Class video link:
Podcast link:
Church website link:
Music link:
SUMMARY OF CHAPTER 11
KEY PASSAGES IN CHAPTER 11
Entitlement
“Yes, dear,” said the Spirit. “I know you expected someone else. Can you … I hope you can be a little glad to see even me; for the present.” “I did think Michael would have come,” said the Ghost; and then, almost fiercely, “He is here, of course?” “He’s there-far up in the mountains.” “Why hasn’t he come to meet me? Didn’t he know?” “My dear (don’t worry, it will all come right presently) it wouldn’t have done. Not yet. He wouldn’t be able to see or hear you as you are at present. You’d be totally invisible to Michael. But we’ll soon build you up.” “I should have thought if you can see me, my own son could!”
Disordered Love
When am I going to be allowed to see him?” “There’s no question of being allowed, Pam. As soon as it’s possible for him to see you, of course he will. You need to be thickened up a bit.” “How?” said the Ghost… “I’m afraid the first step is a hard one,” said the Spirit. “But after that you’ll go on like a house on fire. You will become solid enough for Michael to perceive you when you learn to want someone else besides Michael. I don’t say ‘more than Michael,’ not as a beginning. That will come later. It’s only the little germ of a desire for God that we need to start the process.”
A DETOUR TO HIPPO: ST. AUGUSTINE AND “ORDO AMORIS”
Writing in 386 A.D. in City of God, Augustine defined virtue as “rightly ordered love” (City of God, XV.23), stating in one work:
“But living a just and holy life requires one to be capable of an objective and impartial evaluation of things: to love things, that is to say, in the right order, so that you do not love what is not to be loved, or fail to love what is to be loved, or have a greater love for what should be loved less, or an equal love for things that should be loved less or more, or a lesser or greater love for things that should be loved equally.” (On Christian Doctrine, I.27-28)
This notion of rightly ordered loves has proved to be foundational to much of Western Christian thought. Dante conceived of the seven deadly sins in terms of disordered love. This understanding of virtue and vice meshes with Scripture’s insistence that love is the fulfillment of the law (Rom 13:8; Gal. 5:14; James 2:8). Augustine called virtues “the various movements of love,” and described the four cardinal virtues in terms of love:
“I hold that virtue is nothing other than perfect love of God. Now, when it is said that virtue has a fourfold division, as I understand it, this is said according to the various movements of love…We may, therefore, define these virtues as follows: temperance is love preserving itself entire and incorrupt for God; courage is lovereadily bearing all things for the sake of God; justice is love serving only God, and therefore ruling well everything else that is subject to the human person; prudence is love discerning well between what helps it toward God and what hinders it.“(On the Morals of the Catholic Church, XV.25)
“Tell me. Love, if thou canst, anything which He hath not made. Look round upon the whole creation, see whether in any place thou art held with the birdlime of desire, and hindered from loving the Creator, except it be by that very thing which He hath Himself created, whom thou despisest. But why dost thou love those things, except because they are beautiful? Can they be as beautiful as He by whom they were made? Thou admirest these things, because thou seest not Him: but through those things which thou admirest, love Him whom thou seest not.” (Commentary on the Psalms, on Psalm 80:11) Beneath Augustine’s conception of virtue as rightly ordered love was a foundational conviction about the nature of reality. Augustine believed that the summum bonum, the highest good, was God himself and that all other goods are lesser goods that flow from his hand, intended to lead us back to him. In the Confessions, for example, Augustine says:
“For there is a joy that is not given to those who do not love you, but only to those who love you for your own sake. You yourself are their joy. Happiness is to rejoice in you and for you and because of you. This is happiness and there is no other. Thosewho think that there is another kind of happiness look for joy elsewhere, but theirs is not true joy.” (Confessions, X.22)
“In this framework, sin springs from hearts that neglect God as the Supreme Good and seek their happiness in lesser goods. But such people ignore the order and nature of reality. This is the heart of evil: to prefer a lesser good over the Supreme Good, to worship and serve the creature rather the Creator (Rom 1:25).” (adapted from Rev. Brian Hedges)“These are thy gifts; they are good, for thou in thy goodness has made them. Nothing in them is from us, save for sin when, neglectful of order, we fix our love on the creature, instead of on thee, the Creator.” (City of God, XV.22)
Religion as only as means to an end
“Oh, you mean religion and all that sort of thing? This is hardly the moment… and from you, of all people. Well, never mind. I’ll do whatever’s necessary. What do you want me to do? Come on. The sooner I begin it, the sooner they’ll let me see my boy. I’m quite ready.” “But, Pam, do think! Don’t you see you are not beginning at all as long as you are in that state of mind? You’re treating God only as a means to Michael. But the whole thickening treatment consists in learning to want God for His own sake.”
