When I saw the title of this chapter I worried it would be a cataloging of various dogmas and doctrines that M. Myriel fastidiously held to, or a set of propositional statements that he declared to believe. I was pleasantly surprised to find instead that here Hugo dives deeper into the core beliefs that seemed to shape the orientation and behavior of the bishop. He points out that while one way of looking at Myriel’s life would be to talk about it in terms of a constant and consistent faithfulness to God, maybe a deeper and more complete view would be of overflowing with love. Love for all of humanity, love for everyone, love for all of creation, even those parts that might seem most base.
Like St. Francis, we get the idea that some of Myriel’s love for creation may have been viewed as eccentric by some, or as weak and deficient by others. Myriel seemed to disregard these sorts of responses to him and take them in stride. Rather than someone who “had no spine” or “cared to deeply as a show of weakness”, what we actually have in Myriel is the fruit of someone who had been shaped by a long obedient orientation to God and the love of God over the course of his later years.
Hugo points out that his disposition wasn’t always like this; in his younger years Myriel had been contentious and even violent. Rather than a failure to mature, as those who would frame love and care for others as weakness would like to think, Myriel’s disposition of love for all was a slow transformation that seemed to have come as a result of his consistent and faithful trust in God and the ways of God. Hugo describes this beautifully:
His universal compassion was due less to natural instinct,than to a profound conviction, a sum of thoughts that in the course of living had filtered into his heart: for in the nature of man, as in a rock, there may be channels hollowed by the dropping of water, and these can never be destroyed.
I hope the channels forming in my heart as I grow old are ones that belie a commitment to kindness, love, compassion, and beauty. Only time will tell.