The Victory of the Little Prince

First, in order to proceed beyond matters of great consequence, I must put before you a choice. It is, perplexingly enough, the choice between life and death, blessings and curses. It is this. What is the following picture to you?

Did you say:
A) A hat or,
B) A boa-constrictor digesting an elephant?

Only if you answered B you may proceed to read the rest of this post, because "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; What is essential is invisible to the eye" (The Little Prince). In fact, it would be best if you read The Little Prince before reading this post. I don't think you'll be lost, but it'll just make everything mean a whole lot more.

The Little Prince
I read this charming book with Darcie not long ago, a book about a tiny prince who leaves his tiny island and his temperamental and arrogant rose to explore the galaxy and search for friendship, only to discover that it was his tiny whimsical rose that he truly cared about and found joy in caring for.

The Little Prince, which, according to some sources was the third-most read book in the 20th Century next to the Bible and the Koran, intrigued me to the point that I began investigating the life of the author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

I would agree with Otto Bollnow that our richest education in life comes through profound encounters with unusual, challenging, or inspiring literature, people, historical figures, works of art, etc. Reading The Little Prince was one of these existential encounters for me, and so I wondered if knowing the author would be a similar experience.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Probably the best way I could describe him would be to say that Saint-Exupéry was a man of passion. He was born in Lyons, France, in 1900 into a family of provincial nobility. His father died in 1904 of a stroke, leaving his widow to care for their five young children. He was educated in Jesuit and Catholic schools, before failing his final examination at a university preparatory school but going on to study architecture at a college.

One of the great passions of his life was flying. Entering military service in 1921, he trained to become a pilot. He was offered a job in the air force, but his fiancée's family objected, so took up an office job and began to write. The next years of his life were difficult. His engagement was broken off and he had no success in jobs, trying his hand at bookkeeper and automobile salesman among others. Finally he was able to fly again, delivering mail over North Africa, escaping death on several occasions. In 1928 became the director of a remote airfield in the desert, whose harsh beauty is the setting for The Little Prince and The Wisdom of the Sands. In fact, the first-person perspective of The Little Prince is that of a pilot whose airplane crashes in the Sahara Desert.

Perhaps you do not see the beauty in learning about others' lives as much as I do. I am sorry. I will try to be more succinct. Then, again, maybe we are in danger of being too grown-up to recognize the infinite importance of one life lived, caught up as we are in facts and figures, where deaths are statistics and lives are the memory lag before becoming one.

Antoine flies and writes. One of his novels, Night Flight, became an international bestseller, won a prize, and was adapted for the screen in 1933.

In 1931 Saint-Exupéry married Consuelo Gómez Carillo, who was the inspiration for the little prince's rose. Although she wrote of him that, "He wasn't like other people, but like a child or an angel who has fallen down from the sky," their relationship was stormy. She was jealous and felt neglected, and understandably, because Saint-Exupéry was seldom home and had numerous affairs with other women. Women were certainly another passion of his life, albeit an untamed one.

At the age of 44, wanting to get out of the military, he agreed to one last mission for his Mediterranean-based Allied squadron; to collect data on German troop movements. He took off from an airstrip in Sardinia on July 31, 1944 on a flight over southern France and was never seen again. His plane was found in May 2000. To this day it is unknown whether it was suicide, an accident, or if he was shot down.

It is likely that he was shot down by the German fighter-pilot Robert Heichelle, who reported shooting down an aggressive Lighting that day, but it is also plausible that he committed suicide, having felt isolated and alone in his squadron and being pessimistic about the future. Scientifically, we just don't know. Perhaps it is our desire to honor a dead man's memory that keeps suicide from being the option of choice. Perhaps it is more rationally sound to believe he was shot down. Maybe we just want it to be that way.

The Passing of the Little Prince
 

The end of The Little Prince is tragic and not completely unlike Saint-Exupéry's own passing. He has met a snake who claims "Anyone I touch, I send back to the land from which he came," and he comes to the realization that he has been tamed by his rose, that he is responsible for her and he must care for her. He must go back to the land from which he came to be with her again. "It'll look as if I'm suffering," he says, "It'll look a little as if I'm dying. It'll look that way." The pilot, who has come to care deeply for this little prince, is with him when to see the yellow flash close to the little prince's ankle. "He remained motionless for an instant. He didn't cry out. He fell gently, the way a tree falls." The pilot takes comfort in knowing that he did get back to his plant because at daybreak the pilot does not find his body. The little prince, like Saint-Exupéry, disappeared.

I still found the end of The Little Prince quite disconcerting. I had grown to love the pilot and the little prince. While I can see that the little prince cared so dearly for his rose, I myself have a hard time caring for the rose in that way and so wonder why he had to return. I, along with the pilot, have been tamed by the little prince. The whole thing carries with it the suspension of an uneasy and undefined situation. Letting the snake bite him is too close to suicide for my liking. Isn't there another way? If the little prince managed to get to earth in another way, could he not leave in the same way? Was there no other way to save his flower?

