"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
“Do not be ashamed to enter again into the Church. Be ashamed when you sin. Do not be ashamed when you repent. Pay attention to what the devil did to you. These are two things: sin and repentance. Sin is a wound; repentance is a medicine. Just as there are for the body wounds and medicines, so for the soul are sins and repentance. However, sin has the shame and repentance possesses the courage.”
– St. John Chrysostom
I’ve just received the video from a talk I gave earlier this week at Theology Uncorked on Our Lady. The video is available on Vimeo:
…and it’s also available on YouTube:
If you would like an audio version, I recorded an MP3 of this talk last year when I spoke in Los Angeles.
I haven’t shared a Mark Schultz song in a while…
Well, I know this life is filled with sorrow
And there are days when the pain just lasts and lasts
But I know there will come a day
When all our tears are washed away with a break in the clouds
His glory coming down and in that moment
Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess
That God is love and love has come for us all
Every heart set free, every one will see
That God is love and love has come for us all
For anybody who has ever lost a loved one
And you feel like you had to let go too soon
I know it hurts to say goodbye
But don’t you know it’s just a matter of time till the tears are gonna end
You’ll see them once again and in that moment
Oh, and on that day we will stand amazed
At our Savior, God and King
Just to see the face of amazing grace
As our hearts rise up and sing
Glory, glory, hallelujah
Thank You for the cross
Singing glory, glory, hallelujah
Christ has paid the cost
So recently Bishop Barron visited Google to speak on “Religion and the Opening Up of the Mind”…
Summary
Our protagonist walks upstream on the hard water for an hour, but only advances “a couple of hundred yards”. However, the foam forces him to leave the water and walk on the great flat stones on the banks.
After hearing “an immense yet lovely noise vibrated through the forest” for several hours, he finally arrives at a massive waterfall which he says “was like giant’s laughter: like the revelry of a whole college of giants together laughing, dancing, singing, roaring at their high works”. Lewis comments that his senses “were now receiving impressions which would normally exceed their capacity. On earth, such a waterfall could not have been perceived at all as a whole; it was too big”
He then notices that “a hawthorn bush not twenty yards away seemed to be behaving oddly”. It turns out to be his “bowler-hatted companion” he met on the bus whom the Big Ghost had called Ikey, who wanted to setup a shop in The Grey Town.
The Intelligent Ghost was trying to cross the ground in a stealthy fashion without being seen, but making slow progress through the heavenly environment. He makes his way to a tree when the wind blows, dislodging golden apples which land both around and on him!
Upon recovery, The Intelligent Ghost attempts to fill his pockets with the apples. However, “his ambitions were gradually forced down” from multiple, large apples to the single, smallest apple he could find. Even though he is bent double, “inch by inch, still availing himself of every scrap of cover, he set out on his via dolorosa to the bus, carrying his torture”.
A great voice suddenly says “Fool. Put it down”. Jack realizes that that the waterfall itself was speaking, that it “was also a bright angel who stood, like one crucified, against the rocks and poured himself perpetually down towards the forest with loud joy”. The giant tells The Intelligent Ghost to put the apple done since “There is not room for it in Hell”. Instead, he invites him to remain in Heaven and “learn to eat such apples” and tells him that “the very leaves and the blades of grass in the wood will delight to teach you.”
The ghost either doesn’t hear the angel, or chosoes to ignore him and continues his journey back to the bus…
Questions
Q1. Why do you think Lewis’ senses are increasing in capacity?
Q2. What is The Intelligent Ghost so afraid of?
Q3. What is The Intelligent Ghost trying to do? What problems does he have?
Q4. How can the waterfall also be an angel?
Q5. What does the angel tell The Intelligent Ghost to do instead?
Some stand-up from Tim Hawkins…
Summary
Two lions arrive, “playing some solemn romp”. Feeling nervous, Jack leaves. By the river, he finds one of the Bright People, a man named Dick, talking to the Episcopal Ghost Lewis had met earlier.
Dick and the Episcopal Ghost were friends on earth. The ghost reminisces about the conversations they used to have. He comments that his friend “became rather narrow-minded towards the end”, believing in a literal Heaven and Hell, but he assumes that he’s now “broadened out again”. In response to this, Dick asks the ghost if he knows where he thinks he’s been living. The ghost is scandalized when Dick refers to the Grey Town as “Hell” (but if he chooses to never go back, he may call it “Purgatory”). The Episcopal Ghost asks why he was sent to the Town and is told that it was because he was an apostate.
The ghost indignantly asks “Do you really think people are penalised for their honest opinions? Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that those opinions were mistaken.” He declares that “They were not only honest [opinions] but heroic. I asserted them fearlessly. When the doctrine of the Resurrection ceased to commend itself to the critical faculties which God had given me, I openly rejected it. I preached my famous sermon. I defied the whole chapter. I took every risk.” Dick points out that nothing was risked and the inevitable happened: “popularity, sales for your books, invitations, and finally a bishopric”.
Len explains their “opinions were not honestly come by”. They adopted a certain current of ideas because they “seemed modern and successful”. He asks his ghostly friend “When, in our whole lives, did we honestly face, in solitude, the one question on which all turned: whether after all the Supernatural might not in fact occur? When did we put up one moment’s real resistance to the loss of our faith?” He says that they were “playing with loaded dice… errors which are sincere in that sense are not innocent.”
The Bright One tells him “You have seen Hell: you are in sight of Heaven. Will you, even now, repent and believe?” The ghost affirms that he already believes, saying his “religion is a very real and a very precious thing”.
Dick invites him to the mountains, but the ghost says he will only do so with some assurances: “a place where I shall find a wider sphere of usefulness-and scope for the talents that God has given me – and an atmosphere of free inquiry”. Dick promises him no such thing, “No sphere of usefulness: you are not needed there at all. No scope for your talents: only forgiveness for having perverted them. No atmosphere of inquiry, for I will bring you to the land not of questions but of answers, and you shall see the face of God.”
The ghost protests that “there is something stifling about the idea of finality… what is more soul-destroying than stagnation?” The Spirit responds “There was a time when you asked questions because you wanted answers, and were glad when you had found them… Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth. What you now call the free play of inquiry has neither more nor less to do with the ends for which intelligence was given you than masturbation has to do with marriage.” Regarding this statement as obscene, the ghost responds saying “that question-and-answer conception of thought only applies to matters of fact. Religious and speculative questions are surely on a different level.”
Dick asks the ghost if he even believes that God exists, to which the ghost asks “What does Existence mean?”
Dick then asks if he still even desires happiness, but while the ghost is dispensing his own wisdom on the subject, he suddenly remembers that he’s later presenting a paper at the Grey Town’s Theological Society, asking what Jesus’ opinions would have been if he hadn’t been tragically killed at such a young age. It is at this point the Spirit leaves him and the ghost returns to the bus humming a hymn to himself.
Lewis tries walking on the river’s hard water and falls flat on his face due to the water’s motion.
Questions
Q1. What do you think is the significance of the lions?
Q2. What do we learn about the background of the ghost and the spirit in this chapter?
Q3. Why is the ghost’s criticism of the spirit’s “narrow” opinions ironic?
Q4. What is the ghost’s sin?
Q5. How do the ghost and the spirit each regard the ghost’s beliefs?
Q6. What are the ghost’s demands for Heaven?
Q7. What would you regard as the ghost’s essential resistance to the spirit and to Heaven?
Q8. Why do you think the chapter ends in the way it does?