Vol. 40 No. 14 - The Magnanimous Lives of Mark L. Prophet - April 6, 1997
Upon the Dedication of St. Mark’s
Church Universal and Triumphant of Livingston, Montana
by the Messenger Elizabeth Clare Prophet
Looking at Mark Prophet’s past lives, we see that they span the many cultures and religions of the world. Think about it. He was Noah, Lot, Ikhnaton, Aesop, the disciple Mark, Origen, Lancelot, Bodhidharma, Clovis, Saladin, Bonaventure, Louis XIV, Longfellow and the Russian czarevitch Alexis Nikolayevich.
His soul was at home in the East and in the West, in the Christian and the non-Christian world. His soul knew no boundaries of race or creed or culture. His soul knew only the transcendent language of love and magnanimity.
As I’ve taught before, the overwhelming quality I see when I contemplate the soul of Mark Prophet is his magnanimous heart. And so, while I was meditating on the heart of my beloved in preparation for my talk today, I realized that this very quality--magnanimity, and our practice of it–will be the key to the success of this church.
William Wordsworth once said: “The best portion of a good man’s life [is] his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.” <1>I learned a lot about those little acts of kindness and love from Mark Prophet just by watching how he loved people and how he loved me. Mark didn’t have an easy life. Maybe that’s what made him more loving, more generous, more magnanimous.
In each of his past lives Mark was developing another facet of his magnanimous heart. I’d like to give you a few examples. But before I do, let’s consider the definition of the word “magnanimous.”
“Magnanimous” means literally “great spirit” or “great soul.” It is taken from the noun “magnanimity.” Magnanimity is loftiness of spirit that enables one to bear trouble calmly; to disdain meanness, pettiness, resentment, jealousy and revenge; to generously disregard injuries; to make sacrifices for worthy ends. It is noble generosity.
Thus the definition of “magnanimous” is: showing or suggesting a lofty and courageous spirit; nobly brave or valiant; proceeding from or manifesting high courage; showing or suggesting generosity of mind and nobility of feeling and conduct; nobly ambitious; lofty of purpose; high-souled; forgiving.
The Magnanimity of Ikhnaton
Let us turn now to Mark’s past lives. Thirty-three hundred years ago, Mark was embodied as the Pharaoh Ikhnaton. Ikhnaton established a revolutionary religion based on the worship of the one God, Aton, God of the Sun. He taught the people that Aton was the embodiment of magnanimity. Ikhnaton himself wanted to become the embodiment of Aton.
The pharaoh taught that Aton was the Lord of Love. Aton was compassionate, merciful, gentle, tender. He knew no anger. He loved truth. Aton’s religion was a religion of delight, joy and happiness. Its followers embraced frankness, openness and sincerity. Ikhnaton wanted to be a mirror for Aton. He wanted his private life to be a worthy example to his subjects.
Above all, he had the courageous spirit, the nobility, the magnanimity to be an innovator--to break away from the stony tradition of the past, with its worship of many gods, and to bring his people an understanding of the one true God. In short, Ikhnaton was a paradigm pioneer!
James Breasted, the eminent Egyptologist, says: “There died with Ikhnaton such a spirit as the world had never seen before. He was a brave soul, undauntedly facing the momentum of immemorial tradition that he might disseminate ideas far beyond and above the capacity of his age to understand. In an age so remote and under conditions so adverse, he became the world’s first idealist and the world’s first individual, the most remarkable of all pharaohs, the first prophet of history.” <2>
Beloved members of the Livingston community, take Ikhnaton as your role model of love and magnanimity.
The Magnanimity of Origen
As Origen, in the third century, Mark was the most influential theologian of the early Greek Church, He showed an extraordinary magnanimity in sharing with his students his love of the Word and of the scriptures.
Near the end of his life Origen moved to Caesarea, where he taught pagans in his house and introduced them to Christianity through a course in philosophy. He began with readings from pagan philosophers and poets that spoke of God. Then he brought his students to the study of Christian scripture. We have a document that has survived called the Address of Thanks. It is written by one of Origen’s students, who is expressing his grief at having to leave his master’s school.
