S7E20 – LL 4 – “Vale, sodes et pater”

Today we complete our discussion of “The Latin Letters of C. S. Lewis”.

S7E20: “Vale, sodes et pater” (Download)

Show Notes

Introduction

Quote-of-the-week

Let us rejoice together, my Father: though divided in space, yet in spirit and charity we are united: and may you ever pray for C. S. LEWIS.

C. S. Lewis, The Latin Letters of C. S. Lewis

Chit-Chat

…

Toast

• Matt had an NA Guinness.
• Andrew had a cup of coffee.
• David was also drinking coffee, along with a Best Day Brewing White Belgian Style Wheat NA Beer.

• They toasted…Fabian Lora! May you offer up every day to the Crucified Christ.
• Andrew also gave a shoutout to the Davenant Institute in South Carolina, where he gave a talk recently.

Discussion

01. “Letter #21: Verona (9th January, 1953)”

• The last episode ended with some letters from early 1953. The first letter we examined today was from St. Calabria a few days later. It is mostly a letter of blessings.

We are in holy days…. May the Lord bless you, and grant every good thing to you…

St. Calabria, Letter to C. S. Lewis, January 9th, 1953

• It seems that Don Giovanni has a feeling that he is nearing the end of his days.

I am assured of the great love of your prayers… that I may carry out the divine will even to the end. Time presses (Ruit hora)…

St. Calabria, Letter to C. S. Lewis, January 9th, 1953

02. “Letter #22: Oxford (14th January, 1953)”

• Lewis responds over a week later. They had previously spoken about about an article, which Lewis thought had been written by Don Giovanni under a pseudonym, though it wasn’t.
• Jack quotes “The Imitation of Christ”…

[We should] mark what is said, not who said it…

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria, January 14th, 1953

• Lewis asks St. Calabria a very important question regarding prayer. He is having trouble reconciling two seeminngly contradictory statements in the gospels…

“If it be possible… nevertheless, not as I will but as Thou wilt.”

Matthew 26:39

“Whatsoever you ask believing that you shall receive you shall obtain”

Mark 6:24

How is it possible to say, simultaneously, “I firmly believe that Thou wilt give me this”, and, “If Thou shalt deny me it, Thy will be done”? How can one mental act both exclude possible refusal and consider it? I find this discussed by none of the Doctors.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria, January 14th, 1953

• This is the same year that Lewis published the essay “Petitionary Prayer: A Problem Without an Answer”. Andrew presumed that God does want to hear all of our requests; however, he knows what is best for us, and as a good Father, he reserves the right to say “no” for the sake of his children. David saw the statement “ask and you shall receive” as a trust in God’s goodness.

 …Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

Philippians 2:6-7

• If listeners would like more discussion on this, check out S2E5 “Petitionary Prayer: A Problem Without an Answer” (Part 1) from the Lesser-Known Lewis Podcast.

03. “Letter #23: Oxford (17th March, 1953)”

• Lewis writes again in March…

My dearest Father,

I was delighted, as always, by your letter.

It is a wonderful thing and a strengthening of faith that two souls differing from each other in place, nationality, language, obedience and age should have been thus led into a delightful friendship; so far does the order of spiritual beings transcend the material order.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria, March 17th, 1953

• It is easy to see the effect Giovanni has had on Lewis over the years…

It makes easier that necessary doctrine that we are most closely joined together alike with the sinner Adam and with the Just One, Jesus, even though as to body, time and place we have lived so differently from both. This unity of the whole human race exists: would that there existed that nobler union of which you write. No day do I let pass without my praying for that longed-for consummation.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria, March 17th, 1953

• Lewis spends the rest of the letter talking about the state of the world, modern Christianity, and paganism.

