{"id":56366,"date":"2025-04-03T07:00:38","date_gmt":"2025-04-03T12:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/catholicbard\/?p=56366"},"modified":"2025-03-21T00:32:26","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T05:32:26","slug":"jesus-the-greatest-of-poets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/catholicbard\/2025\/04\/jesus-the-greatest-of-poets\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesus the Greatest of Poets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In a previous post \u2018Mysterious Lives of Christ\u2019, I quoted from<\/p>\n

LIFE OF CHRIST<\/a> (1923) by\u00a0 Giovanni Papini<\/p>\n

That book is in the public domain.<\/p>\n

Here is another passage from this book that you can freely download, and copy, and reuse and do whatever you want with, without restriction as it is once again in the public domain. That is the joy of the public domain and there are lots of good Catholic books forgotten about for years that you can enjoy and be edified like this one.<\/p>\n

The man of imagination sees everything as though it were new:
\nevery great star, wheeling in the night, might lead you to the house hiding the Son of God;
\nevery stable has a manger which, filled with dry hay and clean straw,might become a cradle;
\nevery bare mountain top flaming with light in the golden mornings above the still somber valley,
\nmight be Sinai or Mt. Tabor:
\nin the fires in the stubble, or in the charcoal kilns shining on the evening hills you can see the flame lighted by God to guide you in the desert;
\nand the column of smoke rising from the poor man\u2019s hearth shows the road from afar to the returning laborer.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Pillar of Fire by Paul Hardy, The Art Bible (1896)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The ass who carries the shepherdess just come from her milking is the one ridden towards the tents of
\nIsrael, or the one which went down towards Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover.
\nThe dove cooing on the edge of the slate roof is the same that announced the end of the
\ngreat punishment to the Patriarch, or the same that descended on the waters of the Jordan.<\/p>\n

For the poet every thing is of equal value and omnipresent, and all history is sacred history.<\/p>\n

The man who is thought to be behind the times often is a man born too soon.
\nThe setting sun is the same which at that very moment colors the early morning of a distant country.
\nChristianity is not a piece of antiquity now assimilated, in as far as it had anything good, by the wonderful and not-to-be-improved modern-consciousness;
\nbut it is for very many something so new that it has not even yet begun. The world to-day seeks for peace rather than for liberty,
\nand the only certain peace is found under the yoke of Christ.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Bow yokes on a bullock team Bow yokes on a bullock team Cgoodwin<\/a><\/span>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Own work<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They say that Christ is the prophet of the weak, and on the contrary
\nHe came to give strength to the languishing,
\nand to raise up those trodden under foot to be higher than kings.
\nThey say that His is the religion of the sick and of the dying,
\nand yet He heals the sick and brings the sleep ing to life.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Jesus healing the sick by Gustave Dore, (19th century)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They say that He is against life, and yet He conquers death;
\nthat He is the God of sadness, and yet He exhorts His followers to be joyful
\nand promises an everlasting banquet of joy to His friends.
\nThey say that He introduced sadness and mortification into the world,
\nand on the contrary when He was alive He ate and drank,
\nand let His feet and hair be perfumed,
\nand detested hypocritical fasts, and the penitential mummeries of vanity.
\nMany have left Him because they never knew Him.<\/p>\n

Not Secretive: A Poet<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Bard (1778) by Benjamin West<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jesus seems at first sight secretive.
\nHe orders those affected by miracles to say to no man who has cured them;
\nHe wishes prayers and charity to be done secretly;
\nwhen the disciples recognize that He is the Christ,
\nHe charges them not to repeat it;
\nafter the Transfiguration He bids the three keep silence,
\nand when He teaches He uses parables which all men are not capable of understanding.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Sermon on the Mount by Carl Bloch (1877)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On further thought, on really considering the matter, it is apparent that Jesus has nothing of the esoteric.
\nHe has no secret doctrine to impart to a few acolytes.
\nHis words are public and open.
\nHe always speaks in the public squares of cities, on the beaches of lakes, in the Synagogue,
\nin the midst of the people.
\nHe forbids speaking of His miracles in order that He may not be confused with wizards and exorcists;
\nHe commands to do good secretly in order to keep vainglory from destroying merit;
\nHe does not wish the Twelve to proclaim Him the Christ before His entry into Jerusalem,
\nthe public inauguration of His Messiahship;
\nand He speaks in parables to be better understood by the simple who listen more willingly to a story
\nthan to a sermon, and remember a narration better than an argument.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Return of the Prodigal Son, by Rembrandt, 1660s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Three of the Evangelists report a speech of Jesus, which seems to contradict this view.
\n\u201cUnto you,\u201d He is speaking to the disciples,
\n\u201cit is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, but to others it is not given;
\ntherefore I speak to them in parables that seeing they might not see,
\nand hearing they might not understand.\u201d
\nBut Jesus means only to say this, \u201cYou understand these mysteries,
\nbut the many do not understand them, although they have ears and spirits like yours.
\nAnd to them that they may understand I speak in parables,\u2014that is,
\nin a figurative language of facts because it is easier and more familiar.<\/p>\n

