One of the most well-known characters of the French author Victor Hugo is undoubtedly the Hunchback of Notre Dame—a person born disfigured who in the novel experiences a tragic end, unlike the Disney version in which he ends up living happily ever after.
You might say: “But what does this have to do with the Easter Season that we have just begun?” Indeed, it does! The Archdeacon Monsignor Claude Frollo finds this infant on the Second Sunday of Easter, named after the introductory antiphon of the Mass (in the same way that Gaudete Sunday in Advent and Laetare Sunday in Lent take their name):
Like newborn infants, you must long for the pure, spiritual milk, that in him you may grow to salvation, alleluia.
Here, the Liturgy uses an old translation of this verse from St Peter’s Second Epistle (2:2), taken from St Jerome’s Vulgate. The antiphon in Latin reads as follows:
Quasi modo géniti infántes, rationábile, sine dolo lac concupíscite, ut in eo crescátis in salútem, allelúia.
It was precisely the first two words of the antiphon that Frollo used to name the infant when he baptised him on the last day of the Easter Octave: Quasimodo. In the novel, it seems that the author is trying to enter into the mind of the archdeacon to discover what his intention was when he gave this infant a most peculiar name: maybe because he wanted to mark the day in which the infant was found, or to stress how imperfect and defective this infant was. Through the act of Baptism—perhaps without realising—the Archdeacon declares the human dignity of this deformed individual.
Maybe we all have a little of Quasimodo in us—imperfect and defective—but deep within us lies our humanity and the image of God that gives us dignity. Therefore, the Good News of Easter, which is renewed for us again on the Second Sunday of Easter, speaks precisely about how our imperfections can reach their fulfilment and perfection if we long and search for the pure milk of grace that the Church gives us in the Sacraments and in the Word. Only in this way can we arrive at declaring unequivocally with Thomas: “My Lord and my God!” (Jn 20:28).