S7E19 – LL 3 – “Oremus semper pro invicem”

C. S. Lewis shares his heart with Don Giovanni.

S7E19: “Oremus Semper Pro Invicem” (Download)

Show Notes

Introduction

Quote-of-the-week

May we always pray for one another both in this world and in the world to come.

C. S. Lewis, Latin Letters

Chit-Chat

• Matt is currently experiencing the joys of wedding planning!

Toast

• David had “the strongest cup of tea known to man.”
• Andrew had a cup of coffee in his Starbucks “London mug”
• Matt was drinking coffee, as well as a non-alcoholic Guinness

• They toasted Patreon supporter Jeremy Warburton.

Discussion

01. “Letter #8: Oxford (10th August, 1948)”

• The letter begins by talking about the political state in Italy and England. Lewis determines England to be in worse condition. He also speaks of the “Lefties,” or “your Sinisters,” which are the Italian atheistic, and most likely refers to the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). Lewis calls them “wolves.”
• In England, Lewis says that England’s “wolves” might be of a more subtle, underground nature…in fact, they might not realize that they are wolves at all:

Of those who work injustice in politics many say they are building the Kingdom of God. Nor do they merely say it, they perhaps believe it. For we do not have the ability to read hearts, and Charity does not ascribe to malice that which can result from simple foolishness and ignorance – it “beareth all things, believeth all things’.

To me nothing in this state of affairs seems more grievous than the struggle against hatred in which we are daily engaged – I  will not say the hatred of enemies but of our own people.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria (10th August, 1948)

• Following this, Jack recalls St. Paul:

No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.

1 Corinthians 10:13

• Andrew was reminded of Mere Christianity, where Lewis described how we should feel about our adversaries (particularly important going into an election year).

Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything — God and our friends and ourselves included — as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

• Lewis wraps up with this last piece of advice:

We ought to give thanks for all fortune: if it is “good”, because it is good, if “bad” because it works in us patience, humility and the contempt of this world and the hope of our eternal country.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria (10th August, 1948)

• This is right out of Boethius (which David will discuss in S7E22):

All fortune is good fortune; for it either rewards, disciplines, amends, or punishes, and so is either useful or just.

Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy

02. “Letter #9: Oxford (14th January, 1949)”

• Five months or so later, Lewis sends another letter. St. Calabria had written him on Christmas, and Lewis appeared to be touched that Don Giovanni had remembered him on that day. There is a strong emphasis on assurance of prayer.

Do not doubt that you hold your accustomed place in my prayers. Now indeed mountains and seas divide us; nor do I know what your appearance is in the body. On some day hereafter, in the resurrection of the body, and in that renewal beyond our telling, God grant that we may meet.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria (14th January, 1949)

• David recalled the Law of Undulation from The Screwtape Letters…

Humans are amphibians… As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.… Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation… a series of troughs and peaks...

C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #8)

• Lewis speaks about the different distractions which keep him from his writing:

I labour under many difficulties. My house is unquiet and devastated by women’s quarrels. I have to dwell in the tents of Kedar. My aged mother [Mrs. Moore], worn out by long infirmity, is my daily care. Pray for me, father that I ever bear in mind that profoundly true maxim: “if thou wish to bring others peace, keep thyself in peace”.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria (14th January, 1949)

• The “tents of Kedar” is a reference to the Psalms, about living among a hostile people:

Woe to me that I dwell in Meshek,
    that I live among the tents of Kedar!

Psalm 120:5

• Jack speaks also of “little big men” who “threaten much…promise much, and equally, perhaps in vain?” It was thought that this was a reference to politicians and possibly organised crime.
• As the two men speak frequently about the bleak state of the world, Lewis’ response remains the Christian response:

Concern for the future distresses mortal minds in vain…. “How long, O Lord?”

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria (14th January 1949)

03. “Letter #10: Oxford (17th April, 1949)”

• This letter is from Don Giovanni, sent on Easter Day.

May the grace and peace of Christ exult in your heart. The appointed days draw near in which we celebrate the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus. My thoughts are daily towards you and especially in these days of prayerful good wishes for brothers and friends.”

St. Calabria, Letter to C. S. Lewis, (17th April, 1949)

May good times come! The voice of God indeed daily calls to us; calls to the world to abandon sins and seek the Kingdom of God wholeheartedly. O that we may all hear the call of the Father and, sometime, at last be converted to the Lord. May the Lord Jesus grant that in these days of His Resurrection – after His passion and Death for us – we are able to assist the human family to be raised up in the newness of life of Christ our Lord.”

St. Calabria, Letter to C. S. Lewis, (17th April, 1949)

• Don Giovanni likely wrote the following paragraph in front of a crucifix, or else in front of the tabernacle.

At the foot of the Crucified One I have composed this letter. You will read in my heart all that I would have said to you had health permitted.

