A Remaining Christmas - Belloc

Since my Tolkien poem is a repeat, here's an original - an Hilaire Belloc essay from 1928.

 

A Remaining Christmas

The world is changing very fast, and neither exactly for the better or the worse, but for division.  Our civilization is splitting more and more into two camps, and what was common to the whole of it is becoming restricted to the Christian, and soon will be restricted to the Catholic half.

That is why I have called this article ‘A Remaining Christmas’.  People ask themselves how much remains of this observance and of the feast and its customs.  Now a concrete instance is more vivid and, in its own way, of more value than a general appreciation.  So I will set down here exactly what Christmas still is in a certain house in England, how it is observed, and all the domestic rites accompanying it in their detail and warmth.

This house stands low down upon clay near a little river.  It is quite cut off from the towns; no one has built near it.  Every cottage for a mile and more is old, with here and there a modern addition.  The church of the parish (which was lost of course three and a half centuries ago, under Elizabeth) is as old as the Crusades.  It is of the twelfth century.  The house of which I speak is in its oldest parts of the fourteenth century at least, and perhaps earlier, but there are modern additions.  One wing of it was built seventy years ago at the south end of the house, another at the north end, twenty years ago.  Yet the tradition is so strong that you would not tell from the outside, and hardly from the inside, which part is old and which part is new.  For, indeed, the old part itself grew up gradually, and the eleven gables of the house show up against the sky as though they were of one age, though in truth they are of every age down along all these 500 years and more.

The central upper room of the house is the chapel where Mass is said, and there one sees, uncovered by any wall of plaster or brick, the original structure of the house, which is of vast oaken beams, the main supports and transverses pieces half a yard across, morticed strongly into each other centuries, and smoothed roughly with the adze.  They are black with the years.  The roof soars up like a high-pitched tent, and is supported by a whole fan of lesser curved oaken beams.  There is but one window behind the altar.  Indeed, the whole house is thus in its structure of the local and native oak, and the brick walls of it are only curtains built in between the wooden framework of that most ancient habitation.

Beneath the chapel is the dining room, where there is a very large open hearth which can take huge logs and which is as old as anything in the place.  Here wood only is burnt, and that wood oak.

Down this room there runs a very long oaken table as dark with age almost as the beams above it, and this table has a history.  It came out of one of the Oxford colleges when the Puritans looted them 300 years ago.  It never got back to its original home.  It passed from one family to another until at last it was purchased (in his youth and upon his marriage) by the man who now owns this house.  Those who know about such things give its date as the beginning of the seventeenth century.  It was made, then, while Shakespeare was still living, and while the faith of England still hung in the balance; for one cannot say that England was certain to lose her Catholicism finally till the first quarter of that century was passed.  This table, roughly carved at the side, has been polished with wax since first it began to bear food for men, and now the surface shines like a slightly, very slightly, undulating sea in a calm.  At night the brass candlesticks (for this house is lit with candles, as the proper light for men’s eyes) are reflected in it as in still brown water; so are the vessels of glass and of silver and of pewter, and the flagons of wine.  No cloth is ever spread to hide this venerable splendour, nor, let us hope, ever will be.

At one end of the house, where the largest of its many outer doors (there are several such) swings massively upon huge forged iron hinges, there is a hall, not very wide; its length is as great as the width of the house and its height very great for its width.  Like the chapel, its roof soars up, steep and dark, so that from its floor (which is made of very great and heavy slabs of the local stone) one looks up to the roof-tree itself.  This hall has another great wide hearth in it for the burning of oak, and there is an oaken staircase, very wide and of an easy slope, with an oaken balustrade and leading up to an open gallery above, whence you look down upon the piece.  Above this gallery is a statue of Our Lady, carved in wood, uncoloured, and holding the Holy Child, and beneath her many shelves of books.  This room is panelled, as are so many of the rooms of the house, but it has older panels than any of the others, and the great door of it opens on to the high road.

Now the way Christmas is kept in this house is this:
On Christmas Eve a great quantity of holly and of laurel is brought in from the garden and from the farm (for this house has a farm of 100 acres attached to it and an oak wood of ten acres).  This greenery is put up all over the house in every room just before it becomes dark on that day.  Then there is brought into the hall a young pine tree, about twice the height of a man, to serve for a Christmas tree, and on this innumerable little candles are fixed, and presents for all the household and the guests and the children of the village.

