When I was young, I remember my parents watching a mysterious TV drama called the Forsyte Saga. On checking, I see that the series was a 1967 BBC release, so it is no small wonder that I was a little young for it. Recently I have been listening to the trilogy as recorded books while I am out for walks or in the car.
In the second of John Galsworthy’s novels, In Chancery, as an aside to a family framing up for the spectacle of cousins going to law over the wife of one in the case of Forsyte -v- Forsyte & Forsyte, Jolly Forsyte goes off to South Africa to fight in the army but dies of typhoid. His father, on hearing the news, reflects to himself, in words that struck me hard for they are as apposite as they are poignant. He said, “So young—and I hardly knew him. He hardly knew me—but I loved him.”
Putting aside the relationship between parents and their children, there are many situations in life where we only know about a small part of someone else’s life. We come across people in different contexts: professionally, in business relationships, in shared leisure activities, or through hobbies and interests. The superficiality of such contacts is irrelevant most of time; it may not be until we try to get to know someone better that we find have little in common or are barely compatible.
Returning to Jolyon Forsyte and his thoughts about Jolly, is he tragic or honest? Probably a mix of the two and if I am honest, closer to a description of many parental relationships than most of us would like to admit. So many family disagreements turn on the phrase, ‘you don’t understand me’.
We are preparing for the tragedy of a world that brought about the early death of a young man it hardly knew but some loved. The young man knew his persecutors better than they realised and he loved them. That same character loves us in the same way, he knows us and even if we do not know him well, if at all, his bond with us is unbreakable if we once attempt to forge it by looking his way.
The ‘character’ was and Is Jesus Christ, the time of year is Lent, and the tragic week is Holy Week; how well do we even know it’s detail, let alone its characters?
A Prayer
Lord God, I thank you that you love me and that even though I may make little effort to know you, still you care about me. Give the me openness of spirit and the grace to allow you to know me more completely. Help me to have an enquiring mind that delights in finding out more about you so that at the last the only thing I seek is to be with you eternally. Amen.