Fiction

I am currently rereading Les Miserables. Evidently I have a couple of months to spare.  I started because I absolutely love one of the characters, and he has been popping up in my mind quite a bit over the last month or so.

It is easy to love characters in books, isn’t it?  One reason I love fictional characters is the fact that (when done right) they are consistent.  Since an author, or filmmaker, or playwright can edit their actions down to the essential plot points they can be defined with some absolute parameters.  You can never tell what a real person is going to do, but someone in a book or movie has to act in a certain way or we just won’t believe them.

The character I love in this book is the Bishop of Digne.  As written, he really is grace personified.  He is a man who has truly repented his old life.  Unlike the Rich Young Ruler in the Gospels, this man does give up everything to follow Christ.  What jumped out at me this time was just how much this character gives to the Lord.  When I was younger, I of course realized  that he was sacrificing a couple of candlesticks when he gave them to Valjean.  What didn’t truly hit me until the other day was that he doesn’t just give up some property to be nice. He gives the silver away because he realizes that he has to.  He is compelled to follow the commands and example of Christ.  In the book, we are told that his silver is really all that he had kept through the years.  This is a character who has answered the call to give ALL that he has.  Even more, this is an action that is at once voluntary and mandatory.

In reading this, I am torn.  Yes, the bishop is a fictional character, made up in the mind of some old, dead Frenchman who lived very long ago.  But, this character puts in to practice what we are all supposed to do.  He is at once, the very person we are called to be and a person that we can never hope to emulate.  He is a character who has given this life entirely to his Lord.

He reminds me of the Who’s in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.  I don’t know anyone, Christian or not, who would wake up to an empty house on Christmas morning and run out to sing a song.  I think we would call the cops instead!