Are you enamoured by my cousins, Eeyore, that loveable donkey from the tales of Winnie the Pooh or is your style more a moviegoer’s favourite, tough guy, Donkey, Shrek’s talkative sidekick? Do you sometimes find yourself humming that delightful Donkey Serenade, keeping company with a mule? Such light hearted fun; but let’s put aside talk of my fictitious cousins. Since truth is often stranger than fiction, let me tell you a little about myself, my humble self whom Chesterton once described in his humourous little poem as one:
With monstrous head and sickening cry,
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
Of all four-footed things.
But let me back track a little. About thirty three years ago, as legend has it, a humble little burro was chosen to carry pregnant Mary to Bethlehem to give birth to her Child. Did this not foreshadow the day I would be chosen to carry her Son into Jerusalem? I will never forget that day! How could I forget our humble God enthroned upon my back? I carried him that day, cautiously weaving through the cheering crowds, when all at once ‘There was a shout about my ears, and palms before my feet.’
His mission almost finished, I heard him warn his disciples that He would soon be put to death. Put to death, how could that be? Surely, I had gotten it all wrong!
I’m just a donkey, just the ‘devil’s walking-parody on all four footed things.’ Perhaps that’s all you think I am. However, when a distant rumble, ‘Crucify him’, pierced my ears, I stood and shuddered. In the distance I saw a cross upon a hill and wished I could have carried it for him.
No ludicrous buffoon am I. No donkey ever was. You see, because I carried the King, donkeys, generations after me, bear a cross upon their backs. May you, my friend, I beg you, think twice before you call someone an ass – for she or he, too, bears the divine.
Guest blogger Sr. Magdalena Vogt, Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood
The Donkey
When fishes flew and forests walked,
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood,
Then surely I was born.
With monstrous head and sickening cry,
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
Of all four-footed things.
The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient, crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.
Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.
C. K. Chesterton