Sunday/Pale Galilean

                                  

                         Sunday/Pale Galilean

Today is the gospel where Christ calls the first apostles, Peter and Andrew, James and John, at the sea of Galilee. In Luke, it ends with the fishing boat miracle that so impresses Peter that he fearfully tries to leave Christ.

Brothers, boats, fishing, industry, the sea--there's a lot here for symbolic people. One element is Galilee itself. Galilee was not a firmly established Jewish community. Christ's ministry did not come from the heart of Israel. It was loosely connected to the pagan gentiles. So, what kind of existence is Christ stepping out of?

Swinburn refers to The Pale Galilean in a poem he wrote on the transitory where love, like Christianity, will fade. "Hymn to Proserpine" is sung by a pagan after the proclamation in Rome of the Christian faith. The speaker laments the displacement of pleasure, sensuality, gaity--and Death--that makes up so much of life. Hence, the "pale Galilean."

"For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving his day.
And grief is a grievous thing, and a man hath enough of his tears:
Why should he labour, and bring fresh grief to blacken his years?
Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath;
We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.
Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day; . . ."

It ends grimly, as a pagan would:

"Thou art more than the Gods who number the days of our temporal breath;
Let these give labour and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, death.
Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence. I know
I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so.
For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span;
A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.
So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep.
For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep."