Time is running out to save stolen Napoleonic jewelry

The Louvre museum in Paris was closed again yesterday after four thieves broke into a gallery containing the French Crown Jewels on Sunday morning, stealing eight pieces of Napoleonic jewelry. Disguised as museum workers, they rode a truck-mounted basket lift up the famed museum’s exterior and forcibly entered through a window thirty minutes after the Louve had opened for the day. After smashing display cases, they fled the scene on motorbikes.

One of the stolen pieces was an emerald necklace containing 1,138 diamonds gifted by Napoleon to his second wife. According to art detective Arthur Brand, the authorities have a week before the thieves will likely melt the silver and gold down and dismantle the diamonds, causing the priceless items to “disappear forever.”

So far, no suspects have been identified publicly. A manhunt for them is continuing at this writing.

I remember standing in line some years ago to see the British crown jewels at the Tower of London. I finally made it into the Jewel House and onto a moving walkway that carried me past St. Edward’s Crown (worn when the monarch is crowned), the Imperial State Crown (worn by the monarch at the end of the coronation), and a variety of other regalia. I was permitted only a momentary look at them through bombproof glass while surrounded by armed guards.

I have never felt more like a commoner and less like royalty.

If life has you feeling the same way today, I have some very good news.

“That all men are created equal”

In John 11, Lazarus’s sisters sent word to him regarding their sick brother: “Lord, he whom you love is ill” (v. 3). But as John makes clear, “Jesus loved Martha and her sister” as well (v. 5).

Here’s what’s amazing: he loves you and me as much as he loved them, because God “is” love (1 John 4:8). In fact, as St. Augustine noted, he loves each of us as if there were only one of us.

This astounding fact underlies our nation’s democratic republic. As we noted yesterday, historian Elaine Pagels has shown that the founders’ belief that “all men are created equal” was virtually unprecedented in human history. Their belief in human equality drove their Declaration of Independence and its commitment to build a nation that would secure our “inalienable rights” to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Here’s the problem: the equality of humans is, in the Declaration’s view, a “self-evident” right. And what is evident to you may not be evident to me.

If the “pursuit of happiness” means that a mother chooses an elective abortion, what about the “life” of the unborn child? If someone transitions their gender, marries someone of the same sex, or seeks euthanasia, what about the religious “liberty” of those who disagree?

How are we to manage, much less “secure,” our equality when our post-truth culture no longer embraces the consensual morality presumed by the Founders?

“That they are endowed by their Creator”

The right way to interpret the fact that we are “equal” is to focus on the word in the Declaration preceding it: “created.” Not by evolutionary chance or chaotic coincidence: as Thomas Jefferson wrote, we are “created” by our “Creator.” Note the present tense: he wrote not that we “were created” (at the beginning of history) but we “are created” still today.

What does the Creator say about his creation?

• He creates us male and female (Genesis 1:27).
• He creates us to need a “helper” of the opposite sex with whom we are to be married in a lifelong covenant (Genesis 2:18, 24; Matthew 19:4–6).
• He creates us at the moment of our conception (Psalm 139:13–16), endowing us with the sanctity of life until natural death (Job 14:5).

As Jefferson added, we are created with “inalienable” rights to:

• “Life,” which God intends to be physical, relational, spiritual, and eternal (cf. Luke 2:52; John 10:10).
• “Liberty,” which God intends to include freedom from sin and death through salvation in Christ (Galatians 5:1; John 8:36).
• “And the pursuit of happiness,” which God intends to lead to the blessedness that transcends circumstances (Jeremiah 17:7; Luke 11:28).

All of this is what we were designed and intended by God to experience. But none of it is possible apart from the transforming work of Christ in our hearts and lives.

Why is this?

“This is the summit of pure love”

The good news is also the bad news: part of being created in God’s image is being endowed with the freedom our democratic republic is intended to defend.

Rejecting our racial equality led to four million enslaved people in the US, around 700,000 deaths in the Civil War, and the plague of systemic racism today. Rejecting our equality at conception has led to more than sixty-three million deaths in the womb. Rejecting our equality in governance has led to nearly two billion people oppressed under Communism.

But when Jesus is our Lord, his Spirit manifests the “fruit” of his unconditional love in our hearts and we love all people as he loves us (Galatians 5:22). Such love turned the early church into the mightiest spiritual movement the world had ever seen, breaking down barriers of race, gender, culture, and religion (cf. Acts 10:34). Such love so impressed the pagans that, according to the second-century apologist Tertullian, they marveled: “See how they love one another.”

Such love “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6) then, and does so still today.

To this end, let’s consider an observation from St. Paul of the Cross, the Italian preacher and theologian who died 250 years ago last Sunday. I invite you to read his reflection slowly:

Love is a unifying virtue which takes upon itself the torments of its beloved Lord. It is a fire reaching through to the inmost soul. It transforms the lover into the one loved. More deeply, love intermingles with grief, and grief with love, and a certain blending of love and grief occurs. They become so united that we can no longer distinguish love from grief nor grief from love. Thus the loving heart rejoices in its sorrow and exults in its grieving love.

Therefore, be constant in practicing every virtue, and especially in imitating the patience of our dear Jesus, for this is the summit of pure love.

The finale of the marvelous musical Les Misérables claims, “To love another person is to see the face of God.” The Italian St. Paul would amend this famous line to say,

To love another person is to show the face of God.

Who will see your Father’s face in yours today?

Quote for the day:

“We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become.” —St. Clare of Assisi

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