Anyway, the reason I've always loved Lewis is his ability to explain mysterious things in the most clear way. As a somewhat muddled thinker myself, I appreciate Lewis' clarity when it comes to the deep things of life. Even as a child, I was somewhat frustrated by not being able to comprehend something that I wanted to understand more clearly. For example, I think I've mentioned before that I never liked the word "Grace" because I could not understand "what" it was. We learned about "sanctifying grace," "actual grace," and "sacramental grace," but I did not know what it was I was supposed to be getting. And it bothered me. I wanted it, whatever "it" was, but I wanted to know what God was giving me.
Having confessed my childhood puzzlement to my husband last week, the very next day, he showed me a definition of "Grace" in an article he was reading in the paper: Grace is the release of loveliness into the world. Now that I could understand -- loveliness. Of course, since my childhood, I have grown into more and more understanding of Grace as energy, dynamic relationship with the Holy Spirit, exchange of love and life, movement, God's own breath in me, and finally, The Power and Presence of God in me.
Even as a child, I desired to understand Truth -- I wanted to wrap my head and heart around the essence of things, not their surface. I wanted to know what things meant, not just what was said about them. So when I discovered C.S. Lewis, I was elated -- he makes things so clear to me that I always exclaim, "Why, of course that how things are!" "Why did I not see that before?" One of Lewis's more famous passages from Mere Christianity concerns the identity of Jesus Christ:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
This passage alone has brought many to re-examine their belief about Jesus Christ. I wish I could articulate the wonderful mysteries of God as clearly as Lewis did. But each of us has his own gift, and C.S. Lewis's gift continues to live on and on. His devotees today number in the thousands; there are Lewis study groups and professors of Lewis's philosophy on practically every college campus.
Two nights ago, I met a man in our parish who told me that reading Lewis, along with Thomas Merton, brought him back to the Catholic church. What is remarkable about his story is that Lewis began his professional life as an atheist, and Merton as an agnostic and a seeker of pleasure. Surely, the Power and Presence of God in these two lives is Amazing Grace -- and knowing their stories brings me even closer to understanding what "Grace" means -- the Power and Presence of God in our lives, the Power to change even those walking in darkness, the Power to bring us -- any one of us -- into the Amazing Light of Truth. Not only did Grace/Light/ God's own Energy enter into Lewis and Merton, but it lit them up from within and put both of them on a "lampstand," that they might shed light to all those in the house.
Alleluia! Three cheers for GRACE!
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