Behold the Great Martyr

I first read Les Misérables by Victor many years ago when I was in middle school. I still remember the powerful feelings of reverence and profound awe I felt as I finished the book on New Year’s Day in 1998. I was in my basement bedroom, at my desk, and as I read those last chapters about Jean Valjean’s final moments, I was deeply moved by the life of this man who never lived. I would later listen to the book (on cassette tape) in high school, but since then I had never read it again except in small parts. A few months ago, I decided it was time to listen to the book again, and this time I did it in the original French. Yesterday I finished it, and as I sat listening to the account of Jean Valjean’s suffering at being separated from Cosette and then finally reunited with her and Marius as he lay dying, I felt those same emotions I had many years ago. He was a sinner turned saint who was a powerful type of the Savior by the way he loved and sacrificed for others. I was left feeling a desire to someday be as good as this man was, though I know I am a very long way from that.  

                As I pondered the final part of the novel, I realized that Jean Valjean is indeed a type of Christ in the way he gave up everything for the happiness of Marius and Cosette. His greatest joy was to be with Cosette, the daughter he had taken in and saved from a wretched life. Though he had all the money he could ever want, he hardly used it and instead lived a simple life caring for this young girl he loved like his own. When he discovered that she had fallen in love with Marius, he was met with great anguish as he thought of losing his Cosette to another. But ultimately he risked his life to save Marius’s, knowing that doing so would lead to his own misery. He went to the barricade and rescued the unconscious Marius before he died, carrying him through the sewers to save his life and nearly dying himself as he desperately tried to find a way out. That is surely a symbol of what Christ has done for us, carrying us to our salvation when we hardly even realize it. What He passed through we can hardly imagine. Marius, until the end, had no idea what this man had done for him in sacrificing everything to save his life. We know very little of what Christ actually suffered and gave up for each of us through His great atoning sacrifice and death on the cross, and we easily forget what small part we do know. Valjean delivered Marius anonymously to his grandfather and never told anyone of his deed. After Cosette and Marius married, Jean Valjean revealed to Marius part of the story of his past life as a convict (humbly omitting any detail about the great good he had done in his life) which caused Marius to reject him and eventually keep him from seeing Cosette at all. Gradually, the man who had saved the lives of both Cosette and Marius was rejected by them, leading Valjean to plummet into a lonely despair. Ultimately this led to his death because he was separated from Cosette whom he had loved with all his heart.

                When Marius learned the truth, he declared to Cosette, “Cosette, he went to the barricade to save me. As it is a necessity with him to be an angel, he saved others also; he saved Javert. He rescued me from that gulf to give me to you. He carried me on his back through that frightful sewer. Ah! I am a monster of ingratitude. Cosette, after having been your providence, he became mine. Just imagine, there was a terrible quagmire enough to drown one a hundred times over, to drown one in mire. Cosette! he made me traverse it. I was unconscious; I saw nothing, I heard nothing, I could know nothing of my own adventure.… I will pass the rest of my life in venerating him.” They raced to find Valjean, and as they entered his room they found him dying. He said to Cosette: “It is thou! thou art here! Thou dost pardon me then!” And to Marius he said as well, “And you also, you pardon me!” When Marius finally found words he said, “Cosette, do you hear? he has come to that! he asks my forgiveness! And do you know what he has done for me, Cosette? He has saved my life. He has done more—he has given you to me. And after having saved me, and after having given you to me, Cosette, what has he done with himself? He has sacrificed himself. Behold the man. And he says to me the ingrate, to me the forgetful, to me the pitiless, to me the guilty one: Thanks! Cosette, my whole life passed at the feet of this man would be too little. That barricade, that sewer, that furnace, that cesspool,—all that he traversed for me, for thee, Cosette! He carried me away through all the deaths which he put aside before me, and accepted for himself. Every courage, every virtue, every heroism, every sanctity he possesses! Cosette, that man is an angel!”

                We are perhaps all like Marius in a way—we are the ingrate and the forgetful when it comes to our relationship with the Savior. He is the one who figuratively carried us through the quagmire, offering His life in exchange for ours. And just as Marius had little sense of what Valjean had done for him, so too we know little of the price He actually paid for us: “Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink” (Doctrine and Covenants 19:18). The words of Marius—“my whole life passed at the feet of this man would be too little”—remind us of what King Benjamin taught, “I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants” (Mosiah 2:21). The final scenes of Les Misérables remind us of the incomprehensible sacrifice of God’s Only Begotten Son and invite us to strive more diligently to remember and love Him. How grateful I am for this powerful story by Victor Hugo that invites us to ponder more deeply what Jesus Christ has done for each of us. The final act of Jean Valjean was described this way: “He walked with a firm step to the wall, thrusting aside Marius and the doctor who tried to help him, detached from the wall a little copper crucifix which was suspended there, and returned to his seat with all the freedom of movement of perfect health, and said in a loud voice, as he laid the crucifix on the table: ‘Behold the great martyr.’”