He writes: “[There] both day and night the holy laws are declared, and hymns and songs and spiritual words are heard. Where also there is perpetual sunlight; where by day in waking vision we have access to the mysteries of God, and by night in dreams we are still occupied with what the soul has seen and handled in the day. And where, in short, the inspiration of divine things prevails over all continually.” <3>
He says of his teacher: “This man has received from God the greatest gift, and from heaven the better part. He is the interpreter of the words of God to men. He understands the things of God as if God were speaking to him and he explains them to men that they may understand them.” <4>
Origen’s student describes how his master’s love of the Word sparked a bond of love between himself and all his students. “Like some spark lighting upon our inmost soul, love was kindled and burst into flame within us--a love at once of the Holy Word and of this man, God’s friend and advocate.” <5>
Beloved members of the Livingston community, take Origen of Alexandria as your role model of love and magnanimity.
The Magnanimity of Saladin
In the twelfth century, Mark was embodied as Saladin, <6> the great Muslim leader who conquered and unified the entire Muslim world. Charles Rosebault has given us the following accounts of Saladin’s exceptional magnanimity.
On one occasion, one of his subjects, Omar, brought a charge against Saladin. Omar had been the owner of a slave who had taken his money and run off. Omar thought the slave had died and that Saladin had taken possession of this money. So he brought charges against Saladin to recover it.
After a long hearing, it was disclosed that the slave that had died was not Omar’s slave. A lesser man than Saladin would have inflicted a punishment upon Omar for bringing false charges against him. But Saladin responded with magnanimity. He ordered a robe of honor to be given to Omar as well as a sum of money to cover all his expenses. The presiding judge commented.
“Observe Saladin’s submission to the regulations prescribed by law, the putting aside of his pride, and the generosity he displayed at a time when he might justly have inflicted a punishment.”
On another occasion, during a crusade, some of Saladin’s men had stolen into the Christian camp at night and looted it. This was a common practice of the time. Part of their booty was a little girl. When her mother found out, she became hysterical. She went to Saladin’s camp, weeping, tearing her garments, beating her breasts.
Through an interpreter she explained the situation to Saladin, who was greatly moved. At once he ordered a search to be made through the camp. Within an hour the missing daughter had been found. When her mother saw her, she threw herself on the ground, burying her face in the dust and weeping so violently that the emotional witnesses, including the Sultan, had to join her in tears.
An aftermath, which illustrates Saladin’s sense of justice, was that he paid a ransom to the man who had kidnapped the little girl. For it was quite within the rights of this man to steal the child. And she would have been sold as a slave to some Moslem household. But as Sultan, having the first right to all booty, Saladin could have taken the child without recompense.
During the Third Crusade, Richard the Lion Hearted decided to fight against Saladin to regain possession of Palestine. The interaction between these two noble souls in the midst of the bloodiest of wars is again a tribute to Saladin’s magnanimity.
At one point, seeing Richard on the battlefield without a horse, Saladin sent him a charger because he thought it was “a shame that so gallant a warrior should have to fight on foot.” <7>
The next day, Saladin’s forces had overpowered Richard’s troops. Richard, who was also extremely sick, sued for peace. Historian Will Durant writes: “In his fever, Richard cried out for fruit and a cooling drink. Saladin sent him pears and peaches and snow and his own physician.” They then signed a peace treaty for three years and partitioned the territory.
Durant says: “Usually Saladin was gentle to the weak, merciful to the vanquished and so superior to his enemies in faithfulness to his word that Christian chroniclers wondered how so wrong a theology could produce so fine a man.” <8>
Rosebault writes, as an interesting testimony to Saladin’s generosity, that “this conqueror of vast wealth died so poor that there was not enough left to pay for his funeral. He had given away whole provinces, yet, wrote his secretary, ‘he left neither goods, nor houses nor real estate; neither garden, nor village nor cultivated land nor any species of property.’ In his treasury there remained only one Tyrian gold piece and forty-seven pieces of silver.”
Not long before his death, Saladin advised his son: “If I have become great it is because I have won men’s hearts by kindness and gentleness.” <9>
Beloved members of the Livingston community, take Saladin as your role model of love and magnanimity.
The Magnanimity of Bonaventure
In the thirteenth century, Mark was embodied as Bonaventure, a Seraphic Doctor of the Church and a renowned philosopher and theologian. He was known as the “prince of mystics.” Bonaventure was magnanimous. At the very early age of 35, he was chosen as general of the Franciscan Order. Soon after, he was called to be a peace-maker there, for it was divided between those who were in favor of an inflexible severity and those who wanted to mitigate some of the rules.
