Sermon Library
“Bless Me Ultima - Introduction”
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
April 13, 2008
Service Theme: Easter IV - 2008
Easter IV – 2008 April 13, 2008
Bless Me, Ultima | Introduction
By Gregg R. Anderson
First published in 1972, Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima has become the best-selling Chicano novel of all time. For twenty-two years, despite being available only through a small publisher, the novel sold 300,000 copies by word of mouth and was awarded the Premio Quinto Sol for excellence in Chicano literature. In 1994, the novel was finally printed by a major publisher in a mass-market edition to rave reviews.
Anaya drew from his experiences growing up in New Mexico during World War II to create the story of a young boy who must reconcile the many conflicting influences of his family, religion, and community. In the two years spanned by the novel, Antonio (Tony) Marez, who is six years old when the story begins, comes of age when he learns to recognize evil in the world and to navigate family expectations and religious ambiguity.
Critic Ray Gonzalez, in a review in Nation, states that “Bless Me, Ultima is our Latin American classic because of its dual impact—it clearly defines Chicano culture as founded on family, tradition and the power of myth. Through Antonio and Ultima, we learn how to identify these values in the midst of the dark clouds of change and maturity.”
The summer before Antonio Juan Luna Marez turns seven years old, an old woman comes to live with his family in Guadalupe, New Mexico. This woman – called La Grande or Ultima – is a curandera, a traditional healer loved by some, feared by many and mysterious to all. With her knowledge of medicinal plants and adoration for the llano (open plains), she uses her magic to aid the community.
Because she served as his midwife, Ultima has a special connection to Antonio. As she teaches him, their bond deepens. Antonio witnesses several tragic events that profoundly shake his understanding of his history and his future. After the murder of Lupito, a soldier recently returned from World War II, Antonio begins to consider sin, death, and the afterlife in earnest.
Among the many conflicts Antonio seeks to resolve, the tension between his parents ranks foremost. A devout catholic, Maria Luna Marez is the daughter of farmers, and she desperately wants Antonio to become a priest. But his father, Gabriel Marez, is a former vaquero, or cowboy, whose wandering spirit has not settled despite marriage and six children. Gabriel’s deepest dream has not come true – to move his family to California’s vineyard country.
Antonio’s dreams often foreshadow the future and feature his three older brothers, just demobilized from World War II. These surreal dreams also reflect his existential questions: Why is there evil in the world? Why does God sometimes seem to punish the good? Where will I go after death? How can I know the truth? Believing that his first Communion will answer these questions, Antonio studies his catechism and proves an able scholar. Through his dreams and his challenges – including a mob beating from his schoolmates, the death of a close friend, and his brother’s waywardness – Ultima and her owl remain a watchful, benevolent presence.
Bless me, Ultima is a coming-of-age novel about a young boy’s loss of innocence and approach to maturity. But it also deals with tradition and education, faith and doubt, and good and evil. And if Antonio doesn’t find an absolute truth in his search, he still comes to believe with his father that “sometimes it takes a lifetime to acquire understanding, because in the end understanding simply means having sympathy for people. Throughout the mystery of Ultima, ultimately Antonio learns this great lesson of life called compassion.
In fact, Antonio’s mother longs for her son to become a priest, but too many questions persist for Antonio. But Ultima conveys an indigenous viewpoint to him that provides guidance when he loses confidence in parental viewpoints and the teachings of the Church. Ultima tells him the stories and legends of his ancestors, and he comes to understand how the history of his people stirs his blood. Through her, Antonio learns the “old ways” and develops a new relationship with nature. This relationship opens him to the contemplation of other ways of the spirit. Antonio learns there are powers in the world that differ from those honored by his older traditional faith. He begins to understand the world differently; he learns to overcome his fears, especially his fear of change. In the end, Antonio understands himself and the world around him better, and he learns to accept life and the many challenges that it presents.