Love as God loves
“You exist as Michael’s mother only because you first exist as God’s creature. That relation is older and closer. He also loves. He also has suffered. He also has waited a long time.” “If He loved me He’d let me see my boy. If He loved me why did He take away Michael from me?” But He had to take Michael away. Partly for Michael’s sake.” “I’m sure I did my best to make Michael happy. I gave up my whole life….” “Human beings can’t make one another really happy for long. And secondly, for your sake. He wanted your merely instinctive love for your child (tigresses share that, you know!) to turn into something better. He wanted you to love Michael as He understands love. You cannot love a fellow-creature fully till you love God. Sometimes this conversioncan be done while the instinctive love is still gratified. But there was, it seems, no chance of that in your case. The instinct was uncontrolled and fierce and monomaniac. (Ask your daughter, or your husband. Ask your own mother. You haven’t once thought of her.) The only remedy was to take away its object. It was a case for surgery. When that first kind of love was thwarted, then there was just a chance that in the loneliness, in the silence, something else might begin to grow.”
Feelings as false gods and idols
“This is all nonsense-cruel and wicked nonsense. What right have you to say things like that about Mother-love? It is the highest and holiest feeling in human nature.” “Pam, Pam–no natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves. They are all holy when God’s hand is on the rein. They all go bad when they set up on their own and make themselves into false gods.” “My love for Michael would never have gone bad. Not if we’d lived together for millions of years.” “You are mistaken. And you must know. Haven’t you met-down there-mothers who have their sons with them, in Hell? Does their love make them happy?”
Danger of living in the past and idolizing memories
“How could anyone love their son more than I did? Haven’t I lived only for his memory all these years?” “That was rather a mistake, Pam. In your heart of hearts you know it was.” “What was a mistake?” “All that ten years’ ritual of grief. Keeping his room exactly as he’d left it: keeping anniversaries: refusing to leave that house though Dick and Muriel were both wretched there.” “Of course they didn’t care. I soon learned to expect no real sympathy from them.” “You’re wrong. No man ever felt his son’s death more than Dick. Not many girls loved their brothers better than Muriel. It wasn’t against Michael they revolted: it was against you: against having their whole life dominated by the tyranny of the past: and not really even Michael’s past, but your past.” “You are heartless… The past was all I had.” “It was all you chose to have. It was the wrong way to deal with a sorrow. It was Egyptian, like embalming a dead body.”
Inventing God as we would like Him to be
“Give me my boy. Do you hear? I don’t care about all your rules and regulations. I don’t believe in a God who keeps mother and son apart. I believe in a God of Love. No one has a right to come between me and my son. Not even God. Tell Him that to His face. I want my boy, and I mean to have him. He is mine, do you understand? Mine, mine, mine, for ever and ever.”
The disorienting danger of Hatred
“I hate your religion and I hate and despise your God. I believe in a God of Love.” “And yet, Pam, you have no love at this moment for your own mother or for me.” “Oh, I see! That’s the trouble, is it? Really, Reginald! The idea of your being hurt because . . .” “Lord love you!” said the Spirit with a great laugh. “You needn’t bother about that! Don’t you know that you can’t hurt anyone in this country?” The Ghost was silent and open-mouthed for a moment; more wilted, I thought, by this reassurance than by anything else that had been said.”
The need for affection to be converted to eternal love
There’s something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there’s also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is. And if it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what ye call the lower passions. It is a stronger angel, and therefore, when it falls, a fiercer devil.” “I don’t know that I dare repeat this on Earth, Sir,” said I. “They’d say I was inhuman: they’d say I believed in total depravity: they’d say I was attacking the best and the holiest things. Thev’d call me . . .” “It might do you no harm if they did,” said he with a twinkle in his eye.
God as the only Good and rightly ordered love
“But someone must say in general what’s been unsaid among you this many a vear: that love, as mortals understand the word, isn’t enough. Every natural love will rise again and live forever in this country: but none will rise again until it has been buried.” ”But you and I must be clear. There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him. And the higher and mightier it is in the natural order, the more demoniac it will be if it rebels. It’s not out of bad mice or bad fleas you make demons, but out of bad archangels. The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother-love or patriotism or art: but lust is less likely to be made into a religion.”
