"Converte gladium tuum in locum suum: omnes enim, qui acceperint gladium, gladio peribunt. An putas, quia non possum rogare Patrem meum, et exhibebit mihi modo plus quam duodecim legiones Angelorum?" (from the Passion of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew, Mass for the Second Sunday in Passiontide or Palm Sunday: "Put back thy sword into its place; for all those who take the sword will perish by the sword. Or dost thou suppose that I cannot entreat My Father, and He will even now furnish Me with more than twelve legions of angels?")____________________________________
Jesus Christ despised all human means, or, rather, He abstained from employing any.
Politics rank among the highest of these. It is the art of seizing the tendency of minds at a given moment, of bringing together opinions and interests which seek to be satisfied, of anticipating the will of a people before they have a clear consciousness of it themselves; of assuming, by the help of circumstances, the post of their natural representative, and of placing them upon a course in which we shall be borne along with them for half a century. Such is the art of politics an illustrious art, which may be used for good or evil, and which is the source of prosperous and lamentable vicissitudes among nations.
Jesus Christ was admirably placed for becoming the instrument of a revolution favorable to His religious designs. The people from whom He had sprung had lost, under the Roman yoke, the remains of their ancient nationality; hatred of Rome was then at its height among them, and, in the deserts and mountains of Judea, bands of liberators were daily formed under the command of some patriot, distinguished for his boldness or some other characteristic. These movements were seconded by celebrated prophecies, which had long announced a chief and a savior to the Jewish people.
The relation of these ideas and interests to the new kingdom, the coming of which Jesus Christ proclaimed, was evident. Nevertheless, so far from conniving at and employing them, He trampled them under foot. In order to prove Him, He is asked whether it is needful to pay tribute to Caesar; He calls for a piece of money, and, on being told whose image and superscription it bears, He calmly replies: "Render then to Caesar that which is Caesar's, and to God that which is God's." He goes still further. He announces the temporal ruin of His nation, He speaks against the temple, the object of religious and patriotic veneration among the Jews, and He openly predicts that there shall not remain of it one stone upon another; therefore, this charge was numbered amongst the accusations brought against him before the supreme magistracy.
His doctrine, so favorable to the people and to the poor, was of a nature to obtain great popularity for Him: this is a powerful mainspring for revolutions. In fact, He gained such an ascendancy over the people that they wished to elect Him King of Israel; but He fled in order to avoid that honor, and broke with His own hands an instrument which great men would commonly have valued as a gift and a sign from Heaven.
Next to the art of politics comes power, one of its adjuncts, but which may be considered without reference to the causes that generally communicate it. Jesus Christ had nothing so much at heart as to prevent His disciples from trusting to power and from exercising it. He sends them forth, He says, like lambs; He announces to them all kinds of troubles, without giving them any other help than patience, meekness, and humility. If, unmindful of His lessons, they would call down fire from heaven, he reproaches them with not yet knowing "of what spirit they are." At the moment of His arrest, when He might have defended Himself, and an apostle drew the sword, Jesus Christ says to him: "Put back thy sword into its place; for all those who take the sword will perish by the sword."
While the authors of other doctrines seek a sanction from victory rashly forgetting that victory is variable and conscience immutable, Jesus Christ chooses the Cross for His standard, and protests against all triumph of power by the triumph of His crucifixion.
Henri-Dominique Lacordaire
Conférences de Notre-Dame de Paris (1846)
Conférences de Notre-Dame de Paris (1846)
