REFLECTION ON BABETTE'S FEAST by Paul Joseph C.
thewildvoice.org/christ-made-u...
Throughout the world sounds one long cry from the heart of the artist: give me the chance to do my very best. These were the words of Achille Papin, the great opera singer from Paris who Babette knew very well. These were the silent words that laid beneath the works of Ludwig van Beethoven, Raphael Sanzio, Johann Sebastian Bach, Louis Pasteur, Dante Alighieri, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Albert Einstein. That sound was the whisper heard in the perfect works of artists such as Mother Theresa, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas and Therese of Lisieux. That long cry from the heart of Michelangelo, Catherine of Siena, Martin Luther King, Maria Callas and of all those whose sublime fruits were never known by this world's generations, all came from one cry. On a cold afternoon and under the blackened skies covering the Earth's womb, a voice in the wild pierced the hearts of all the living that ever were minted from the dirt of our mountains and deserts. On a cold afternoon, the voice of Love pierced the dark vault above and reached Itself in the Father's Bosom after It had been pierced by nails as punishment for having shared Itself. On a cold afternoon, Paradise became silent as the eternal praises of angelic sublimity were broken by the loud utterance of these words: "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?"
Today, this long cry still echoes throughout the world from the heart of the Greatest among all artists, and whose only chance of redeeming every child ever conceived into creation became an unbreakable Promise on the exhale of a final breath. In that cry, a King stripped of all His royal Majesty and clothed in all His naked and wounded Humanity, called upon the Mighty Artist whose first masterpiece was that same Creation casting darkness on that same afternoon. The One through Whom the Father Made all things, uttered the suffered cry of a most unfathomable pain and yet, most pleasing self-sacrifice in the never-ending love containing all the known and unknown.
The sound of solitude uttered in the question 'My God, My God, why have You Forsaken Me?' was answered by the laughing, the mocking and the ingratitude of those wicked men and women who were blind to that breathtaking treasure of God's Redemptive Work now suspended between Heaven and earth. That moment, which so much was portrayed by the hands of the most refined painters during the Renaissance, was executed on the dirty canvas of humanity's cruelty, while the signature at its bottom consisted of God's Masterpiece: that silent Fortress who, under the name of Mary, bore the weight of Her Baby's cross in Her own Womb while tasting the bitterness of all sins ever committed before and after Her Immaculate Conception. On that bare scalp of Golgotha, the Master of all sculptors and scientists told His virginal Mother to behold all men and women into that same Womb where He Found nourishment and protection from the world. This gift He gave to all, including those few soldiers who, in that same instant, were dividing His garments among themselves by casting lots in the cold wind.
As the Body and Spirit in which all works of perfect redemption found their exhausted completeness, the sound of all symphonies ever composed by God's Created geniuses was heard in the words 'It is consummated'. And as the Son of Man commenced His Spirit in His Father's Hand before dying, so will do all those who give themselves to others in the way He Did. It was behind the appearance of poverty that the riches of a King were never to be seen through human sight. Honored by men with a crown of thorns and a thousand spits, this King was the very incarnation and origin of Babette's words 'An artist is never poor'. Before carrying the cross of her own poverty and before entering Christ's given chance to delight the angels as the artist that God meant her to be, it was the long cry from the heart of The Master Artist which was cross and delight for all on earth and in Heaven.
Now, the Teacher gave His student the chance to do her very best by giving away that culinary masterpiece which delighted the palates of all those men and women who never were meant to know that the author of the greatest feast they ever experienced was the Master Chef at the Cafe' Anglais. Never will they know this. Never will they have the chance to thank her and never will they learn that the price of such free gift came at the cost of her now life long poverty. The signature of her art-piece was omitted as to not corrupt the purity of her charity as a sort of fast from praises and self-approbation. Their joyful feasting at the price of her own joyful fasting paralleled the act of a self sacrificial Lamb giving Himself to us as Food of Life to be consumed for the joy and salvation of all.
And after the food was consummated, she commenced herself into God's Providence, knowing that an artist will never be poor.