THEMES IN CHAPTER 11
Entitlement
“Yes, dear,” said the Spirit. “I know you expected someone else. Can you … I hope you can be a little glad to see even me; for the present.” “I did think Michael would have come,” said the Ghost; and then, almost fiercely, “He is here, of course?” “He’s there-far up in the mountains.” “Why hasn’t he come to meet me? Didn’t he know?”
But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”(James 4:6) But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”(Lk. 14:10-11)
Disordered Love
“You will become solid enough for Michael to perceive you when you learn to want someone else besides Michael. I don’t say ‘more than Michael,’ not as a beginning. That will come later. It’s only the little germ of a desire for God that we need to start the process. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.(Mk. 12:30) If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” (Lk. 14:26)
Religion as only as means to an end
“Oh, you mean religion and all that sort of thing? Well, never mind. I’ll do whatever’s necessary. “But, Pam, do think! Don’t you see you are not beginning at all as long as you are in that state of mind? You’re treating God only as a means to Michael?” When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. (James 4:3) But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.(Mt. 6:33)
Love as God loves
“If He loved me why did He take away Michael from me?”“He wanted your merely instinctive love for your child (tigresses share that, you know!) to turn into something better. He wanted you to love Michael as He understands love. You cannot love a fellow-creature fully till you love God.” You were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth, so now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart. (I Peter 1:22) My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (Jn. 15:12-13) This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (I Jn. 4:10-11)
Feelings as false gods and idols
“This is all nonsense-cruel and wicked nonsense. What right have you to say things like that about Mother-love? It is the highest and holiest feeling in human nature.” “Pam, Pam–no natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves. They are all holy when God’s hand is on the rein. They all go bad when they set up on their own and make themselves into false gods.” “My love for Michael would never have gone bad. Not if we’d lived together for millions of years.” “You are mistaken. And you must know. Haven’t you met-down there-mothers who have their sons with them, in Hell? Does their love make them happy?”
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jer. 17:9) Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. (I Jn. 2:15-17) Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered. (Prov. 28:26)
Danger of living in the past and idolizing memories
“How could anyone love their son more than I did? Haven’t I lived only for his memory all these years?” “That was rather a mistake, Pam.” “You are heartless… The past was all I had.” “It was all you chose to have. It was the wrong way to deal with a sorrow. It was Egyptian, like embalming a dead body.” “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. (Is. 43:18-19) Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2 Cor. 5:17) Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask this. (Eccl. 7:10)
Inventing God as we would like Him to be
“Give me my boy. Do you hear? I don’t believe in a God who keeps mother and son apart. I believe in a God of Love. No one has a right to come between me and my son. Not even God. I want my boy, and I mean to have him. He is mine, do you understand? Mine, mine, mine.” For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. (2 Tim. 4:3) Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; away from me, you evildoers’ (Mt. 7:21-23)
The disorienting danger of Hatred
“I hate your religion and I hate and despise your God. I believe in a God of Love.” “And yet, Pam, you have no love at this moment for your own mother or for me.” If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. (I Jn. 4:20) Whoever hates disguises himself with his lips and harbors deceit in his heart; when he speaks graciously, believe him not, for there are seven abominations in his heart; though his hatred be covered with deception, his wickedness will be exposed in the assembly. (Prov. 24:24-26)
The need for affection to be converted to eternal love
“There’s something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on, but if it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what ye call the lower passions.” And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment (Phil. 1:9) Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. (I Jn. 4:7-12)
God as the only Good and rightly ordered love
“But someone must say in general what’s been unsaid among you this many a vear: that love, as mortals understand the word, isn’t enough. Every natural love will rise again and live forever in this country: but none will rise again until it has been buried.” ”But you and I must be clear. There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him. And the higher and mightier it is in the natural order, the more demoniac it will be if it rebels. It’s not out of bad mice or bad fleas you make demons, but out of bad archangels. The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother-love or patriotism or art: but lust is less likely to be made into a religion.” “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.” (Jn. 12:23-26) For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2 Cor. 5:14-17)
PRAYER OF ST. AUGUSTINE
(4th century)
Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit,
That my thoughts may all be holy.
Act in me, O Holy Spirit,
That my work, too, may be holy.
Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit,
That I love but what is holy.
Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit,
To defend all that is holy.
Guard me, then, O Holy Spirit,
That I always may be holy.