It is at about five o’clock that these last come into the house, and at that hour in England, at that date, it has long been quite dark; so they come into a house all illuminated with the Christmas tree shining like a cluster of many stars seen through a glass.
The first thing done after the entry of these people from the village and their children (the children are in number about fifty—for this remote place keeps a good level through the generations and does not shrink or grow, but remains itself) is a common meal, where all eat and drink their fill in the offices.  Then the children come in to the Christmas tree.  They are each given a silver piece one by one, and one by one, their presents.  After that they dance in the hall and sing songs, which have been handed down to them for I do not know how long.  These songs are game-songs, and are sung to keep time with the various parts in each game, and the men and things and animals which you hear mentioned in these songs are all of that countryside.  Indeed, the tradition of Christmas here is what it should be everywhere, knit into the very stuff of the place; so that I fancy the little children, when they think of Bethlehem, see it in their minds as though it were in the winter depth of England, which is as it should be.

These games and songs continue for as long as they will, and then they file out past the great fire in the hearth to a small piece adjoining where a crib has been set up with images of Our Lady and St Joseph and the Holy Child, the Shepherds, and what I will call, by your leave, the Holy Animals.  And here, again, tradition is so strong in this house that these figures are never new-bought, but are as old as the oldest of the children of the family, now with children of their own.  On this account, the donkey has lost one of its plaster ears, and the old ox which used to be all brown is now piebald, and of the shepherds, one actually has no head.  But all that is lacking is imagined.  There hangs from the roof of the crib over the Holy Child a tinsel star grown rather obscure after all these years, and much too large for the place. Before this crib the children (some of them Catholic and some Protestant, for the village is mixed) sing their carols; the one they know best is the one which begins: ‘The First Good Joy that Mary had, it was the joy of One’.  There are a half a dozen or so of these carols which the children here sing; and mixed with their voices is the voice of the miller (for this house has  great windmill attached to it).  The miller is famous in these parts for his singing, having a very deep and loud voice which is his pride.  When these carols are over, all disperse, except those who are living in the house, but the older ones are not allowed to go without more good drink for their viaticum, a sustenance for Christian men.

Then the people of the house, when they have dined, and their guests, with the priest who is to say Mass for them, sit up till near midnight.  There is brought in a very large log of oak (you must be getting tired of oak by this time!  But everything here is oaken, for the house is of the Weald).  This log of oak is the Christmas or Yule log and the rule is that it must be too heavy for one man to lift; so two men come, bringing it in from outside, the master of the house and his servant.  They cast it down upon the fire in the great hearth of the dining-room, and the superstition is that, if it burns all night and is found still smouldering in the morning, the home will be prosperous for the coming year.

With that they all go up to the chapel and there the three night Masses are said, one after the other, and those of the household take their Communion.

Next morning they sleep late, and the great Christmas dinner is at midday.  It is a turkey; and plum pudding, with holly in it and everything conventional, and therefore satisfactory, is done.  Crackers are pulled, the brandy is lit and poured over the pudding till the holly crackles in the flame and the curtains are drawn a moment that the flames may be seen.  This Christmas feast, so great that it may be said almost to fill the day, they may reprove who will; but for my part I applaud.

Now, you must not think that Christmas being over, the season and its glories are at an end, for in this house there is kept up the full custom of the Twelve Days, so that ‘Twelfth Day’, the Epiphany, still has, to its inhabitants, its full and ancient meaning as it had when Shakespeare wrote. The green is kept in its place in every room, and not a leaf of it must be moved until Epiphany morning, but on the other hand not a leaf of it must remain in the house, nor the Christmas tree either, by Epiphany evening.  It is all taken out and burnt in a special little coppice reserved for these good trees which have done their Christmas duty; and now, after so many years, you might almost call it a little forest, for each tree has lived, bearing witness to the holy vitality of unbroken ritual and inherited things.

In the midst of this season between Christmas and Twelfth Day comes the ceremony of the New Year, and this is how it is observed:
On New Years’ Eve, at about a quarter to twelve o’clock at night, the master of the house and all that are with him go about from room to room opening every door and window, however cold the weather be, for thus, they say, the old year and its burdens can go out and leave everything new for hope and for the youth of the coming time. This also is a superstition, and of the best.  Those who observe it trust that it is as old as Europe, and with roots stretching back into forgotten times.

