Recently I finished reading the classic novel, Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. If you’re not familiar with the actual print of the book, it’s a massive book of nearly 1300 pages. I like reading, but I’m not the most avid of readers. After loving the musical and its music, I really wanted to read the novel and take up the gauntlet of 1300 pages. It took me ten years to finally finish the endeavor. Glad to say I did it, and if you’re stuck on trying to finish a book I hope my ten year journey gives you hope.

Almost as old as time is the understanding that the movie is never as good as the book. This is amazingly true for musical adaptations, at least for Les Mis, in my opinion. I always found that at the end of Les Mis, the musical, how strongly the revolutionary spirit is felt in the closing number: the scene of the afterlife portrayed on the barricade. The fighting spirit for Liberty lives on! It’s a dramatic and compelling end to the musical.

Curiously enough, this is not at all how the novel ends. [SPOILER ALERT] towards the end of the novel after the intense scene at the barricade and Jean Valjean rescues Marius, the entire tenor of revolution and political freedom from tyranny is absconded by love. Cosette and Marius are finally reunited, and this takes Marius’s mind far away from barricades and fighting. His heart finally rests with Cosette, and that is all that matters to him. He never returns to the barricade. The precise end of the novel is still the death of Jean Valjean, but the context of his death is so very telling.

Valjean slowly began to remove himself from Cosette’s life as she began to enter into the new chapter of her life with Marius, getting married, settling down, and soon to inherit a fortune that would set them for life. Valjean removes himself because he doesn’t want any of his past to possibly interfere with Cosette’s new life. This he accomplished legally through signing away documents, etc. But he drives a wedge even emotionally between himself and Cosette. He has no forgiveness for himself and what he did. He is convinced that his self-perceived wretchedness could contaminate Cosette’s happy life with Marius. By removing himself from her life, Valjean becomes very ill. The doctor does not understand why. In the last scene, Valjean and Cosette, along with Marius, are reunited and the truth of Valjean comes out and his heroic deeds are laid before him, and he receives forgiveness from Marius. For the first time in his life Valjean accepts forgiveness, though it is too late. His illness has spread, but at least he is able to die in peace, understanding that he is a good man, forgiven and in the good graces again of his adopted daughter and son-in-law.

The contrast of these two endings is stark. Victor Hugo, yes, portrays in his book the trying historical strife for freedom and a just society, but his strongest appeal is for love and receiving forgiveness. The world will always have these conflicts, but tight knit bonds of love that is what gives us life. Life worth living—that revolutions cannot touch. Holy Matrimony and Family actually have the last crescendo in Victor Hugo’s novel, as a testimony that Love is stronger than death and more important than politics.

This is the great acclamation of the Crucified Christ! Our Savior lifts up all who are wearied by the world to Himself through His Love that is victorious over death. Christ, and Christ alone, gives us the victory over the world by His death. A death that was intended by the Romans to put an end to a political revolutionary.

School is out for summer! ☀️ Please check out our summer offerings below: 

We are thrilled to offer summer options for our families.

• Saint Andrew Summer Adventure Camp will be offered for the majority of the remaining summer weeks. Adventure Camp Registration for SA students, their friends, and neighbors in the community is open. 

• Join us for a playdate on the school campus Ackermann lot, July 11th and August 8th at 10am. 

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