S4E62 - TSL 31 - "Blaze of glory"

Matt and David wrap up The Screwtape Letters and Wormwood’s patient goes home.

S4E62: “Blaze of Glory” (Download)

If you enjoy this episode, you can subscribe manually, or any place where good podcasts can be found (iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, Podbean, Stitcher, TuneIn and Overcast), as well as on YouTube. The roadmap for Season 4 is available here.

More information about us can be found on our website, PintsWithJack.com. If you’d like to support us and get fantastic gifts, please join us on Patreon.

Timestamps

00:00 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:15 – Welcome
00:46 – Chit-Chat
08:01 – Song-of-the-week
09:34 – Quote-of-the-week
11:31 – Drink-of-the-week
12:46 – Patreon Toast
13:00 – Chapter Summary
14:59 – Discussion
36:25 – Unscrewing Screwtape
38:15 – “Last Call” Bell and Closing Thoughts

YouTube Version

Show Notes

Chit-Chat

Today we finish The Screwtape Letters! Matt offered a bit of a reflection on the experience. David shared some quotations he came across related to previous letters:
Back in Letter #15, the “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow” episode? We spoke about the past, present and future and the importance of the present because this is the place we can actually act. Well, my parish’s bulletin recently included this quotation which made me think of it:

“Don’t give your present to the devil and your future to God”
St. Gregory the Theologian (Gregory of Nazianzus – 4th Century ECF)

The next quotation I wanted to share relates to a subject of Fortitude, which was the subject of Letter #29, the “Fearless” episode. I had posted on Facebook that episode’s quote-of-the-week, where Screwtape says “courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point” And former guest of the show, Dr. Lepojarvi, commented that he thinks it’s a mistake to take this as an argument that in Lewis’s hierarchy of virtues, courage stands atop (apparently various authors have argued for this). I agreed, suggesting that, in a similar way that Prudence is necessary to allow virtues to remain in balance, Courage allows them to remain at all when the pressure is turned up. A little later, he replied, saying that he just came across a quotation from Field Marshal Bill Slim which echoed this point and sounded very Lewisian. This is what he said in a broadcast in 1957:

QUOTATION
TODO

The final quotation I wanted to share comes from a recent episode of the Clumsy Theosis podcast, whose host, Richael, was my guest co-host last week. As I mentioned on that episode, Richael is currently doing a series on spiritual warfare and I thought this quotation from St. John Chrysostom (a contemporary of St. Gregory) was very appropriate as we wrap up The Screwtape Letters:

The Devil never proposes to us sins in their proper colors
St. John Chrysostom, Homily 22

Song-of-the-week

On to the song-of-the-week… In today’s letter, the patient enters Heaven… So what song is most fitting? Listener John Marr had only one recommendation, the aria “Un bel dì, vedremo” (One fine day, we will see) from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, which he says he always hears when he reads this final letter and tears up…

I really was tempted to let this one win, but, as we heard last week, John is insistent upon the distinction between a song and an aria soooo Blaze of Glory by Bon Jovi it is!

Seriously though, once again, Un bel di is gorgeous and you should listen to it…(and it probably should be the song-of-the-week, but what are you going to do?)

Quote-of-the-week

The quote-of-the-week is…

“Yes. Of course. It always was like this. All horrors have followed the same course, getting worse and worse and forcing you into a kind of bottle-neck till, at the very moment when you thought you must be crushed, behold! you were out of the narrows and all was suddenly well. The extraction hurt more and more and then the tooth was out. The dream became a nightmare and then you woke. You die and die and then you are beyond death. How could I ever have doubted it?”
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #31)

Drink-of-the-week

To celebrate the end of the letters, the drink-of-the-week selections were Macallan 12 and Lagavulin 16 for Matt and David, respectively.

Patreon Toast

One of the benefits for Gold-level supporters on Patreon is that we toast one of them each episode. Today we are toasting Page Morin:

The night is darkest before the dawn, so we pray that, wherever you are in your journey, that you know that the light is just around the corner.
Toast for Page Morin

Chapter Summary

So, on to Letter #31, which was first published in The Guardian on 28th November, 1941. I’m allowed one hundred words for this summary, but I’m not going to need them…

The patient died in an air raid. He is now out of Screwtape’s reach.
He was greeted by angels and now looks upon the face of God.
Wormwood has failed. Screwtape has invited his nephew over for dinner…
Chapter Summary for Letter #31

Affectionate greeting

Normally Screwtape begins all his letters as “My dear Woodwood”. Today’s is far creepier…

My dear, my very dear, Wormwood, my poppet, my pigsnie, …
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #31)

These are some terms which might not be familiar to most people. They are both terms of endearment…
- “Poppet” is a variant of “puppet”, implying that someone is like a little doll.
- “Pigsnie” possibly comes from Chaucer and may be a variation of “piga” which means “young maid” in Anglo-Saxon.

Chomping at the bit

Anyway, Screwtape reveals that Wormwood has lost the patient’s soul. Whimpering, Wormwood had apparently asked Screwtape whether his uncle’s affection meant nothing. Screwtape offers this “reassurance”:

Rest assured, my love for you and your love for me are as like as two peas. I have always desired you, as you (pitiful fool) desired me. The difference is that I am the stronger. I think they will give you to me now; or a bit of you. Love you? Why, yes. As dainty a morsel as ever I grew fat on.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #31)

Needless to say, this is going to be an awkward family dinner!