While this is going on the bells in the church hard by are ringing out the old year, and when all the windows and doors have thus been opened and left wide, all those in the house go outside, listening for the cessation of the chimes, which comes just before the turn of the year.  There is an odd silence of a few minutes, and watches are consulted to make certain of the time (for this house detests wireless and has not even a telephone), and the way they know the moment of midnight is by the boom of a gun, which is fired at a town far off, but can always be heard.

At that sound the bells of the church clash out suddenly in new chords, the master of the house goes back into it with a piece of stone or earth from outside, all doors are shut, and the household, all of them, rich and poor, drink a glass of wine together to salute the New Year.

This, which I have just described, is not in a novel or in a play.  It is real, and goes on as the ordinary habit of living men and women.  I fear that set down thus in our terribly changing time it must sound very strange and, perhaps in places, grotesque, but to those who practise it, it is not only sacred, but normal, having in the whole of the complicated affair a sacramental quality and an effect of benediction: not to be despised.

Indeed, modern men, who lack such things, lack sustenance, and our fathers who founded all those ritual observances were very wise.

*                             *                             *

Man has a body as well as a soul, and the whole of man, soul and body, is nourished sanely by a multiplicity of observed traditional things.  Moreover, there is this great quality in the unchanging practice of Holy Seasons, that it makes explicable, tolerable, and normal what is otherwise a shocking and intolerable and even in the fullest sense, abnormal thing.  I mean, the mortality of immortal men.

Not only death (which shakes and rends all that is human in us, creating a monstrous separation and threatening the soul with isolation which destroys), not only death, but that accompaniment of mortality which is a perpetual series of lesser deaths and is called change, are challenged, chained, and put in their place by unaltered and successive acts of seasonable regard for loss and dereliction and mutability.  The threats of despair, remorse, necessary expiation, weariness almost beyond bearing, dull repetition of things apparently fruitless, unnecessary and without meaning, estrangement, the misunderstanding of mind by mind, forgetfulness which is a false alarm, grief, and repentance, which are true ones, but of a sad company, young men perished in battle before their parents had lost vigour in age, the perils of sickness in the body and even in the mind, anxiety, honour harassed, all the bitterness of living—become part of a large business which may lead to Beatitude.  For they are all connected in the memory with holy day after holy day, year by year, binding the generations together; carrying on even in this world, as it were, the life of the dead and giving corporate substance, permanence and stability, without the symbol of which (at least) the vast increasing burden of life might at last conquer us and be no longer borne.

*                             *                             *

This house where such good things are done year by year has suffered all the things that every age has suffered.  It has known the sudden separation of wife and husband, the sudden fall of young men under arms who will never more come home, the scattering of the living and their precarious return, the increase and the loss of fortune, all those terrors and all those lessenings and haltings and failures of hope which make up the life of man.  But its Christmas binds it to its own past and promises its future; making the house an undying thing of which those subject to mortality within it are members, sharing in its continuous survival.

It is not wonderful that of such a house verse should be written.  Many verses have been so written commemorating and praising this house.  The last verse written of it I may quote by way of ending:

‘Stand thou for ever among human Houses,
House of the Resurrection, House of Birth;
House of the rooted hearts and long carouses,
Stand, and be famous over all the Earth.

"Noel" by Tolkien (again)

In 2013 a poem by J. R. R. Tolkien, "Noel", was rediscovered. It was apparently originally published in 1936 in The Annual of Our Lady's School. Tolkien, of course, had also written a series of Father Christmas Letters for his children, so he has a clear connection to Christmas.

I actually posted this poem here years ago, but it is worth repeating!

Noel
by J. R. R. Tolkien

Grim was the world and grey last night:
The moon and stars were fled,
The hall was dark without song or light,
The fires were fallen dead.
The wind in the trees was like to the sea,
And over the mountains’ teeth
It whistled bitter-cold and free,
As a sword leapt from its sheath.

The lord of snows upreared his head;
His mantle long and pale
Upon the bitter blast was spread
And hung o’er hill and dale.
The world was blind,
the boughs were bent,
All ways and paths were wild:
Then the veil of cloud apart was rent,
And here was born a Child.

The ancient dome of heaven sheer
Was pricked with distant light;
A star came shining white and clear
Alone above the night.
In the dale of dark in that hour of birth
One voice on a sudden sang:
Then all the bells in Heaven and Earth
Together at midnight rang.

