Piety and Vanity

Piety and Vanity

February 8, 2016

Class Film

“Vanity of vanities! All is vanity,” says the general as he looks himself in the mirror, reflecting back on a life of wealth, glory, and prestige. He is dressed in his finest, about to return to the place he promised never to revisit. The carriage ride is long, giving him idle time for his mind to travel back to that day years ago when he looked her in the eye and choose the life of vanity over piety. The thought of love suppressed enters his mind and echoes in the empty caverns. She was disappointed to say the least. But there are aches and pains that must be endured for the kingdom of heaven. The path to wholeness often incurs loss, so her father used to say. She had her sister and a tight knit community. What more could a pious woman ask for than relationships such as these? Then came the knock on the door. The general, aged from battle, with scars of victory, stands at the doorstep. He has come back. An outsider, a man of the world, come to enjoy a French dinner. The food was laid out for all to see. Blinded by their own piety, the community fails to see the work of art which Babette has prepared for them. The general, however, savors every bite and sip, taking it as if it were a sort of communion and redeeming of past failure. He, whose life was not oblivious to such opulence, delights over the meal. And so the outsider opens the eyes of those inside. The general has lived his life, making choices in the face of fear, only to find that “mercy is infinite” and “imposes no conditions.” In this moment, he realizes that everything he has chosen and rejected has been granted to him. All things may be redeemed, even vanity, even piety. Love is the recapitulation of all rights and wrongs, past and present and the feast a symbol of that transformation.