As a Christmas present, the three co-hosts recorded a short section from a Lewis work of their own choosing and shared it with the listeners for Christmas!
S4E22: “Wonderful Christmas Time” (Download)
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Timestamps
00:00 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:15 – Welcome
01:22 – Song-of-the-week
01:27 – Drink-of-the-week
01:33 – Quote-of-the-week
02:00 – Andrew’s introduction
03:58 – Andrew’s reading
05:02 – Andrew’s commentary
20:30 – Matt’s introduction
22:31 – Matt’s reading
24:52 – Matt’s commentary
29:39 – David’s introduction
30:41 – David’s reading
33:22 – David’s commentary
39:07 – “Last Call” Bell and Closing Remarks
YouTube Version
After Show Skype Session
No Skype Session today! Go and enjoy a minced pie!
Show Notes
Song-of-the-week
- The song-of-the-week was Wonderful Christmas Time by Paul McCartney:
Quote-of-the-week
- The quote-of-the-week came from this letter:
“He will be silent when he ought to speak and laugh when he ought to be silent”
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #10)
Andrew
- Andrew shared Lewis’ poem, The Nativity:
Among the oxen (like an ox I’m slow)
I see a glory in the stable grow
Which, with the ox’s dullness might at length
Give me an ox’s strength.
Among the asses (stubborn I as they)I see my Savior where I looked for hay;
So may my beast like folly learn at least
The patience of a beast.
Among the sheep (I like a sheep have strayed)I watch the manger where my Lord is laid;
Oh that my baaing nature would win thence
Some woolly innocence!
C.S. Lewis, The Nativity
- Alluded to this section of the Preface to Mere Christianity:
No man, I suppose, is tempted to every sin. It so happens that the impulse which makes men gamble has been left out of my make-up; and, no doubt, I pay for this by lacking some good impulse of which it is the excess or perversion. I therefore did not feel myself qualified to give advice about permissable and impermissable gambling: if there is any permissable, for I do not claim to know even that.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Preface)
- Andrew mentioned how Lewis received the sacrament of Confession with the Anglican priest, Fr. Walter Adams at St. Mary Magdalene parish church in Oxford.
- He alluded to Puzzle the Donkey from The Last Battle and how St. Francis of Assisi referred to his body as “Brother Ass”.
- When speaking about hunger he alluded to this passage from St. Paul:
Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things
Philippians 3:19
Matt
- Matt shared two passages. The first passage was from The Great Divorce:
“The Happy Trinity is her home: nothing can trouble her joy.
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 13)
She is the bird that evades every net: the wild deer that leaps every pitfall.
Like the mother bird to its chickens or a shield to the arm’d knight: so is the Lord to her mind, in His unchanging lucidity.
Bogies will not scare her in the dark: bullets will not frighten her in the day.
Falsehoods tricked out as truths assail her in vain: she sees through the lie as if it were glass.
The invisible germ will not harm her: nor yet the glittering sun-stroke.
A thousand fail to solve the problem, ten thousand choose the wrong turning: but she passes safely through. He details immortal gods to attend her: upon every road where she must travel.
They take her hand at hard places: she will not stub her toes in the dark.
She may walk among Lions and rattlesnakes: among dinosaurs and nurseries of lionets.
He fills her brim full with immensity of life: he leads her to see the world’s desire.”
This is Lewis’ rendition of Psalm 91:
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, who abides in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust”. For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence; he will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.
A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand; but it will not come near you. You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked.
Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your habitation, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent.
For he will give his angels charge of you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone. You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.
Because he cleaves to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will rescue him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him, and show him my salvation.
Psalm 91
- The second passage was from Mere Christianity:
in Christianity God is not a static thing—not even a person—but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance…
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 4)
The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made.
David
- I shared the final part of The Weight of Glory:
It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is
hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour. The load, or
weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that
only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live
in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting
person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly
tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a
nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these
destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the
circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all
friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked
to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as
the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—
immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually
solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest
kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no
flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with
deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence
which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your
neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is
holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat — the glorifier and the glorified,
Glory Himself, is truly hidden.
C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (Sermon given 8th June 1931)
- The Latin phrase “vere latitat” means “truly he hides”
- The Latin phrase “Imago Dei” means “Image of God”
- I shared this quotation from St. John Chrysostom:
If you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the church door, you will not find Him in the chalice.
Paraphrase of St. John Chrysostom’s Homily 50.4
