The tenth chapter of Les Miserables is the best one so far. It is titled “The bishop confronted by a strange light” and details his attendance at the death of a local man who had been part of the revolution. I won’t go into an in-depth summary because the chapter deserves to speak for itself, but in so many ways this man represents what Myriel would have previously considered the enemy. In the beginning portion of the chapter he is repeatedly referred to as the beast and is cast in a very judgmental light that is a reflection of the particular understanding Myriel has of the world as it is.
As these two men encounter the humanity of each other, maybe even better, the spark of the divine that lives within each, it quite literally undoes the bishop. There is a powerful scene when the man is finally breathing his last where the bishop falls to his knees and asks a blessing. Here we see something stunning in it’s beauty and simplicity. Rather than administering last rites or acting as though he had something to offer this man, he recognizes that this man has given him a great gift in transforming the way he viewed the other.
One of the things that struck me the most in this is that Myriel’s last point of resistance was that this man, like most other revolutionaries of his ilk, was an atheist. In Myriel’s calculation this foundation would preclude one from any kind of goodness. However, as Myriel watches the man on deaths door gaze out into the infinite expanse beyond and praise it as the source of all life, there is this recognition that labels aside, they deeply share not only a care and concern for those most downtrodden by the world that surrounds them, but a shared understanding of the inherent goodness and beauty of all of creation and humankind.
In this shared moment I couldn’t help but be reminded of Paul Tillich’s concept of God as “The Ground of Being”. To be clear, Hugo died a year before Tillich was born, so I am in no way implying any kind of influence. I just find it to be an idea that gives shape to the beautiful narrative that unfolds in this scene. Somehow the contradicting (a)theism of these two individuals is completely transcended in this moment by their shared state of awe at the infinite and universal goodness and beauty they were gifted with. Reading this passage you see two people who should be fully opposed to one another find a common footing that reshapes and re-narrates their shared existence - a new now forged by a return to the “Ground of Being”. I’ve often said that I find the question of God’s existence to be paradoxically one of the least compelling questions in theological inquiry. Language like that of Tillich’s can bridge what seems like an impassable divide and reveal that often there is more shared ground between some atheists and theists than there is between certain types of Christians today. Maybe the place to actually find common ground is in “The Ground of Being” - a place where we can collective embrace the lament, grief, hope and love of all humanity as we move toward a future where we must learn to share what we have equitably or risk losing it all entirely.