The Impact Of Grace

Dear St Andrew’s,

I have just finished Les Misérables—not read it, but listened to it. All 68 hours of it! You may not have read the novel, but I’m sure many of you have seen the musical on stage or at the movies.

Written by Victor Hugo and published in 1862, the novel is set in France in the early nineteenth century. It follows Jean Valjean, imprisoned for stealing bread and then kept in the galleys for years, as he tries to build a new life. His relentless pursuer, the police inspector Javert, believes a criminal can never change. Around them Hugo weaves the stories of Fantine and her daughter Cosette, poverty and revolution, love and sacrifice.

The book is enormous. It could probably be half the length if Hugo had left out the detailed description of the Battle of Waterloo, the history of Parisian sewers and the daily life of French convents. But the main story is riveting—which helps explain why Les Mis is the best musical ever, in my humble opinion J.

For all its thousand-plus pages, the decisive moment comes about a hundred pages in. Released from prison, Valjean is bitter and suspicious. When the Bishop of Digne takes him in, Valjean repays his kindness by stealing the church’s precious silver. The police catch him and bring him back. The bishop could send him back to the galleys. Instead, he tells the police that the silver was a gift, and gives Valjean the pieces he had left behind. Then he says: “I have bought your soul to save it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.”

Valjean is undone. The bishop’s mercy is so unexpected that he can hardly take it in. Hugo describes him as caught in an agonising struggle: would he yield to this goodness, or cling to the hatred prison had planted in him? The bishop’s forgiveness has unsettled everything. Valjean is no longer able to carry on as though it had never happened.

Then, almost without thinking, he steals a forty-sou piece from a young boy, Petit Gervais. When he realises what he has done, he tries to find the boy and return the money, but cannot. The shame overwhelms him. For the first time in decades, he weeps. Hugo says he saw his life and his soul clearly: the wrong he had done, and the mercy he had received. The bishop’s words would not leave him.

We can domesticate grace. We rightly sing about how amazing it is, but Hugo shows how shocking—even almost violent—it can be as it breaks through our defences and shatters our self-sufficiency. It should shake us to our core, perhaps leave us sobbing as Valjean does. In this fictional scene, Hugo captures something true: grace brings our old life to an end before giving us new life.

Valjean recognises that he stands at a crossroads. He can turn back towards darkness, or let the bishop’s unexpected kindness lead him into the light. He chooses the light. The rest of the novel shows the consequences: a man once hardened by injustice becomes generous, courageous and self-sacrificing. Even when he has the chance to kill Javert, his relentless pursuer, he lets him go. Valjean’s act of mercy is life-giving to Javert in that moment, though Javert cannot make sense of it and the novel gives his story a tragic ending.

The bishop’s kindness points us towards the grace of Jesus. Jesus does not merely overlook our sin; at the cross he bears its cost to bring us back to God. Like Valjean, we are confronted with mercy we have not earned. We can cling to our old ways, or turn towards the light. And when Christ’s grace takes hold of us, it does more than forgive our past: it begins to change the way we live.

Blessings,

James