God's Cinderella

Abstract

Chesterton reflecting on the grotesque in nature wrote, “I knew there can be laughterOn the secret face of God.”But certain gestures in God’s providence even more than in His creation hint at whatever in the divine intellect is the prototype of a sense of humour in ours.It seems, for instance, something like a heavenly jest that the canonisation of Margaret of Hungary should have been reserved for an age that passionately disapproves of almost everything she exemplifies. To begin with, was she not doomed by her parents, even before her birth, to a life of inhuman self-repression?In 1241 Bela IV of Hungary and his queen had been hunted from one refuge to another by a Tartar invasion—that nightmare of eastern Europe in the 13th century. Tracked to their last resort, an island fortress in the Adriatic, they awaited inevitable capture and such gruesome death as might suit the horrid humour of their pursuers. At the queen’s suggestion they promised to consecrate their unborn child to God if He should save their kingdom and lives. Thereupon the Tartars, their attention suddenly distracted by news recalling them to their own country, turned their backs on the prey within their reach and departed.Margaret of Hungary belongs to the category of born saints. For generations God had been preparing her as a willing victim for her country. Sanctity was in her blood. Hungary’s first three kings, her ancestors, had been St. Stephen, St. Emeric and St. Ladislas I.