Finally clean

Screwtape explains what happened to Wormwood’s patient. At the moment of death he saw Wormwood:

There was a sudden clearing of his eyes (was there not?) as he saw you for the first time, and recognised the part you had had in him and knew that you had it no longer.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #31)

Screwtape compares the patient’s transition to a scab of dead skin falling off, throwing off a wet, dirty garment. Screwtape says that it’s bad enough to see humans enjoying a lovely hot bath, but that doesn’t compare to this “complete cleansing”.
- Lewis was quite happy with a form of Purgatory and describes it in very similar terms in Letters To Malcolm:

“Our souls demand Purgatory, don’t they? Would it not break the heart if God said to us: ‘It is true, my son, that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into the joy’? Should we not reply, ‘With submission, sir, and if there is no objection, I’d rather be cleaned first.’ ‘It may hurt, you know’ – ‘Even so, sir.’
C.S. Lewis, Letters To Malcolm (Letter #20)

An easy exit

What really seems to bug Screwtape is how easily he regards the patient’s transition, no doctor visits or nursing home…

One moment it seemed to be all our world; the scream of bombs, the fall of houses, the stink and taste of high explosive on the lips and in the lungs, the feet burning with weariness, the heart cold with horrors, the brain reeling, the legs aching; next moment all this was gone, gone like a bad dream, never again to be of any account.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #31)

It’s funny, we wouldn’t typically regard this as an easy transition into the next life! We referred to an inscription at a monastery on Mount Athos:

…or, in English…

Made for Heaven

Screwtape says that this transition seemed natural to the patient…

…as if he’d been born for it — the earth-born vermin entered the new life?
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #31)

He also comments on transformation in the patient’s mind, saying that…

~~How~~ all his doubts became, in the twinkling of an eye, ridiculous?
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #31)

He describes what Tolkien would call a Euchatastrophe:

The extraction hurt more and more and then the tooth was out. The dream became a nightmare and then you woke. You die and die and then you are beyond death.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #31)

Angels and Demons

Screwtape says that, not only did the patient see Wormwood, “he also saw Them.” While the patient looked upon the angels, Wormwood reeled back at their presence. All this offends Screwtape’s sense of dignity, the idea that…

…this thing of earth and slime could stand upright and converse with spirits before whom you, a spirit, could only cower.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #31)

Matt referred to the TV Show, The Chosen:

Matt alluded to this passage of Scripture:

Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Here is a true Israelite. There is no duplicity in him.” Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.” Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.”
John 1:47-49

Even while the patient didn’t know what the angels look like (and even doubted their existence), upon seeing them he immediately recognises the part they had played in his life, saying: “So it was you all the time” As they spoke, the patient was reminded of faint memories…

The dim consciousness of friends about him which had haunted his solitudes from infancy was now at last explained; that central music in every pure experience which had always just evaded memory was now at last recovered.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #31)

…and this entire scene takes place even before the limbs of the patient’s corpse come to rest.

God

However, the patient didn’t just encounter angels… “He saw not only Them; he saw Him.” The patient beheld not only angels, but God. Once again, Screwtape’s sense of dignity is rocked…

This animal, this thing begotten in a bed, could look on Him. What is blinding, suffocating fire to you, is now cool light to him, is clarity itself, and wears the form of a Man.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #31)

This alludes to Daniel 7:

As the visions during the night continued, I saw coming with the clouds of heaven

One like a son of man.
When he reached the Ancient of Days
    and was presented before him,
He received dominion, splendor, and kingship;
    all nations, peoples and tongues will serve him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
    that shall not pass away,
    his kingship, one that shall not be destroyed.
Daniel 7:13-14

Wormwood would like to think that the patient’s falling at Jesus’ feet and recognition of his sin to be something horrible, but it’s not. Screwtape says it’s nothing like Wormwood’s…

…choking and paralysing sensations when you encounter the deadly air that breathes from the heart of Heaven.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #31)

…and once again we encounter the aroma which Screwtape has mentioned throughout this book and now we come to its source, God Himself. When we mentioned this before, listeners BB Smith and Lori Morrison both pointed us towards 2nd Corinthians:

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumph, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?
2 Corinthians 2:14-16

The future

Screwtape ends this section by saying something rather interesting about the patients’ future:

Pains he may still have to encounter, but they embrace those pains. They would not barter them for any earthly pleasure.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #31)

Out of Hell’s reach

Screwtape ends his final letter by saying that Wormwood now has nothing with which to tempt the patient. All of those good things of earth just don’t compare with what the patient is now experiencing. I have to read the next section verbatim:

All the delights of sense, or heart, or intellect, with which you could once have tempted him, even the delights of virtue itself, now seem to him in comparison but as the half nauseous attractions of a raddled harlot would seem to a man who hears that his true beloved whom he has loved all his life and whom he had believed to be dead is alive and even now at his door.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #31)

Screwtape is bewildered at the economy of Heaven. He doesn’t understand grace or what is going on…

If only we could find out what He is really up to! … Sometimes I am almost in despair. All that sustains me is the conviction that our Realism, our rejection… of all silly nonsense and claptrap, must win in the end.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #31)

I’d love to quote The Last Battle here, but Matt hasn’t read it yet, but I’d encourage all listeners to go and read the final few pages of it after finishing Screwtape.
Screwtape ends his letter…

Meanwhile, I have you to settle with. Most truly do I sign myself Your increasingly and ravenously affectionate uncle…
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #31)

Unscrewing Screwtape

Matt had some suggestions

Do… maintain hope when you are struggle – recognize you are being cleansed / purged of your false self; your ego
Do… not substitute lesser goods for the ultimate Good

Rather than offering some do’s and don’ts, I thought I’d just quote the final few sentences of Mere Christianity, since Lewis’ exhortation at the end of the book really is the best advice we could offer:

Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 11)

Fr. Jeffrey Doyle

No more videos!

S4E62 – TSL 31 – “Blaze of glory”

Timestamps

YouTube Version