St. Calabria, Letter to C. S. Lewis (17th April, 1949)

04. “Letter #11: Oxford (10th September, 1949)”

• The next letter is a reply from Lewis beginning with an apology, realising that it has been six months, and he forgot to respond!

I have just found in my desk the letter which you so kindly wrote at Easter this year. I think I have sent no reply: nothing could be less civil than this silence of mine, nothing less human. I acknowledge my fault, I ask pardon. But I do not wish you to believe either that your memory has fallen from my mind or that your name has fallen from my daily prayers…

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria (10th September, 1949)

• Lewis cites “accidia” (sloth) as one of the Seven Deadly Sins that he is most strongly affected by. Andrew connects this trait with English writer Samuel Johnson. Perhaps this is most accentuated by the time it took to do things, or the tediousness of them, like writing lots of letters or reading boring essays, like the professor in That Hideous Strength.
• The sign-off in this letter contains a hint to Greek mythology…

Farewell, my Father; and of your fatherly charity cease not to make mention of me before our common Lord (true God and the only true Man for all we others, since the Fall of Adam, are but half men)

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria (10th September, 1949)

05. “Letter #12: Verona (18th September, 1949)”

• This is another reply from Don Giovanni. It is very sweet because of his concern for Lewis, having received silence for months.

The consolation from your letter, which I have lately received, was most welcome to me. For many months after your letter I longed to receive some news of you; I was afraid lest your health had failed. Now I give thanks to God for your restoration to strength; and I pray the goodness of God that He will grant you many years in which you may be able to work to the glory of God and the salvation of brethren.

St. Calabria, Letter to C. S. Lewis (18th September, 1949)

• He also talks about God having a “special mission” for Lewis:

I always have you in mind; certainty you seem to me to be called to a special mission for the good of your neighbour; at this hour, in these difficult times, Divine Providence demands from us that, compelled by love, we openly carry the Gospel in our daily life so that others may ‘see our works and glorify the Father.’ The gifts of mind and heart which are your strength, the place which you hold among young students, are sufficiently clear signs of God’s will in respect of yourself. God expects from you that by word and deed you will firmly and gently bring brethren to the Gospel of Christ.

Without Him, we can do nothing: but we ‘can do all things in Him who strengthens us’.

St. Calabria, Letter to C. S. Lewis (18th September, 1949)

06. “Letter #13: Oxford (19th November, 1949)”

• Jack replies after a few months, having received another letter from a different Italian gentleman that the couldn’t make heads or tails of. He described it as a “Sibylline book”, a reference to the obscure prophecies. He requests that Don Giovanni write to the man, asking on his behalf to either write in English or Latin, or, if he must use Italian, to use a typewriter.
• Lewis also notes that Jesus took on nearly all miseries, except old age, stating that “in the One True Man, lives youth everlasting”. Following this, Andrew noticed another brief quote and tied it to Prince Caspian, and our “heavenly age”.

Weakened as we are by age and the long habit of sinning…

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria (19th November, 1949)

07. “Letter #14: Verona (17th December, 1949)”

• This letter, sent by St. Calabria, was sent in Advent 1949.

I feel myself joined by a close, sweet bond…Let us pray for one another that the longing of Christ may be fulfilled as soon as possible; and let all of us from the Christian family labour to bring it about that brethren ‘dwell together in unity.’ Let us all walk in newness of life, so that, by the light of our life’s example, we may draw to the flock of Christ, and to yielding good fruit, all those others who, through either negligence or prejudiced opinions, have strayed from the way.

St. Calabria, Letter to C. S. Lewis (17th December, 1949)

• David noticed that Don Giovanni’s letters are very Pauline in style. Andrew thought they also reflected the Psalms:

How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!

Psalm 133:1

08. “Letter #15: Oxford (13th September, 1951)”

• Now Lewis is grateful for a break of the silence!

I was moved with unaccustomed joy by your letter and all the more because I had heard you were ill; sometimes I feared lest you had perhaps died.

But never in the least did I cease from my prayers for you; for not even the River of Death ought to abolish the sweet intercourse of love and mediations.

Now I rejoice because I believe…you are well or at least better.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria (13th September, 1951)

• The “River of Death” refers to the River Styx from Greek mythology; another example of the mixing of paganism and Christianity.
• The scriptural version of this letter comes from St. Paul…

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:38-39

• Lewis also includes a note about not condemning the body, reminding St. Calabria about St. Francis’ “Brother Ass”.
• The book that is referred to is Lentano dal Pianeta Silenzioso, otherwise known as Out of the Silent Planet.
• Lewis closes with blessings for his 50th anniversary of priestly ordination, and a wonderful valediction:

May we always pray for one another both in this world and in the world to come.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria (13th September, 1951)

09. “Letter #16: Oxford (26th December, 1951)”

• On Boxing Day of 1951, Lewis writes to Don Giovanni that “a great joy has befallen me”. This joy was the full realisation of the forgiveness of sins.

