A Mass for Arras

"He said, "And thus, the progress of your mind seems to result from a constant struggle—Heaven's grace grapples with the promptings of Hell. Where do you find confirmation that your halting mind, shackled by a thousand conditions, influences, tastes, lustful fantasies, fears, and caprices could be clearer and more able in its knowledge of God's intentions than the teachings of the Church? We live in cruel times, my dear Jan. People no longer desire to be honorable Christians. They follow the example of licentious princes and foolish bishops, and yield to bizarre heresies. They seek the presence of God in daily life and try to detect God's designs so as to meet them halfway, but God does not want people to strive so zealously for salvation. It is obvious that everyone desires eternal happiness, but they must surrender their fate into the hands of our Lord Jesus Christ and not try to take His place. . . . Jan, trust me! I have spent my life among books and the treatises of the wisest authors. It's laughable! I despise all those usurpers who would save the Holy Church with their belief in reason. The Church's greatest power lies in the sacraments, for they are the narrow footbridge thrown over life's abysses and along which God draws near to us. By remaining faithful to the sacraments, you remain faithful to God. He is with you then, and you with Him. If God gave you a mind, it was not to be used to strive for Heaven but to move about this earth."

"What God demands of man is a thousand times greater than what He asks of a rat, but that does not mean in the least that the rat is damned for all time."

"Albert of course won the argument because the result was truly important to him, while everything was an amusement to de Saxe. He was too rich and bored to attach importance to anything. Once when I came upon him in church by the confessional, he told me that he sinned out of boredom and confessed out of boredom as well. He really was the only great lord in the town of Arras! May he rest in peace."

"He had probably never held me in such disdain as at that moment when he perceived that he had overestimated me."

"It was a rather cruel liberation. All people, no matter what their station, had always been part of an all-powerful hierarchy. It cannot be denied that hierarchy is a blessing, but it also cannot be denied that it is a leash and collar. Oh, I do not think that someone born a peasant suffers because of what he is or desires to be something else. Only a very narrow mind could conceive such an illusion. It seems obvious—a peasant is a peasant, and thus everything about him is peasantish, every particle of his body. He would have to stand outside himself and his way of life in order to perceive his own peasantness as I perceive it."

"Throughout his life each of us had submitted to those above him, but when hunger and plague suddenly toppled the ladder of hierarchy into the dung of universal powerlessness, each of us, without exception, discovered that he was separate from the world. We were orphaned and condemned to death, but we were no longer subject to anything except ourselves. A terrible solitude had overtaken us, but there was something sublime about it as well. Hitherto, in living and in dying, all of us, without exception, had been in a state of subjection; and I do not doubt that this state can be full of sweetness and may give us a sense of security. Yet in that state, we make efforts to please others, those above us and those below. Submission is the beauty of our existence. And, in exchange, we receive protection and peace; in a word, it allows us to enjoy life. Without it, fate leaves each of us prey to himself. And so it was that in the hour of agony, a mixture of terrible anguish, despair, and lasciviousness, the citizens of Arras whispered to themselves, "I am the son of man. I am the son of man and nothing more!" This unbearable burden lay heavily upon us, most likely causing our descent to the lowest depths."

"I think that reason had never before known such brilliant triumphs as in those days when values were everywhere in decline. People were able to find a justification for every sublimity and misdeed. It was characteristic that the precision of those justifications made some people more equal and others less."

"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. The world is hopelessly constructed. Imagine the existence of an ox. "

""That may be," he replied softly. "But if I remain alive, a great deal will change. People will conclude that they had been right, and their image of sin will be drawn tight as a bowstring. But the human mind is not a bowstring and should not be drawn taut. When it breaks, Arras will descend into madness. It is a good town, Jan, and it deserved a better fate. I do not wish to be the executioner of this town. Better the town be mine.""

""It has been said here that reason is the devil's tool. That's not true! But it is true that the devil can dwell only in the mind and never in the heart of man. I would not be able to answer the question of whether or not Jan is guilty! His heresy lies mostly in his lack of trust, for all his fine efforts. He constantly yields to strange promptings. They might come from the devil, or his submission may just be out of weakness. We should be concerned with the salvation of this soul, not its damnation. I think Jan should be removed from the council so as to have time for meditation and prayer. Then we shall see. . .""

"The desire for unanimity, I replied to myself, seems stronger than the desire for truth, because we do not derive our sense of security from the truth, but from the community. Arras is what unites us for better and for worse. Apart from Arras, we possess nothing. What about our faith? I asked in alarm. Faith, I answered, is the seed, while Arras is the soil. Without it, the mocking wind would scatter our faith to others' fields, and we would become beggars by church gates that had been slammed shut."

"What of it that they were guilty, if that guilt had cost them so much despair and isolation? They could undergo no punishment greater than having been deceived by the ostensible destiny to which they had yielded in good faith. They stood by the Trinity Gate so bereft and injured that they no longer had the will to humbly confess their guilt. I even think they did not feel guilty in the way an outsider might expect: they did not feel guilty about what they had done but rather about the good faith in which they had acted. In honest dialogue with themselves, they would not have asked, "Why did you kill innocent people?" but, "Why did you believe that you should kill people in Arras?""

""The people on the council made a grievous error, but I will not be their judge. I'm feeling too weary to prosecute others for their sins. They've made their beds; let them lie in them. And it wasn't I who led them astray. If I seek the freedom most appropriate for me, I will not deprive them of choice either. Let each man go his own way. The way of the foolish is not for me; but neither shall I attempt to correct them, for it will only come to naught. Let the sober stay with their sobriety, and the madmen with their madness.""

"Gentlemen, that was a town neither good nor wise, because of what it had suffered. A grievous fate was sent down upon it, and that was why Arras had sinned. Wisdom never goes hand in hand with affliction."

"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. By then, gentlemen, I knew what I was doing. At some time everyone feels the need to make a great revolt, but one must choose the right hour. Had I left Arras during the madness, I would have saved only my reason, something I never lacked anyway. By leaving after everything was over, however,I saved a scrap of my faith. Not a lot, but enough to live a while longer in this best of worlds."