As a child Antonio is surrounded by many different influences, both good and bad. He struggles to make choices and often pushed to do so way before his age and time. One of his influences is a very literalistic and simplistic doctrine of God which is submitted as truth and requires blind acceptance, but Antonio, at his very young age, has witnessed too much of life already to submit to such blind acceptance. He has many questions, many questions.
Early in the novel, after witnessing caballero justice and the death of another person, Antonio asks more questions than is typical for a young boy. “Why are you so thoughtful, Antonio?” Ultima asks. Antonio persists in more questions about life and death and Ultima again returns, “I am beginning to understand why your mother calls you the inquisitor.” “But I want to know, there are so many things I want to know,” Antonio insisted. “A Curandera cannot give away her secrets,” Ultima said, “but if a person really wants to know, then he will listen and see and be patient. Knowledge comes slowly.”
The novel is written through the eyes of Antonio. Adults are predominantly reading this book, but it is through the eyes of a child. This in and of itself is remarkable.
When I consider all the characters in this novel, I mostly identify with this 6 year old boy who is really a young man with his questions. His mother tells him that after his first communion he will hold God in his mouth, in his body, in his soul and will speak to God and God will answer. So Antonio asks, “Then will I have the knowledge of God?” “Yes,” his mother sighed. “I hope you will use your knowledge to carry out God’s will. You are a very bright boy, you understand so much, you can be a great leader, a priest. I do not want you to waste your life in dreams, like your father. You mush make something of yourself, you must serve the people. The people need good leaders, and the greatest leader is a priest.”
Later in the novel, Antonio thinks, “God knows everything. Man tries to know and his knowledge will kill us all. I want to know. I want to know the mysteries of God. I want to take God into my body and have Him answer my questions. Why was my friend killed? Why does evil go unpunished? Why does God allow evil to exist? I wondered if the knowledge I sought would destroy me. But it couldn’t, it was God’s knowledge. Do we ask too much when we ask to share God’s knowledge?”
Antonio’s mind continues, “God is supposed to know everything, all right, then why didn’t he make this earth without bad or evil things in it? Why didn’t he make us so that we would always be kind to each other? He could of made it so that it was always summer, and there’s always apples in the trees, and the water at the Blue Lake is always clean and warm for swimming – instead He made it so that some of us get polio when we go swimming and we’re crippled for life. Is that right?”
Antonio has more questions. I suspect this novel is written for adults through the eyes of a child because we all have the same child-like questions. But the child-like answers are not sufficient for Antonio, nor for us today. We identify with Antonio and want better answers, realistic answers.
Antonio pushes and pushes. Very few people become real for Antonio – except, except, Ultima. Throughout all of the problems, questions, injustice, hatred, ambiguity, hyprocrisy, and fear, Ultima remains a great human touchstone in Antonio’s life. Ultima knows her spirit through the mystery of earth and the mystery of God. Ultima embraces mystery. It is only when Antonio accepts the mysteries of life as mystery, as Ultima ultimately teaches, does he come to reconciliation with life, earth, and God. We identify with this now seven year old Antonio. To accept the reality that life has more questions than answers is to accept reality.
“At the time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them, and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18: 1-4) “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” (Mark 10: 15-16)
To question is to care. Much of the time questions are more honest than answers. When some tradition or authority professes to have more answers or the answer, it becomes suspect and less honest. Somehow, with the help of Ultima, Antonio, as a child, comes to this realization. Institutional religion may try to reinforce answers. Human spirituality, however, accepts the questions and lives within the questions and the mystery.
Throughout all the questions of life, Ultima remains grounded in her own faith, grounded within the ground, so to speak; respecting the earth as sustainor of life, a reverence for the simple and the sublime of all creation. Ultima is humble and meek, a living witness to compassion and understanding. She is more than catechism and communion from the church. She lives her catechism and is in complete communion with the earth and life. Ultimately, this is Ultima’s blessing. Amen.
Gregg R. Anderson
Aspen Chapel.org
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