[Modern people] neglect not only the law of Christ but even the Law of Nature as known by the Pagans. For now they do not blush at adultery, treachery, perjury, theft and the other crimes which… the Pagans and the Barbarians have themselves denounced.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria, March 17th, 1953

• Last he was at the Wade Center, David read some of the work of Orthodox priest Fr. Andrew Cuneo. He wrote a passage on the pre-Christian pagan world…

The argument that paganism best precedes Christianity occurs repeatedly in Lewis’s significant corpus of Latin writing: the letters he writes to a priest in Italy, Don Giovanni Calabria. It is appropriate that such a sentiment comes in the Latin tongue; for the truly classical spirit of C.S. Lewis saw no radical opposition between the religions of the pagans and the religion of Christ. Nor would he confine all God’s revelation to the Christian church. In this belief, he stands on the side of Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and St. Augustine. He could well agree with Augustine that “if those who are called philosophers, particularly the Platonists, have said anything which is true and consistent with our faith, we must not reject it” [De Doctrina Christiana]. How far from Tertullian and the more severe Church Fathers this is; for the relationship between Chrsitian belief and pagan philosophy varies significantly between the most representative Christian thinkers. As with Clement, Lewis believed Pagan philosophy to be a “handmaid” to the Christian religion, a word which itself implies the requisite subordination. About pagan literature – as distinct from philosophy – Lewis appears to go beyond many of the Church fathers in his estimation of its compatibility with Christian belief. He not only accepted the elements of Pagan philosophy in concert with Christianity, he also accepted elements of their myth and cult. Like Augustine, he saw a protoevangelium in a poet like Virgil. Lewis incorporated both Pagan myth (mythos) and philosophy (logos) into his Christian mythos-logos: the Christian mythology of his fiction.

With a sympathy for classical literature and philosophy, then, did he say to Don Giovanni Calabria, … (“I would almost dare to say, ‘First let us make the younger generation good Pagans and afterwards let us make them Christians’”). A book such as Till We Have Faces becomes clearer in that light. Moreover, Lewis’s fundamentally eirenic attitude towards classical religion is also seen in his relations with other Christian denominations. If Lewis was able to support a certain continuity between pagan worship and Christian  worship, how much more would he support the continuities between various branches of Christianity. The Latin letters of C.S. Lewis to a Catholic priest enright and display this ecumenism. The language of the letters speaks of Lewis’s synthesis of classicism and Christianity; the spirit of the letters speaks of the unity he tried to point out amongst Christian denominations.

…“They error who say ‘The world is turning pagan again’”, writes Lewis to Fr. Calabria in 1953. “Would that it were! The truth is that we are falling into a much worse state”. A post-Christian man (Lewis did not have the benefit of the term “postmodern”) differs from the Pagan as the widow differs from the virgin, he adds. By this analogy, a post-Christian man is two removes away from the Pagan. In the last letter Don Calabria receives from Lewis, Lewis reiterates the point. Post-Christian Europe is in a different position from Pagan Europe: “many men of our time have lost not only the supernatural light but also the natural light which the pagans possessed”. By natural light, Lewis means the ordinary moral laws common to all civilisations. Thus he could write that even the Pagans blushed at adultery, treachery, perjury, and theft: even the barbarians rejected these things. Like a modern day Jeremiah, Lewis laments that the post-Christian man and woman have “forgotten how to blush” – …. Was Lewis attributing a piety to the Pagans which did not exist? He almost reads into the ancient moral norms which sound uneasily Christian. Dante did the same. For it was the very subject of blushing which brought Lewis into debate with another Latinist one year after he had written the above letter – in fact, one year after Fr. Calabria had died. Lewis’s engagement with things classical had yet another chapter; this time he would consider whether the Pagan poet Statius had a foot in the Christian world as well.

Fr. Andrew Cuneo

• Andrew recalled that Lewis wrote an essay called “Is Theism Important?” which was later published in “God in the Dock”. Lewis fleshed these ideas out further in “Till We Have Faces”.

When grave persons express their fear that England is relapsing into Paganism, I am tempted to reply, “Would that she were.” For I do not think it at all likely that we shall ever see Parliament opened by the slaughtering of a garlanded white bull in the House of Lords or Cabinet Ministers leaving sandwiches in Hyde Park as an offering for the Dryads. If such a state of affairs came about, then the Christian apologist would have something to work on. For a Pagan, as history shows, is a man eminently convertible to Christianity. He is essentially the pre-Christian, or sub-Christian, religious man. The post-Christian man of our day differs from him as much as a divorcée differs from a virgin. The Christian and the Pagan have much more in common with one another than either has with the writers of the new statesmen. And those writers would, of course, agree with me.