In The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principle Saints Reverend Alban Butler writes: “Bonaventure no sooner appeared among them, but by the force of his exhortations which he tempered with mildness and charity, he restored a perfect calm. And all the brethren marched under this new Joshua with one heart, in the same spirit and in the same path.”
For Bonaventure, his superior position only gave him the opportunity to be more magnanimous--more generous. On one occasion, while returning to Paris, he visited several convents. Butler says: “he showed everywhere that he had become superior only to be the most humble, the most charitable, the most compassionate of all his brethren, and the servant of his whole Order.” He was truly what we call today a “servant leader.”
Bonaventure taught that true magnanimity comes in the execution of small, daily duties. Butler writes: “Saint Bonaventure places not the perfection of Christian virtue so much in the more heroic exercises of a religious state as in the performing well our ordinary actions.”
Bonaventure says: “The best perfection of a religious man is to do common things in a perfect manner.” A constant fidelity in small things is a “great and heroic virtue.” <10> Beloved members of the Livingston community, take Saint Bonaventure as your role model of love and magnanimity.
The Magnanimity of Longfellow
In the nineteenth century Mark was embodied as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the most popular American poet of the day. If there is a constant quality that shines through Longfellow’s poetry, it is the quality of heart. However, not everyone who enjoys his poetry would guess that tragedy was a part of Longfellow’s life.
His young, gentle and intelligent first wife died after only four years of marriage from an illness. He believed that she would recover until the last week of her life. While rallying from depression over her death he wrote one of his most beloved poems, “A Psalm of Life.” The tragedy gradually led him away from scholarship as his main interest and more into poetry.
He remarried seven years later and had two sons. But following that, his first daughter died in infancy. For months afterward he felt that his ability to love and to be happy had died with her. He and his wife went on to have three daughters. At the height of his fame, Longfellow was again plunged into sorrow by the tragic death of his second wife, who burned to death while she was melting sealing wax and she dropped the match to the floor onto her gown.
Though he experienced painful recurrent memories for the rest of his life, Longfellow bore this loss heroically. He set himself to the task of translating Dante’s Divine Comedy, which became the best translation of that work in his day. I believe that because Longfellow experienced these tragedies he was able to touch the heart and the soul of people all the more deeply. It increased his magnanimity and compassion.
A contemporary of Longfellow paints a perfect portrait of magnanimity in the poet. He writes:
Perhaps the most remarkable traits in Longfellow’s character were his accessibility and his charity. Though a great worker, he seemed always to have time for anything he was asked to do. He was never too busy to see a caller, to answer a letter, or to assist by word or deed anyone that needed assistance.
Longfellow’s courtesy to all visitors, even to strangers or children who called to look at him, or who, not venturing to call, hung about his garden gate in order to catch a glimpse of him, was almost a marvel. He always took it for granted that they had come to see Washington’s study [at his home], and accordingly took the greatest interest in showing them that.
He never, as long as he could write, was known to refuse his autograph. His acts of charity, though performed in secret, were neither few nor small. Of him it may be said with perfect truth, ‘he went about doing good,’ and not with his money merely but also with his presence and his encouragement.
To how many sad hearts did he come like an angel with the rich tones of his voice, waking harmonics of hope where before there had been despair and silence? How many young literary people, disappointed at the unsuccess at their first attempts did he comfort and spur on to renewed and higher efforts?
How utterly free he was from jealousy and revengefulness.
Once when the present writer proposed to the president of Harvard University Visiting Committee that Longfellow should be placed on that committee, the president replied: ‘What would be the use? Longfellow could never be brought to find fault with anybody or anything.’
And it was true. His whole life was bathed in that sympathy, that love which suffers long and envies not, which forgives unto the seventy times seven times and as many more if need be.’ <11>
Beloved members of the Livingston community, take Longfellow as your role model of love and magnanimity.
I would like us to be able to say that, like Mark, all members of this church speak the common language of love and magnanimity. I would like our sanctuary to be a haven where people from all walks of life, all religions and all cultures can come and feel at home.
It is therefore with great joy in my heart that I dedicate St. Mark’s Church Universal and Triumphant of Livingston, Montana.
A Psalm of Life
What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist
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Tell me not, in mournful numbers, |
END
2. James Henry Breasted, Ph.D., A History of Egypt (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912), p. 392.
3. Henri Crouzel, Origen (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985), p 26.
4. Ibid., p.28.
8. Ibid.
9. Durant, Age of Faith, p. 602.
11. Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., s. v. “Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth.”
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