Dear Friends,
This week I have been reading a gripping intellectual history by Alan Jacobs entitled “The Year of Our Lord, 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis.” The book introduces and weaves together the common themes of the creative work of five prominent Christians of that day: Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil. These thinkers, working mostly separately, developed a powerfully consistent sensibility about how civilization should be rebuilt after the Second World War. (I was grateful to read that, for a few of these thinkers who either visited New York City or lived here, the city’s cultural vitality played a pivotal role in their seeing the West anew.) They all longed for a spiritual and moral regeneration of the post-war world, and they applied great diligence to mapping out a path. That path could be called “Christian humanism,” an understanding of society animated by the ultimate value of human beings as beloved creations of God, alongside a stark recognition of the profound limitations that humans bring to the world.
Among so many lively stories and much incisive analysis of the “Christian humanism” of these writers, a particular quote leapt off the page and grabbed me by the heart. It was a portion of a sermon that C. S Lewis preached at Oxford’s University Church of St. Mary the Virgin in June of 1941. He titled the sermon “The Weight of Glory” and preached this: “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.”
In this sermon, Lewis seeks to de-center the world of politics and ideology. This is not to ignore such things, but it is a clarion call to be sure to put first things first. His is a bold vision of the human person: one that puts all of our political, cultural, and organizational projects second in relationship to the supreme task of loving our neighbor as Christ has taught us. As Lewis was during wartime, we may be beset by a sensation of collapse of institutions, cultural and ecological breakdown, or even a sense of living in the ruins of a time gone by. But the only viable path for Lewis and his colleagues is one that resolutely rebuilds our relationships and our society on the foundational “heart” of the matter: the “hearts” that live and beat in the people around us and the “hearts” which contain God’s image and presence (as well as obscure it). As Lewis also wrote, “perhaps civilization will never be safe until we care for something else more than we care for it.” I would agree with this, yet I would remove the word “perhaps!”
As our Lord preached:
“Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?. . . for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:31-33)
Grace and peace,
Matthew+
