"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
At the 50th Anniversary of C.S. Lewis’ death, he was honoured in Westminster Abbey’s “Poet’s Corner”. To mark the anniversary and this honour, there was a C.S. Lewis Symposium with lectures given by noted C.S. Lewis experts. Here are the videos of those presentations:
Oh…my…goodness…
I have always enjoyed the song “Let all mortal flesh”. My love of this song deepened as I dug into Church History and discovered these words were part of the ancient Liturgy of St. James. Although most people associate this song with Christ’s coming at Christmas, both the lyrics and this early liturgical setting point, not to Christ’s coming two thousand years ago, but to His coming to us on the altar at every Mass.
Despite having always loved the song, this weekend my love was taken to new depths. On Saturday I heard a new version of this song by Sarah Kroger on The Catholic Playlist Show. Since then, I have played little else . The orchestration and Sarah’s phenomenal voice, as clear as glass, have such a transcendent quality…wow….just…..wow.
Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly-minded,
For with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
Our full homage to demand.
King of kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth He stood,
Lord of lords, in human vesture,
In the body and the blood;
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heav’nly food.
Rank on rank the host of heaven
Spreads its vanguard on the way,
As the Light of light descendeth
From the realms of endless day,
That the pow’rs of hell may vanish
As the darkness clears away.
At His feet the six-winged seraph,
Cherubim with sleepless eye,
Veil their faces to the presence,
As with ceaseless voice they cry:
“Alleluia, Alleluia,
Alleluia, Lord Most High!”
Today in Mere Christianity, we begin Book III! This new book is entitled “Christian Behaviour”. In this chapter, in addition to learning about the qualities of my ideal woman(!), we discover what C.S. Lewis regarded as “the three parts of morality”. To illustrate these different parts, Jack uses the analogy of a convoy of ships.
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Episode 13: “The Three Parts of Morality” (Download)
In the New Year, Matt and I will be discussing the chapter in “Mere Christianity” on the subject of sexual morality. In that episode, I intend to speak briefly about masturbation. C.S. Lewis doesn’t explicitly address the subject of masturbation in that work, but he does in a letter he wrote to the young American named Keith Masson:
“For me the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back; sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides. And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman.
For the harem is always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no woman can rival. Among those shadowy brides he is always adored, always the perfect lover; no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity.
In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself. . . . After all, almost the main work of life is to come out of our selves, out of the little dark prison we are all born in. Masturbation is to be avoided as all things are to be avoided which retard this process. The danger is that of coming to love the prison.”
– Personal Letter From Lewis to Keith Masson (1956)
The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3
Sounds almost exactly like something Jason Evert or Matt Fradd would write today!
Well, this is rather lovely! Today I came across a website by Billy Kangas which includes poems by Deacon Nate Harburg concerning the Early Church Fathers. Each father gets a separate poem. For example, this is the one he wrote for St. Ignatius of Antioch:
If you’d like to read the rest, please just click on the image below:
“A single change in the habitual questions you ask yourself can and will profoundly change the quality of your life.”