Mary sang in this world below:
They heard her song arise
O’er mist and over mountain snow
To the walls of Paradise,
And the tongue of many bells was stirred
in Heaven’s towers to ring
When the voice of mortal maid was heard,
That was mother of Heaven’s King.

Glad is the world and fair this night
With stars about its head,
And the hall is filled with laughter and light,
And fires are burning red.
The bells of Paradise now ring
With bells of Christendom,
And Gloria, Gloria we will sing
That God on earth is come.

Santa Season

 

For the past 20 years, I have been a professional Santa. I used to be a mall Santa, but I left that and now just do a few appearances. My first ones this year are this weekend - a town celebration, and Breakfast with Santa at a parish.

Chesterton was a promoter of Christmas and Santa. In fact, one of his final articles was about Santa, "Santa Claus and Science" published in the December 20, 1935, issue of The Commonweal - just about six months before he died. Here is the text of it: 

***

I WISH the subject I discuss here in a short article could be discussed in a big book, or a long series of books. I rather fancy that, if it could really be reduced to its elements, we should find the elementary truth about Catholicism and Protestantism and the present problem of our civilization. It would perhaps explain why, in the coming Christmas, many millions of our mature fellow creatures, so far from hanging up their stockings to have them filled, will rather hang up their hearts and heads and find them empty; and why they will continue to enact a fable for children to believe in, and for children who do not believe in it. For the sake of brevity, let me sum up such a scientific monograph under the heads of three or four questions. 

First, who was Santa Claus or who was he supposed to be? Why do we actually describe this domestic and familiar figure by a name in a foreign language that few of us know? Why should a sort of uncle or grandfather so intimate that he is allowed to enter by the chimney, instead of the front-door, have on his wsmng-card the rather florid name of a distinguished foreigner? The answer is important. It is because in my country the saints really have crept back again like spies. Saint Nicholas of the Children may not come through the chimney like a burglar; but he was really admitted through the front door only as a foreigner. It is part of a paradox, that Protestant England satisfied its intense insularity mainly by the use of foreign words. For instance, men cannot do without the image of the Mother of God; the veritable Queen of Hearts, with every sort of lovers in every sort of land. But the Victorians got over her omnipresence in all art by calling her "a Madonna," whatever that may mean. As it was British to talk of Mary only in Italian, so it was British to talk of Saint Nicholas only in German. So we could tap all the traditional poetry of Christendom, without calling it Catholic or even Christian. It was a sort of smuggling; we could import Nicholas without paying the tax to Peter. 

Second, everybody could then dispose themselves in elegant attitudes of sad sympathy and patronizing pity; over a mere fairy-tale for children, which children themselves must soon abandon. Santa Claus has passed into a proverb of illusion and disillusion. A man wrote a poem about how he had ceased to believe in Santa Claus at the age of seven and in God at the age of seventeen; and explained how he really regretted God not much more than Santa Claus. The notion that the thing had ever had any relation to any religion, or that that religion had ever had any relation to any reason, or that it had been a part of a real philosophy with a fringe of popular fancies but a body of moral fact, never occurred to anybody. And I startled some honest Protestants lately by telling them that, though I am (unfortunately) no longer a child, I do most definitely believe in Santa Claus; though I prefer to talk about him in my own language. I believe that Saint Nicholas is in heaven, accessible to our prayers for anybody; if he was supposed to be specially accessible to prayers of children, as being their patron, I see no reason why he should not be concerned with human gifts to children. I do not suppose that he comes down the chimney; but I suppose he could if he liked. The point is that, for me, there is not that complete chasm or cutting o~ of all relations with the religion of childhood, which is now common in those who began by starting a new religion and have ended by having no religion. 

Third, do our contemporaries really know even the little that there is to know about the roots, or possible origins, of such romances of popular religion? I myself know very little; but a really complete monograph on Santa Claus might raise some very interesting questions. For instance, Saint Nicholas of Bari is represented in a well known Italian picture of the later Middle Ages, not only as performing the duty of a gift-bringer, but ,s actually doing it by the methods of a burglar. He is represented as climbing up the grille or lattice of a house, solely in order to drop little bags of gold among the members of a poor family, consisting of an aged man and three beautiful daughters who had no money for their wedding dowries. That is another question for our contemporaries: why were celibate saints so frightfully keen on getting other people married? But anyhow, I give this only as an example out of a hundred, which might well be followed up if only grown-up people could be induced to take Santa Claus seriously. It looks as if it might be the root of the legend. To see a saint climbing up the front of our house would seem to most of us as odd as seeing a saint climbing down our chimney. Very probably neither of the things happened; but it might be worth while even for scientific critics to find out what actually did happen. 