As with the death of Saint-Exupéry, it is not possible to say with scientific certainty what happened in the passing of the little prince. Oh, how we want for the truth to be that the little prince has in fact saved his flower, that it has not been eaten by the sheep, that despite how few thorns it has it and its arrogance, the little prince has returned to his planet and everything is right in the universe... that each star in the night sky blossoms with the beauty of the love of a little prince for his flower. Oh, how we want the truth to be that men do not commit suicide, that they do not have affairs. Oh, how we want the truth to be that Jesus Christ died and rose again, that we will one day be with him.

A Great Little Prince, a Serpent, and a Rose

We have a great Prince who became little, who allowed the great Serpent to poison him so that we, his precious rose, would be saved. Was there no other way? He came to earth peacefully as a baby, could not he have left upon the clouds?

As much as we try, we can never scientifically prove what happened on the cross or in the following days. It must be impossible to prove such a thing, by definition, otherwise it would not be a matter of faith. Of course, it is also impossible to prove otherwise. If it were possible to prove otherwise, there would be no faith on earth. There is a choice to make, for life or for death, for blessings or for curses. Can we look beyond the visible to see with our heart, to the inward and invisible? Can we look beyond this world where people kill themselves and commit affairs, trampling themselves and their roses? Can we look beyond what the world sees as 'matters of consequence,' that we have never actually known someone to come back from the dead and have never seen the entirety of God?

Did Christ return to his land after being bitten by the snake, and is his rose safe?

I know that he did, and I know that we are. I returned that day, and his body was gone. Even now, he is disappeared. There are some things that are humanly, inductively, and rationally impossible. It is scientifically impossible that Christ is dead because of the empty tomb, and theoretically impossible because he is God. It was also imperative for him to die because he was man. Conversely, to human rationality it is theoretically impossible that he die because he is God, but inductively impossible that he should rise again, being a man. The very fact that we are able to choose to believe in spite of the impossibility of the death of God and the impossibility of a man coming to life again are proof for our belief. Such an occurance cannot be manufactured by us, for it is something we cannot think. For us in this unique faith in Christ, "Certum est, quia impossibile est" (Tertullian). It is certain because it is impossible. It must have been from God. As Christ himself said, "What is impossible with men is possible with God" (Luke 18:27).

Were we unable to believe, as an individual, that Christ died and rose again, we would not be able to enter the Kingdom of God. Because, however, we are able to believe that the snake is not the victor, we are certain of the victory of our little Prince. We believe in the eternal victory of our God - the past is redeemed in creation, the present particulars in the life of Christ, and the future sealed in his glorious return. The expectancy of our faith is victory over the future because it is an eternal victory, finding its proof not primarily in the scientific evidences of man but in the eternal love of our Father God. Through the our faith, the expectation that there is an eternal victory for the saints in Christ, we are able to conquer the future and, in doing so, conquer the particularities of ourselves. It is only through this conquering of ourselves and the future, Kierkegaard writes, that we are able to fully live the present.

Today, do you believe that the rose is safe? Do you believe that it is only through faith in Christ that we are able to overcome the snake's death-bite, that the only optimism in this world that makes sense is faith in Christ?

If this is what we believe, then we must come to care for the Rose as the Little Prince does. It is incredibly difficult, because, "Oh yes, she was quite vain!" In having difficulty loving the saints, though, we are only coming to see the grace that was required for Him to first love us. We, as his rose, as his body, torment him with our "rather touchy vanity." We think we are ready to fight off the roaming Lion with our four little thorns, but in truth we couldn't do a thing against him. Besides, it's the Lamb we must be most concerned about, for it is He who "can destroy both the soul and the body in hell." Hallelujah, for it is this same Lamb who has redeemed our life from the pit and who has died to free us from His own wrath!

Let us believe, then, in that truth which is invisible. Let us have full confidence, because of the disappeared Christ, that our Little Prince has returned to prepare a place for his Rose, His Body, His Saints. Because we, a rose of such little consequence, have become precious to the Prince, let us love His Rose as He loves us, even though we realize its inherently inconsequential nature.

Indeed, it is because He has chosen us that we have such great value. Not only does He love the world enough to die for humanity, but,

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will" (Eph 1:3-5).

Let us take joy in such a great salvation, in such a great love, and let us make every effort to draw others to our Great Little Prince, who has died for the sins of the world and is patient, "not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9).

We are His people, the Rose of His garden. To the angels, to the animals, and to the world, He has said, 

"You're lovely, but you're empty... One couldn't die for you. Of course, an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than all of you together, since she's the one I've watered. Since she's the one I put under glass. Since she's the one I sheltered behind a screen. Since she's the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except the two or three for butterflies). Since she's the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she's my rose."

Oh, how He longs for us to see her how He sees her, to love her as He loves her, to see ourselves as He sees us, to love ourselves because He loves us, to see the world as He sees it, to love the world because He longs for them to be His rose! Let us go forth today in longing love for the world, in tender nurture for the church, and in glorious joyful victory in our Little Prince, who has shattered the chains of death and has crushed the head of the Serpent.