By JEFF MINICK
When she learned that Valentine’s Day falls on Ash Wednesday this year, my ten-year-old granddaughter moaned, “Nooooooo.” Her dreams of cake and candy hearts had just gone up in smoke.
When I learned that Easter falls on April Fools’ Day this year, I thought, How appropriate.
The Feast of Love, February 14, and The Feast of Fools, April 1, strike me as the perfect bookends for the Lenten season and its Easter Finale.
After all, the Nazarene whose sacrifice, death, and Resurrection stamp their imprimatur on this season was the greatest of lovers. Caritas lies at the heart of His teaching. He commanded us to obey the two Great Commandments: to love God and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. He embedded pity and mercy in love when He saved the adulteress from stoning. He taught His followers to repay hatred with love. He taught love by example, by straight-up talk, and by parables: the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and the Lost Sheep.
“Greater love hath no man than this,” He declared, “that a man lay down his life for his friends.” He then proceeded to do just that, giving Himself over to the mockery and spittle of a mob, to the lash and a crown of thorns, to die as a figure of derision, nailed to a cross beneath a sign inscribed INRI, Latin initials for “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”
And like all true lovers, the Nazarene was a fool. Only a fool for love could come into this world, preach charity and goodness, mercy and peace, and offer Himself as a sacrifice for all the sins of a wicked humanity. If, as He claimed, He was God, then He was also omniscient and so knew that those for whom He had sacrificed Himself would fail Him, that wars among nations would not cease, that human beings would hate each other for their religion or the color of their skin, that men and women would continue to break the Commandments, a prescience that doubtless explains why He established a means of forgiveness and repentance as vehicles into His Kingdom.
Like King Lear’s Fool or the jester in Edward Rowland Sill’s poem, The Fool’s Prayer, the Nazarene was the only member of the court who spoke truth to power, who by His wisdom and adept speech could turn barbed questions back onto His inquisitors. “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s,” He told one of these tricksters.
He outraged the elite of His day by dining with tax collectors and speaking with prostitutes, and performed miracles in some cases to silence His attackers. Pilate tried to portray the Nazarene as a sort of courtly fool by having Him dragged before the mob wearing a crown of thorns and royal purple, a faux king, and declaring “Behold the man,” an attempt, one philosopher has written, to turn tragedy into comedy. Pilate’s staged buffoonery failed, rousing from the mob only louder cries for crucifixion.
In the Sermon on the Mount, The Greatest Fool Who Ever Lived delivers to His listeners the heart of His teaching. Placed in the context of today’s narcissism and materialism, these teachings seem madness. Who but a fool would tell us to forgo the treasures of this Earth? Who but a fool would tell us not to worry about tomorrow? Who but a fool would tell us to pray for our enemies and for those who persecute us, to turn the other cheek?
The Feast of Love and the Feast of Fools are upon us. This year, the former brings not only hearts and flowers, but also ashes and fasting, the latter not only pranks but the resurrection of a dead man.
And what of us?
Is there a message for us in this coincidence of festivals?
Will we be fools for Love?
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