Fourth, what do our great modern educationists, our great modern psychologists, our great makers of a new world, mean to do about the 202 The Commonweal December 20, I933 breach between the imagination and the reason, if only in the passage from the infant to the man ? Is the child to live in a world that is entirely fanciful and then find suddenly that it is entirely false? Or is the child to be forbidden all forms of fancy; or in other words, forbidden to be a child ? Or is he, as we say, to have some harmless borderland of fancy in childhood, which is still a part of the land in which he will live; in terra viventium, in the land of living men? Cannot the child pass from a child's natural fancy to a man's normal faith in Holy Nicholas of the Children, without enduring that bitter break and abrupt disappointment which now marks the passage of a child from a land of make-believe to a world of no belief?  

Happy Thanksgiving 2025

We can be thankful for Chesterton's appreciation for thankfulness and gratitude! 

“The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.”

“When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”

"The worst moment for an atheist is when he feels a profound sense of gratitude and has no one to thank."

“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”

“When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?”

"The test of happiness is gratitude."

"The best kind of giving is thanksgiving."

A Few Clerihews (Waiting?)

 

I just got the most recent issue of Gilbert. I had submitted some clerihews back in October, but they may have gotten there too late for inclusion. So maybe they will show up in an issue next year.

 On the other hand, they may not have been up to snuff enough for inclusion. 

Here are the ones I submitted this time:

St. John Vianney 

did not attend the hootenanny.

He didn’t want to chance

spotting parishioners starting to dance.

H. G. Wells

crafted some literary hells.

When it comes to romance, too,

he created more than a few.

Henry VIII

was named "Defender of the Faith."

He kept the title, but cast the Faith aside

when he wanted to make mistress Anne a short-term bride.

The look on the face of Joseph Pearce

was positively fierce.

As he was about to send his latest out the door

he suddenly realized he'd written the same thing before.

We can probably assume Saint Blaise

is in Heaven these days.

Martyrdom likely led him to eternal glory

and not just some fish story.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

sat in her parlor frowning.

Robert had bought her something labeled "Serra da Estrela cheese,"

that clearly wasn't Portuguese.

 

o god of earth and altar

Chesterton's Prayer Life?

 

I was involved with a discussion with a Eastern Rite Catholic about some suggested Rosary mysteries. He said he was uneasy about taking such "liberties with our prayers." I pointed out that the Rosary had developed over centuries, and had been adapted and changed - most recently by Pope St. John Paul II adding the Luminous Mysteries.

The discussion was respectful, not contentious. 

But I then wondered if Chesterton said the Rosary, or if he observed other common spiritual practices.

I looked online, but found nothing about the Rosary or other devotional practices, or his prayer life. I skimmed through the indexes of several books about him that I own, and found nothing. I did find a commentary by him on The Way of the Cross, but that seemed more a commentary of the images used. 

Now we know he was deeply religious. After his conversion, he was a regular Mass goer. His writing is full of spiritual references and subjects, including his conversion and regard for the Catholic Church. In Knight of the Holy Ghost, Dale Ahlquist noted, "He reveals his prayer life the way it should be revealed: in his work."

One of his poems was even turned into a hymn.

O God of Earth and Altar
Bow down and hear our cry
Our earthly rulers falter
Our people drift and die
The walls of gold entomb us
The swords of scorn divide
Take not thy thunder from us
But take away our pride

From all that terror teaches
From lies of tongue and pen
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men
From sale and profanation
Of honour and the sword
From sleep and from damnation
Deliver us, good lord

Tie in a living tether
The prince and priest and thrall
Bind all our lives together
Smite us and save us all
In ire and exultation
Aflame with faith and free
Lift up a living nation
A single sword to thee

Perhaps someone more knowledgeable of Chesterton life would be able to cite some specific practices. 

For now I'll just cite one quotation.

“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”

Maybe we should say grace before enjoying Chesterton's writing!

 

About Politics and Government

 

I just finished reading John Adams by David McCullough. I see why he won the Pulitzer for this book.

In addition to being a good read and providing insights into the life of Adams, the book also explored the political conflicts he faced.