C. S. Lewis, Is Theism Important, God in the Dock

Christians and Pagans had much more in common with each other than either has with a post-Christian. The gap between those who worship different gods is not so wide as that between those who worship and those who do not.

C. S. Lewis

• Matt wondered if Lewis was reading too much reverence into Paganism. Andrew referenced the character of Merlin in “That Hideous Strength”, who was essentially a combination of Paganism and Christianity, in order to show the nearness that they share.

Christianity is the only frame which has preserved the pleasure of Paganism.

G. K. Chesterton

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.

Matthew 5:17

• To learn more about the Greek myths and philosophy foreshadowing Christ, try reading “The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes” by Dr. Louis Markos. Paul Ford discusses some of this in “Companion to Narnia, Revised Edition: A Complete Guide to the Magical World of C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia” as well.

04. “Letter #24: Oxford (10th August, 1953)”

• In August, Lewis sends St. Calabria a note prior to heading to Ireland, where he describes his love of his home country, but also anguish at the strife between members of dissenting faiths.

There indeed [in Ireland] both yours and ours [Catholic and Protestant] “know not by what Spirit they are led”. They take lack of charity for zeal and mutual ignorance for orthodoxy.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria, August 10th, 1953

• Lewis also has a few words on politics…

I think almost all the crimes which Christians have perpetrated against each other arise from this, that religion is confused with politics. For, above all other spheres of human life, the Devil claims politics for his own, as almost the citadel of his power.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria, August 10th, 1953

05. “Letter #25: Verona (3rd September, 1953)”

• We come to the final letter in the collection from Don Giovanni, who says he has some rare extra time for spiritual exercises.

Divine Providence binds us together with the sweet bonds of love, even if we have never known each other personally. But in love and mutual prayer we know each other well, very well. In heaven we shall see each other in the presence of God by the mercy of the Lord who has redeemed us.

St. Calabria, Letter to C. S. Lewis, September 3rd, 1953

• It seems Lewis’ line in his previous letter that “They take lack of charity for zeal and mutual ignorance for orthodoxy” has struck a chord with the Italian Saint…

These words the Spirit has inspired you with; they brought to my ear and my heart a profound agreement. Truly the Lord has bestowed upon you a special favour; truly the Lord has something which He enjoins on you because of the gravity of our times, that you may labour for the good of the brethren, for the glory of God and Christ, and for the renewal of souls in charity. I call you blessed, and always shall! Because God wills to use you in the carrying out of His works.

St. Calabria, Letter to C. S. Lewis, September 3rd, 1953

• St. Calabria ends the letter by asking Lewis a question; essentially, why is the world messed up? What caused these problems, and what is to be done? Lewis attempts to respond to the question in the following letter…

06. “Letter #26: Oxford (15th September, 1953)”

• Lewis writes about two weeks later in response to Don Giovanni’s question. He says that older people are nostalgic for the past; however, he does see the danger in the new age, which he attributes to the degree of apostasy in Europe, due to the retreat of religious standards, Christian especially, along with old Pagan standards. Lewis does see the virtue of courage and care for the poor in the upcoming generation.
• Lewis also speaks to preparing people to hear the Word…

First let us make the younger generation good pagans and afterwards let us make them Christians.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria, September 14, 1953

• In “The Great Divorce”, Lewis is focusing on the attractions of Christianity. Andrew called Lewis a “proto-evangelist”.
• David thought that Lewis was discussing “The Abolition of Man”, because they are talking about arguments for objective value.

That part of the line where I thought I could serve best was also the part that seemed to be thinnest. And to it I naturally went…

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Preface

• Like Chesterton, Lewis knows that Christianity is not “wanting”…

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.

G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong With the World

07. “Don Giovanni dies…”

• St. Calabria died on December 4th, 1954. Interestingly, Wikipedia says that on December 3rd, Don Giovanni offered himself to God to die in the place of the Pope, Pius XII, who had been ill. The pope rallied and, upon learning of Calabria’s death, sent an official telegram of condolence.

08. “Letter #27: Oxford (5th December, 1954)”

• Not knowing of the death of his cherished correspondent, Lewis writes again in December, likely prompted by the liturgical season.

Good Heavens, dearest Father, what a long silence there has been between us!