\u201d You teach children with fables and the simple with stories,
\nand \u201cthe many\u201d have remained like the simple and the childish.
\nTo overcome the slowness of their minds I use words adapted to their nature.
\nThey are all fancy, and little intellect;
\nand the parables are an appeal to the imagination more than to the reasoning powers.
\nI do not employ them therefore to hide the truth,
\nbut the better to reveal it to those who could not see it in a purely rational form.
\nFor if then they do not understand, it is the fault of their obstinacy,
\nwhich often closes the eyes and ears of the soul.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Parable of the Good Samaritan, as depicted by Jan Wijnants (1670)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jesus had no mysteries to dissemble.
\nIt was His wish that all, even the most humble and ignorant, should understand Him.
\nThe parables were not made to hide His teaching from the profane, but to make it more explicit
\nand understandable to every one.
\nThat sometimes even the intelligence of the Twelve is inferior to this task is a melancholy conclusion by no means unknown to Jesus.
\nThe marvelous content of His message has cast into the shade His poetic originality, not less marvelous.<\/p>\n

Jesus never wrote\u2014once only He wrote on the sand, and the wind destroyed forever His handwriting
\n\u2014but in the midst of a people of powerful imagination,
\nof the people who wrote the Psalter,
\nthe story of Ruth,
\nthe book of Job,
\nthe Song of Songs,
\nHe would have been one of the greatest poets of all times.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Song of Songs (Cantique des Cantiques) by Gustave Moreau, 1893<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

His victorious youthfulness of spirit,
\nthe racy, popular language of the country where He grew up,
\nthe books He had read,
\nfew but among the richest of all poetry<\/p>\n

\"\"
Public Domain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2014His loving communion with the life of the fields and of animals and above all
\nHis divine and passionate yearning to give light to those who suffer in the dark,
\nto save those who are being lost forever,
\nto carry supreme happiness to the most unhappy
\n(because true poetry does not catch its fire from the light of the lantern
\nbut at the light of the stars and of the sun,
\nis not found in the writings left behind by great-grandfathers,
\nbut in love, in sorrow in the deeply moved soul);
\nthese things combined made of Jesus a poet, an inventor of living and eternal images
\nwith which he achieved a miracle on which the Evangelists make no comment,
\n\u2014the miracle of communicating the highest truth by the means of stories so simple,
\nfamiliar, full of grace that after twenty centuries they shine with that unique youth which is eternity.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Some of these stories are only idyllic or epic restatements of revelations
\nwhich at other times He expounded in abstract words;
\nbut there are some which express things never said in any other form in His teaching.
\nThe parables are the imaginative comments on the Sermon on the Mount,
\nsuch as could be made only by a poet who merits the tide
\nof divine more truly than any other poet ever born.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a previous post \u2018Mysterious Lives of Christ\u2019, I quoted from LIFE OF CHRIST (1923) by\u00a0 Giovanni Papini That book is in the public domain. Here is another passage from this book that you can freely download, and copy, and reuse and do whatever you want with, without restriction as it is once again in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4354,"featured_media":56429,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,653,263],"tags":[77,594],"class_list":["post-56366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jesus","category-public-domain","category-writing","tag-bible","tag-jesus"],"yoast_head":"\nJesus the Greatest of Poets - Catholic Bard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/catholicbard\/2025\/04\/jesus-the-greatest-of-poets\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jesus the Greatest of Poets - Catholic Bard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In a previous post \u2018Mysterious Lives of Christ\u2019, I quoted from LIFE OF CHRIST (1923) by\u00a0 Giovanni Papini That book is in the public domain. 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