“I can laugh When things ain't funny A haha-happy-go-lucky me” Paul Evans 1960

He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh them to scorn; the Lord shall have them in derision Psalm 2:4 Sung in Handel’s Messiah Part 2 (Tenor Recitative)

At the website of the famous Vatican commentator (Vaticanista), Sandro Magister there was a letter from a distinguished scholar of the Fathers of the Church, Leonardo Lugaresi, concerning the papal audience with comedians. Here it is edited:

Dear Magister,

Your latest article, dedicated to "Francis superstar on the theater of the world", urges me to make a marginal consideration - but perhaps of some use to delve deeper into the problem you highlighted - …To comedians, the Pope said: “Can we laugh at God too? Of course, and this is not blasphemy, we can laugh, as we play and joke with the people we love. […] It can be done but without offending the religious feelings of believers, especially the poor." What to think of this statement, certainly well-intentioned, which will undoubtedly have received the enthusiastic approval of all the audiences who listened to it? I would say it is true: the world can laugh at God, but in a much deeper, more demanding and dramatic sense than Francis' captivating joke suggests.

The "homo religiosus" (the religious man/woman) trembles in horror at the mere idea that we can laugh at God: he has always known that God is first and foremost terrible and when he manifests himself in all his majesty for man the only alternative to terror is awe, a sentiment also echoed by the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, when he writes: “It is terrible to fall into the hands of the living God!” (10:31). It is therefore not God that man can laugh at, but rather himself; it is God, on the contrary, who can laugh at man and his awkward misery…. Even in the philosophical tradition, man can laugh at himself, but not at God, learning to look at himself with irony, especially when he takes himself too seriously in playing his part on the stage of the Theater of the World. He therefore laughs at the powerful, as the God of the Bible does from above: “The kings of the earth rise up and the princes conspire together. […] Those who inhabit the heavens laugh at it, the Lord mocks them from above” (Psalm 2:2-4). But he also laughs at the philosopher himself, who falls into the well because he is looking at the stars, …Or the beautiful woman who, no longer young, and no longer beautiful, paints herself all over to look like one young and beautiful again and for this reason becomes, …ridiculous and pathetic at the same time.

Power, wisdom and beauty, as idols, are not spared from the laughter of man, even of the religious man, who for his part can even treat with irony the "professionals of the sacred" in their way of relating to the divine, … But not at all about God, you can't joke with Him and about Him. I therefore dare not think of how many religious men of our time would react hearing the Pope say that we can laugh at God "as we play and joke with the people we love", and to add that the only limit is to do so "but without offending the religious feelings of believers, especially the poor;." which, if you think about it, from a religious point of view makes the matter much worse, because it shows a respect for man which is instead denied to God. ... It is true, however, that with Christ everything changes. The incarnation, passion and death of the Son is a culturally shocking event that we will never finish breaking down, because in it God puts himself in the position of being mocked by men.

The question “can we laugh at God?” from that moment, in fact, receives an affirmative response, which however, in the first and insurmountable instance, has not the humorous and light-hearted value typical of the friendly or family banter to which the pope seems to refer to, but rather the dramatic sense of divine "kénosis" (self –emptying) (Philippians 2 :7),in the acutely inappropriate form of God's ability to laugh, that is, his exposure to ridicule by men. You can laugh at God, in the sense that men were given the opportunity to do so, and actually did: The first time in a courtyard of Jerusalem, when "the governor's soldiers led Jesus into the praetorium and gathered the whole force around him. They stripped him, made him wear a scarlet cloak, plaited a crown of thorns, placed it on his head and placed a reed in his right hand. Then, kneeling before him, they mocked him: 'Hail, King of the Jews!'. Spitting on him, they took the reed from his hand and struck him on the head” (Matthew 27, 27-30). You cannot reflect enough on the fact that in the Christian story of the passion and death of Jesus his sacrifice is carried out within the form of two fundamental institutions of human culture, the trial and the spectacle, however operating in them a paradoxical reversal of roles which profoundly changes the meaning. (The trial becomes spectacle and the spectacle of the Cross become the trial)

The death of Christ, in fact, is the outcome of a criminal trial, in which, however, it is the accused and not the judge who proclaims the truth. The role of accused, and then of condemned although (or because) innocent, is assumed by the Son of God, that is, precisely by the one who is the true judge of human history. That trial and that death, however, are also a show, a theatrical representation, tragic in itself, but, as we have seen, ready to descend to the comic register of a military farce of the type in which Pilate's (or Herod's) soldiers , according to Luke) subjected Jesus. Here, again, God leaves his rightful place, that of the divine spectator who contemplates the "theatrum mundi" (theater of the world) from above, and takes on the role of actor. Actor in a drama of salvation in which the freedom of God and the freedom of man meet and struggle… which is absolutely serious, but also always susceptible to being turned into "ludus ”, that is, entertainment, in the eyes of an audience of disengaged spectators, who watch it as if on television, munching popcorn. In this sense, there is a lightning-fast note from Luke regarding the crucifixion, which has always impressed me: "The people stood and watched" (23:35).

Christ is therefore the "true antagonist", as Clement of Alexandria calls him, who comes into the world to perform before men the only performance that can save them, but the tremendous seriousness of his sacrifice is not at all preserved by comic contamination. He depends on the spectators, he depends on the world. As Augustine splendidly says, “if it is irreligion that is watching, he is a great joke; if it is faith that is watching, a great mystery." Like the comedian, by coming into the world, the Son of God subjects himself to the possibility of ridicule, he also takes into account being treated like the Jesus in James Ensor's painting, "The Entry of Christ into Brussels,” which seems to me to be the most brilliant pictorial representation of Christianity in the contemporary world….. The man who testifies to his Christian faith among the men of today "may really have the impression of being a clown", a ridiculous relic of the past, but he must run this risk to the end. (emphasis added) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/James_Ensor_%281888-1889%29_-_Intrede_van_Christus_in_Brussel.jpg

Today, more than ever, being Christian therefore also means accepting the "ridiculous part" that the world assigns to us, but challenging it about this. So yes, the world can "laugh at God" and also at us who, behind Him, subject ourselves to its mockery; but precisely for this reason the reality, from the Christian point of view, cannot be resolved by a pleasant praise of humor, which in the West pleases everyone and offends no one, or worse in the promotion of a "Buddy Christ" like that of "Catholicism Wow!” satirized in “Dogma”, a film from twenty-five years ago that perhaps has not lost its relevance. On the stage of the theater of the world, this is not the role that belongs to the Christian, whoever he is, whether the Pope or the least of the lay faithful. https://www.diakonos.be/ridere-di-dio-quello-che-il-papa-non-ha-detto-nel-suo-incontro-con-i-comici/ (END)

Finally here is an interesting entry from St Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae (Summary of Theology) especially the remark in Objection 3 to the question “whether there be an excess of play?” The remark is: …it is related in the Lives of the Fathers (ii. 16; viii. 63) that is was revealed to the Blessed Paphnutius that a certain jester would be with him in the life to come. (emphasis added) St Thomas replies: …Wherefore the occupation of play-actors, the object of which is to cheer the heart of man, is not unlawful in itself; nor are they in a state of sin provided that their playing be moderated, namely that they use no unlawful words or deeds in order to amuse,… if a man spends too much on such persons, or maintains those comedians who practice unlawful mirth, he sins as encouraging them in their sin. ST, II-II, question 168, article 3.

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