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria, December 5th, 1954

• Lewis writes about his approaching move from Oxford to Cambridge University. He says that Mary Magdalene will continue to be his patroness, and he praises Cambridge, noting the importance of Christianity there, and the relative absence of Communists and Logical Positives.

Know at least that I always pray for you, and especially at this time when we are preparing for the dearest of festivals, the Feast of the Holy Nativity.
Let us rejoice together, my Father: though divided in space, yet in spirit and charity we are united: and may you ever pray for C. S. LEWIS.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria, December 5th, 1954

• The guys reflected on what Lewis must have experienced upon learning of his friend’s passing.

The death of a friend is like the loss of a limb.

C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s [Tolkien’s] reaction to a specifically Charles joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him ‘to myself’ now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald.

C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

09. “Letter #28: Oxford (16th December, 1954)”

• Though death separated the two friends, Lewis decides to continue his correspondence with Don Luigi Pedrollo, a member of Giovanni’s congregation. Lewis sends his condolences.

He [Saint Calabria], indeed, from the troubles of this world which he used to feel most heavily, has happily passed over into his own Country; to you without doubt the grief is keen.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to Don Luigi Pedrollo, December 16th, 1954

• Don Louigi must have sent a photograph with his letter, because Lewis thanks him for it.

His appearance is such as I had imagined: the gravity of age well mixed and combined with a certain youthful vivacity.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to Don Luigi Pedrollo, December 16th, 1954

• David noted that, like his master George MacDonald, Lewis always describes holy people as a mix of old age and youth. An obvious example is the character of MacDonald in “The Great Divorce”. The great-great-grandmother in “The Princess and the Goblin” is depicted in similar fashion.

10. “Letter #29: Oxford (19th January, 1959)”

• After a five year hiatus, Lewis sent another letter to Don Luigi, providentially during the week of prayer for Christian unity, which Don Giovanni loved.

11. “Letter #30: Oxford (28th March, 1959)”

• Lewis writes again later that year on Holy Saturday. Apparently in response to a question about his current projects, Lewis states that he is writing “The Four Loves”. Naturally, he also asks for prayers…

…For this is a work ‘full of dangerous hazard’ as Flaccus wrote.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to Don Luigi, January 19th, 1959

12. “Letter #31: Oxford (15th December, 1959)”

• At the end of the year, there is another somber letter from Jack, explaining the return of his wife Joy’s cancer.

May it please the Lord that, whatever is His will for the body, the minds of both of us may remain unharmed; that faith unimpaired may strengthen us, contrition soften us and peace make us joyful.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to Don Luigi, December 15th, 1959

13. “Letter #32: Oxford (16th April, 1960)”

• Easter of the following year, he sends a short note, saying that life is hard, but…

None the less, let us lift up our hearts: for Christ is risen.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to Don Luigi, April 16th, 1960

14. “Letter #33: Oxford (3rd January, 1961)

• At the beginning of the next year, Lewis responds to an inquiry about Don Giovanni’s letters. He explains the fate of the vast majority of his letters.

It is my practice to consign to the flames all letters after two days – not, believe me, because I esteem them of no value, rather because I do not wish to relinquish things often worthy of sacred silence to subsequent reading by posterity.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to Don Luigi, January 3rd, 1961

• He takes a dig at the researchers who unearth these things, and states that this is the last thing that he would want to happen to Don Giovanni’s letters. He mentions a meeting between Pope John XXIII and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and then ends by asking for prayers for his late wife, who died in July.

15. “Letter #34: Oxford (8th April, 1961)”

• The final letter comes in early April. Lewis has been ill, and he gives thanks to Don Luigi for his prayers for both him and Joy. The letter ends with a mixture of Christian and Pagan imagery…

I know that you pour forth your prayers both for my most dearly-longed-for wife and also for me who – now bereaved and as it were halved – journey on, through the Vale of Tears, alone.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to Don Luigi, April 8th, 1961

Blessed are the men whose strength is in thee,
    in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
As they go through the valley of Baca [weeping]
    they make it a place of springs;
    the early rain also covers it with pools.
They go from strength to strength;
    the God of gods will be seen in Zion.

Psalm 84:5-7

• Andrew was reminded of Lewis’ reflections in “A Grief Observed”, which have provided great comfort for many.

