it is for other men to understand. It is a tremendous responsibility, a continued torture and suffering to confide it to another, to graft it on another’s thought, to give it into the hands of the man incapable of respecting it, this gift so rare, a thought new in human life. ”

“ Jerusalem like all capitals—great sewers to which flow the refuse, the outcasts, the rubbish of the nations—is inhabited by a mob of frivolous, elegant, idle, skeptical and indifferent people, by a ceremonious patrician class who have kept only the tradition of ritual and the sterile rancor of their decadence; by an aristocracy of property owners and speculators who belong to the herd of Mammon, and by a rebellious, restless, ignorant crowd, controlled only by the superstition of the Temple and the fear of the foreigner’s sword. Jerusalem was not fit soil for the sowing of Jesus. ”

“ For what we call life is not true life and he who gives up his soul ruins also the flesh which houses it.
Every one of us has a hankering to judge his fellows. To sit in judgment makes us feel that we are above those judged, better, more righteous, innocent. To accuse others is like saying, “We are not thus.” As a matter of fact it is always the hunchbacks who first cry out on those whose shoulders are a little bent. But Jesus says, “Judge not that ye be not judged, condemn not and ye shall not be condemned, forgive and ye shall be forgiven.” ”

“ We have all known friends like these, cautious souls, trembling at the idea of what people will say, who follow you but from afar; receive you—but when no one can see you together; esteem you—but do not so much as admit this esteem to others; love you—but not so much as to lose a single hour of sleep or a single miserable penny to help you! But when death comes, even when it comes through the fault or the avarice, or the cowardice of such despicable men, then their celebration begins. They are the ones who weep more tears and more glittering tears than any one else. ”

“ The wife of Simon, the father of James and John, the brother of Thomas, had saved the casting nets and the drag-nets as tools which might be useful, in memory of the exiles, as if a voice had said to those who had remained at home: “They too will come back; the Kingdom is fair, but far distant, and the lake is fair now, to-day, and full of fish. Holy is holiness, but no man lives by the spirit alone. And a fish on the table now is worth more to a hungry man than a throne a year from now.” ”

“ The word seems old, the message dim with antiquity repeated by the echoes of two thousand years, but the Kingdom—as a fact, true, accomplished—is new, young, born yesterday, still to grow, to flower, to prosper. Jesus threw the seed into the earth, but the seed has scarcely germinated in two thousand years passed like a stormy winter, in the space of sixty human generations. Is it perhaps possible that our own time after the flood of blood is the divine and longed-for period? ”

“ The husband with all his legal love and authority, the satyr with all his mistresses, the eloquent adulterer, the bold ravisher, have not so much power over the spirit of women as he who loves them without touching them, he who saves them without asking for even a kiss as reward. Woman, slave of her body, of her weakness, her desire and of the desire of the male, is drawn to him who frees her, to him who cures her, to him who loves her and asks no more from her than a cup of water, a smile, a little silent attention.
Women loved Jesus. ”

“ A soldier took off his scarlet cloak, the red chlamys of the legionaries, and threw it over those shoulders, red with blood; another took up a handful of dry thorns, kindling for the brazier of the night-watch, twisted a couple of them together like a crown and put it on His head; a third had a slave give Him a reed and forced it into the fingers of His right hand; then, roaring with laughter, they pushed Him upon a seat. One by one, passing before Him, they bent their knees awkwardly, crying: “Hail, King of the Jews!” ”

“ The massacre of the Innocents was the last act of the reeking, bloody old man. There is a prophetic meaning in this immolation of the Innocents around the cradle of an Innocent, this holocaust of blood for a new-born child, a child destined to offer His blood for the pardon of the guilty, this human sacrifice for One, who in His turn was to be sacrificed. After His death thousands and thousands were to die for the sole crime of having believed in His resurrection. He was born to die for others and as if to expiate His birth, behold, here are thousands born who die for Him. ”

“ LITTLE CHILDREN All men are children of the Son of Man, but no one could call Him father in the flesh. Among the disappointing joys of men perhaps the only joy which does not disappoint is to hold in one’s arms or on one’s knees a child whose face is rosy with blood which is also yours, who laughs at you with the dawning splendor of his eyes, who stammers out your name, who uncovers the springs of the lost tenderness of your childhood ”

“ Divinity is in us; animality hampers and constricts it, stunting our growth. Who would not wish to be God? Oh, men, are you in very truth content to be only men? Men as you are to-day, half-men, half-beasts? Centaurs without robustness, sirens without sweetness, demons with fauns’ muzzles and goats’ feet? Are you so satisfied with your bastard and imperfect humanity, with your animality scarcely held in leash, taking no step to win holiness save to desire it? ”

“ His blood, mixed with sweat, had not yet fallen on the ground, under the olives, and had not yet dropped from the nails upon Golgotha. But His desire to give life with His life, to redeem with His suffering all the sorrows of the world, to transmit at least a part of His substance to His immediate heirs; this desire to give Himself up wholly for those whom He loves is so great that from this moment on, He feels the immolation complete and the gift possible. If bread is the body, blood is in a certain sense the soul. ”

“ Thou mightest at least have fled away as the others did if thou hadst not the strength to drink with me the cup of infamy which I had foretold to thee. Flee away now that I may see thee no more until the day when I shall be truly free and thou shalt be truly made over by faith. If thou fearest for thy life why art thou here? If thou fearest not, why dost thou deny me? Even Judas at the last has been more faithful than thou: he came with my enemies, but he did not deny that he knew me. ”