GRM 188.8 · Volume 3
The Gospel as revealed to me
Quotation
They reach the house. The man is there, on the threshold, wearing a clean dark tunic and a mantle to match, a pair of new sandals and carrying a large haversack over his shoulder. He closes the door and then, what is strange in a man who might be considered hard-hearted, he takes a white hen, perhaps his pet, which squats tamely in his hands, he kisses it weeping and lays it down.
«Let us go… and forgive me. But my chicken always loved me… I used to speak to them and… they understood me…»
«I understand you, too… and I love you. So much. I will give you all the love that the world denied you in thirty-five years…»
«Oh! I know! I can feel it! That is why I am coming. But be indulgent to a man who… loves an animal which has been more faithful to him than men…»
«Yes… Forget your past. You will have so much to do! And, experienced as you are, you will do it very well. Simon, come here and you, too, Matthew. See? This man was more than a prisoner, he was a leper. And this one… a sinner. And they are very dear to Me, because they know how to understand poor hearts… Is that right?»
«Thanks to Your goodness, my Lord. But you may rest assured, my friend, that everything is cancelled by serving Him. Only peace remains» says the Zealot.
«Yes. Peace and a new youth taken over from old vices and hatred. I was a tax collector. Now I am an apostle. The world is in front of us. And we know all about it. We are not absentminded children who pass near the harmful fruit and the bending plant and do not see facts. We know. We can avoid evil and teach other people how to avoid it. And we can straighten up those who bend.
Because we know what a relief it is to be supported. And we know Who supports: Him» says Matthew.
«That’s true! Quite true! You will help me. Thank you. I feel as if I were passing from a dark foul smelling place to the open in a flowery meadow… I felt something similar when I came out, at long last free, after twenty years of imprisonment and brutal work in the mines in Anatolia and I found myself – I escaped one stormy evening – on the top of a wild mountain, but in the open, in a place full of sunshine at dawn, and covered with scented woods… Freedom! But now it is better! Everything is more sublime! I had not been in chains for fifteen years. But hatred, fear and solitude were still like chains to me… But now they have been shaken off!…
Detail
John of En-Dor has just been converted. Jesus consoles him, then calls Simon the Zealot and Matthew, who will be able to understand the man.
Annotation
Extract from Dictionnaire des lieux de l'Evangile tel qu'il m'est révélé, p. 19. Jean d'Endor, an escaped convict, recalls his "twenty years of imprisonment and exhausting work in the mines of Anatolia" (...) "at the lead mines and the quarries of precious marbles". This is a remarkable indication, since the mines of Anatolia have been famous since antiquity for the extraction of copper, lead, marble... They were the source of the legend of King Midas, and made the fame of Croesus. Even today, Turkey is considered the country par excellence of white marble, and its lead mines are renowned (Gümüşhane and Karasu mines). In a commentary, Jesus justifies the use of the word Anatolia instead of Bithynia and Mysia.
Anatolia, also known as Asia Minor in Latin, is the peninsula at the western end of Asia, corresponding to present-day Turkey.