Where sky and water meet,
Where the waves grow sweet,
Doubt not, Reepicheep,
To find all you seek, There is the utter East.

C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

16. “Lewis’ Latin style”

• David wanted to close the episode with a few more selected lines from Fr. Andrew Cuneo’s work, found at the Wade Center in “Selected Literary Letters of C. S. Lewis”.
• He writes about Lewis’ Latin style…

Lewis clearly writes his Latin as a twentieth-century Englishman and makes no effort to write in the high style of Cicero or with the sentence length of Caesar. Lewis’s sentences are generally short: … – “know that your house [of priests] is mentioned daily in my prayers”. When his sentences unfurl, phrasing is nevertheless tight and sequential; he does not avail himself of the immense flexibility of word order in Latin. Lewis’s intention is simplicity: his (deceptively) simple style in English asks for and receives a simple, clear, Latin style. In this way, his Latin writing is more like a mediaeval scribe than a renaissance humanist… There is a flavour of the spirituality of Thomas a Kempis throughout the letters, perhaps giving an indication of his Latin reading at the time. This and other mediaeval authors were surely the substance of Lewis’s private and professional reading…

Fr. Andrew Cuneo, Selected Literary Letters of C. S. Lewis

• Fr. Cuneo spends some time talking about Lewis’ Latin sources, and talks about his reading of the Vulgate, but also how he would often simply mentally translate the King James Bible into Latin rather than quote the Vulgate directly. 

17. “Lewis’ ecumenism”

• He has a discussion about Lewis’ ecumenism, saying that…

…when Lewis drew upon scripture in the Latin letters with Fr. Calabria, it was rarely for polemical purposes. The Anglican and the Catholic may have been writing in lingua Catholica, but Lewis was determined to avoid all issues of denominational conflict.

The Latin correspondence nevertheless does add to an understanding of Lewis in relation to Catholicism. The Latin letters can be placed alongside letters to Fr. Peter Milward, Dom Bede Griffiths, and Mary Van Deusen to show that Lewis was determined not to discuss the issue of Catholicism at length. It is Lewis’s silence on the issue that speaks loudest. In the Latin letters, as in Mere Christianity, one finds Lewis first of all denying his ability to treat the issue of schism: … – “However, I am a layman, indeed the most lay of laymen, and least skilled in the deeper questions of sacred theology”. Next Lewis deflects the issues of partisan theology to those who are qualified to address them: “things which are to be treated by bishops and learned men” – …. In conclusion, he says he will only focus on areas of denominational agreement. In this way, by fraternal agreement, charity, and prayer, Lewis treats the Protestant and Catholic schism. His treatment is oblique, perhaps, from the standpoint of disputation; but it is sharp and direct from the standpoint of what he thought would actually heal any schism.

Fr. Andrew Cuneo, Selected Literary Letters of C. S. Lewis

• David’s favourite section was this…

Lewis’s periodic style, his moral sentiments, his clauses balanced by antithesis: these are the most classical elements of his English: “Charity begins at home: so does uncharity”, “Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered”. His style brings the reader face-to-face with his meaning yet softens the contact by a symmetry of clauses. Moreover, the balance and poise of his statements use nothing other than his native Anglo-Saxon vocabulary. This means that classical elements of his style are packaged in strong, monosyllabic, diction. For instance: “we must lay before [God] what is in us, not what ought to be in us” – fifteen monosyllables with only one exception. The result is a style full of short, well-candenced, but eminently memorable sententiae. Lewis is English in diction, Christian in content, but Roman in his ability to create a good adage.

Fr. Andrew Cuneo, Selected Literary Letters of C. S. Lewis

• Lewis certainly had a background in the classics. From a young age, he started reading Latin from the “Aeneid”.

Wrap-Up

Concluding Thoughts

• Discussing other letters of Lewis, Andrew reminded readers of C. S. Lewis’ book on prayer “Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer”, which was an imagined correspondance. “Yours, Jack” is another good resource.
• Finally, since this is the last letter collection this season, at the end of this season, we’ll be discussing “Letters From Jack“, which is the book we brought back into print which was produced by the Honors Class of Azusa Pacific university. We’re going to have a video chat session open to all our Patreon supporters, and also anyone who purchased Letters From Jack. Try eating it over a snack, because…

Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.

C. S. Lewis

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