The Legend of the Wandering Jew

When Christ struggled up the hill of Golgotha, there was a Jew named Ahasuerus (known in Filipino legend as Samuel Belibet) who would not let him rest, but would only mock the suffering Jesus, saying, “Why do you loiter? Go faster, Jesus, go faster.” Jesus turned to him and said, “I am going, but you shall wait until I return.” And so it was that Ahasuerus was condemned to roam the earth in despair, awaiting Christ’s return, wandering from place to place. When asked when he arrived, he inevitably answers, “Yesterday.” When asked when he will leave, he always replies, “Tomorrow.”

“We look before and after, and pine for what is not,” Shelley wrote. Before him, St. Augustine already declared, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” We are creatures desperately seeking for meaning and mystery. Our hearts are always already beyond—that is our nature. And this yearning has a cosmic scope: Does the universe have a purpose? Despite earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and ten-kilometer diameter meteorites slamming into the Yucatan Peninsula, is the universe kind and full of grace? Is there proof beyond reasonable doubt that there is a beyond that transcends the vagaries of fate and all human delusions?