Given that we just had an election, and the current poisonous political climate in this nation, the timing was perfect.

Adams had a number of personality flaws, but he was a principled man who was the target of all sorts of often unfair and vicious political attacks. Those attacks included ones on his appearance and personality, as well as multiple innuendos and outright lies. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton in particular did not emerge looking good given their words and actions.

I've been involved in politics in a variety of ways over the years, starting with campaigning for George McGovern back in 1972! (Well, the option that year was Nixon, so ....). I've been a party official, and a candidate myself. I also covered elections as a reporter.

Based on my experiences, I don't have a particularly high opinion of most politicians and the majority of voters.

Chesterton, of course, had plenty to say about politics, elections, and politicians. The line of his most often quoted is, "“It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.” But he had more to say.

In his autobiography, he talks about campaigning for candidates. He was canvassing potential voters, and assumed that the purpose was to engage them in conversation. He discovered his assumption was an "extraordinary delusion."

"The object of canvassing is counting. The only real reason for people to be pestered in their houses by party agents is quite unconnected with the principles of the party (which is often a complete mystery to the agents): it is simply that the agents may discover from the words, manner, gesticulations, oaths, curses, kicks or blows of the householder, whether he is likely to vote for the party candidate, or not vote at all."

He also discovered through various elections that the candidate each time was often "the worst duffer on his own platform." Indeed, the speakers on the candidate's behalf such as Hilaire Belloc or John Simon were often more articulate about the platform or even as speakers that is the candidate. He realized "that what runs modern politics is money; and that the superiority of the fool in the frockcoat over Belloc and Simon simply consisted in the fact that he was richer than they were."

I recall as a reporter and newspaper town blogger interviewing many candidates who clearly did not understand what their platform really was about: They just kept repeating the taking points they had memorized. And often they were selected to run not because of their outstanding skills, knowledge, or intelligence, but because of their connections or because they did business with party officials or already elected individuals. I saw that the politicians who tended to get reelected or move on to other offices were often the ones who most towed the party line, not showing independent thought, or even any thought at all.

As for the voters, they are easily swayed by the contemporary version of "frockcoats." Slick ads, smooth-talking, good-looking candidates who know all the right talking points and lies/slurs to repeat. Too many voters do not take the time to really research the candidates or the issues. They just blindly vote by party, or for whoever captures their fancy.

Cynical? Perhaps. And I will admit that there are intelligent, informed, independent politicians, but we have too few of them. And those voters? Out in California the voters said they supported having an independent redistricting commission, then voted to overturn the districts created by that commission. Did they have any idea what they were voting for? Not likely. The party told them what to vote for - and added animus toward the President - and the voters dutifully did as they were told. 

As Chesterton notes, “Men are ruled, at this minute by the clock, by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern.” Indeed, he also observes, “When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.”

But, in the end, we do need some sort of government. After all, as Chesterton admits, “All government is an ugly necessity.” 

Often ugly indeed.

A Limerick With a Lewis Twist

 

There once was a blogging progressive
who judged conservatives too aggressive.
He went on the attack
and they fired back -
isn't Screwtape's scheming impressive?

Saints

With All Saints and All Souls days this weekend, a look at what Chesterton and Lewis has to say about saints.

Chesterton

It is better to speak wisdom foolishly like the saints than to speak folly wisely like the deans.

The voice of the special rebels and prophets, recommending discontent, should, as I have said, sound now and then suddenly, like a trumpet. But the voices of the saints and sages, recommending contentment, should sound unceasingly, like the sea.

Each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most.

“The saint is a medicine because he is an antidote. Indeed that is why the saint is often a martyr; he is mistaken for a poison because he is an antidote. He will generally be found restoring the world to sanity by exaggerating whatever the world neglects, which is by no means always the same element in every age. Yet each generation seeks its saint by instinct; and he is not what the people want, but rather what the people need.

There are saints indeed in my religion: but a saint only means a man who knows he is a sinner.

Lewis

The stamp of the saint is that he can waive his own rights and obey the Lord Jesus.

How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been. How gloriously different are the saints.

Lewis, being a Protestant, will never be recognized officially by the Catholic Church as a saint, but if he is in Heaven, he is a saint anyway.

As for Chesterton, the cause for his sainthood has stalled. Perhaps it will restart - certainly many Chestertonians hope so - but even if it's never official, if he is Heave he, like Lewis, is already a saint.