For a long time I believed that I believed in the forgiveness of sins. But suddenly (On St. Mark’s day) this truth appeared in my mind so clear a light that I perceived that never before (and that after my confessions and absolutions) had I believed it with my whole heart.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria (26th December, 1951)

Do you know, only a few weeks ago I realised suddenly that I at last had forgiven the cruel schoolmaster who so darkened my childhood.

I’d been trying to do it for years: and like you, each time I thought I’d done it, I found, after a week or so it all had to be attempted over again.

But this time I feel sure it is the real thing. And (like learning to swim or to ride a bicycle) the moment it does happen it seems so easy and you wonder why on earth you didn’t do it years ago.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to Mary Willis Shelburne

• It appears that Don Giovanni wrote about some of his sins, which Lewis replied with this warning:

It is this: you write much about your own sins. Beware (permit me, my dearest Father, to say beware) lest humility should pass over into anxiety or sadness. It is bidden us to ‘rejoice and always rejoice.’ Jesus has cancelled the handwriting which was against us. Lift up our hearts!

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria (26th December, 1951)

• David has been praying the Chaplet of St. Charbel this Lent.

Many are my sins, but greater is Your mercy. When placed on a scale, Your mercy prevails over the weight of the mountains known only to You. Consider the sin and consider the atonement; the atonement is greater and exceeds the sin. Your beloved Son sustained the nails and the lance because of my sins so in His sufferings You are satisfied and I live.

The Chaplet of St. Charbel

10. “Letter #17: Oxford (14th April, 1952)”

• Jack notifies Don Giovanni of the death of his confessor and spiritual director, Father Walter Frederick Adams.

I feel very much an orphan because my aged confessor and most loving father in Christ has just died. While he was celebrating at the altar, suddenly, after a most sharp but (thanks be to God) very brief attack of pain, he expired; and his last words were “I come Lord Jesus.” He was a man of ripe spiritual wisdom – noble minded but of an almost childlike simplicity and innocence: buono fanciullo if I may put it so.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria (14th April, 1952)

• Matt described his own fear of death, and David recommended the opening chapter of St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians:

For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you.

Philippians 1:21-24

• Lewis asks the priest where the line “Love is a fire continually burning” (The Imitation of Christ) and ends with the following:

“That they all may be one” is a petition which in my prayers I never omit. While the wished-for unity of doctrine and order is missing, all the more eagerly let us try to keep the bond of charity.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria (14th April, 1952)

11. “Letter #18: Oxford (14th July, 1952)”

• It seems St. Calabria has been waxing poetic on the dire times they are living through again. Jack again responds wonderfully, echoing his essay Living in an Atomic Age:

The times we live in are, as you say, grave: whether ‘graver than all others in history’ I do not know…. if That Day is indeed approaching now, what remains but that we should rejoice because our redemption is now nearer and say with St. John “Amen; come quickly, Lord Jesus.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria (14th July, 1952)

The use of Fashions in thought is to distract the attention of men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic.

C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #25)

12. “Letter #19: Oxford (5th January, 1953)”

• Lewis writes this next letter on the Feast of the Three Kings (the Magi). He asks for St. Calabria to pray for his next project, which happens to be Letters to Malcolm, a book on prayer for new converts.
• This was Matt’s favourite section of the entire collection…

Pray for me, my Father, that I neither persist, through overboldness, in what is not permitted to me nor withdraw, through too great timidity, from due effort: for he who touches the Ark without authorization and he who, having once put his hand to the plough, draws it back are both lost.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria (5th January, 1953)

• This is the pulling together of two different Scriptural passages:

When they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God, because the oxen stumbled. The LORD’s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down and he died there beside the ark of God.

2 Samuel 6:6-7

Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Luke 9:62

13. “Letter #20: Oxford (7th January, 1953)”

• A magazine article has turned up, referencing a Chinese disaster of some sort. Lewis, who once had high hopes for China, sees its decline. He switches into the third-person plural, saying “Nor was this misery absent from our thoughts and prayers”, likely referencing Warnie. But Lewis then pivots and offers a scathing critique:

…it did not happen, however, without sins on our part: for that justice and that care for the poor which… the Communists advertise, we in reality ought to have brought about ages ago…

…we Westeners preached Christ with our lips, with our actions we brought the slavery of Mammon. We are more guilty than the infidels: for to those that know the will of God and do it not, the greater the punishment. Now the only refuge lies in contrition and prayer. Long have we erred. In reading the history of Europe, it’s destructive succession of ware, of avarice, or fratricidal persecutions of Christians by Christians, of luxury, of gluttony, of pride, who could detect any but the rarest traces of the Holy Spirit?

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria (7th January, 1953)

Wrap-Up

Concluding Thoughts

• Mere Christians: A C. S. Lewis Conference
• Sophia Holcomb

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