Column: Illuminations
O Great Humility
by Anthony Esolen
As I write this, my dog Jasper, he of the seventy tricks, is lying atop the sofa, and looking out the window to check for the neighborhood children coming home from school. He waits patiently for me also when I come home from school, as patiently as did the dog Argos, "Flash" as I call him, when Odysseus his master came home after twenty years of war and wandering. No disguise could fool the sagacious dog. But so feeble was old Flash, flea-stung and neglected, warming his bony form on the dung heap, that all he could do to greet his master was flatten his ears a little and whimper and try to wag his tail. Odysseus wiped a tear from his eye, asked the good swineherd about the dog, and passed on, as death and darkness closed the eyes of Flash, first of all creatures to recognize the return of the king.
There's a faithful dog in the lovely apocryphal (or to Catholics and Orthodox, canonical) book of Tobit. The elderly Tobit, blind and impoverished, sends his son Tobias out on a long and dangerous journey to collect a debt from a kinsman. From that journey the young Tobias will bring back not only great wealth but also a beautiful and virtuous wife and a healing ointment for his father. That is the work of the angel Raphael, "God heals," who accompanies him, along with the family dog. Tobit's wife Anna keeps watch atop a hill; "then the dog, which had been with them in the way, ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, showed his joy by fawning and wagging his tail."
Christian painters do not forget the animals with which we share this glorious creation. Bartolome Esteban Murillo is my favorite among them. He has a little white dog nearby listening closely to Jesus at Cana, just when the Lord is instructing the servants to fill the jugs with water. That same little dog appears in a charming painting of the Holy Family, gazing intently upon the toddler Jesus and raising his paw as Jesus holds out a dove in front of him, while a smiling Joseph holds Jesus, and Mary, spinning thread at the distaff, looks on. And he—I mean the dog—leaps with joy at the feet of the prodigal coming home from that far country, as his father embraces him. Perhaps, in Murillo's imagination, it was the dog that brought the first good news to the father!
Many of us wonder whether, in the new heaven and the new earth, we will be greeted at our homecoming by those innocent creatures that needed no redemption. The answer has not been revealed to us. But I think it is perfectly pious to entertain a hope, because God is a giver more generous than our dreams. Most especially can we hope so because of the mystery of the Incarnation itself, and the how and the where of the Nativity of our Lord.
The First to See
Consider the haunting motet, O Magnum Mysterium, composed by Murillo's near contemporary, Tomas de Victoria. It is a polyphonic rendering, for choirs of men and boys, of the chant for the matins of Christmas:
O magnum mysterium, et admirabile
sacramentum,
ut animalia viderent Dominum natum,
jacentem in praesepio!
Beata Virgo, cuius viscera meruerunt portare
Dominum Christum. Alleluia.O great mystery, and wondrous sacrament,
that animals should behold the newborn Lord
lying in a manger!
Blessed Virgin, whose womb was worthy to bear
Christ the Lord. Alleluia.
The music begins with a haunting and unusual minor-key melody sung by the boy sopranos, joined by the altos, well before the tenors and basses join in. Victoria seems to have thought that youths were fittest to announce this mystery, though when the full choir sings, the general impression is of profound but comforting darkness, in the quiet of that Christmas Eve. Victoria dwells lovingly upon the Latin animalia, delicately emphasizing each syllable, and repeating the word—animalia, "animals."The first living creatures who beheld the birth of the King of Kings, other than his mother and foster father, were not Herod or the chief priests or the scribes or the governor Quirinius or the eastern sages from afar, nor even the lowly shepherds, but the animals, the ox and ass and lamb. And the music ends with a burst of alleluias.
Anthony Esolen is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Thales College and the author of over 30 books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House) and, with his wife Debra, publishes the web magazine Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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more from the online archives
19.1—January/February 2006
on Death & Seven of the Last Words of Socrates by Graeme Hunter
8.4—Fall 1995
The Demise of Biblical Preaching
Distortions of the Gospel and its Recovery by Donald G. Bloesch
18.10—December 2005
on an Apostle’s Encounter with the Son’s Children by Anthony Esolen
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