Prayer In A Time of War
![missa_thumb[3]](http://cdn4.ricochet.com/var/ezwebin_site/storage/images/media/images/missa_thumb-3/1114749-1-eng-US/missa_thumb-3_lightbox.jpg "missa_thumb[3]")
"Yet war does do something to death. It forces us to remember it. The only reason why the cancer at sixty or the paralysis at seventy-five do not bother us is that we forget them. War makes death real to us, and that would have been regarded as one of its blessings by most of the great Christians of the past. They thought it good for us to be always aware of our mortality. I am inclined to think they were right. All the animal life in us, all schemes of happiness that centered in this world, were always doomed to a final frustration. In ordinary times only a wise man can realize it. Now the stupidest of us knows. We see unmistakably the sort of universe in which we have all along been living, and must come to terms with it. If we had foolish un-Christian hopes about human culture, they are now shattered. If we thought we were building up a heaven on earth, if we looked for something that would turn the present world from a place of pilgrimage into a permanent city satisfying the soul of man, we are disillusioned, and not a moment too soon. But if we thought for some souls, and at some times, the life of learning, humbly offered to God, was, in its own small way, one of the appointed approaches to the Divine reality and the Divine beauty which we hope to enjoy hereafter, we can think so still."
-- C.S. Lewis Learning in War Time
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Mar '11
Re: Prayer In A Time of War
To be contemplated while listening to Haydn's Missa in Tempore Belli.
Jun '10
Re: Prayer In A Time of War
Wouldn't you love the chance to sit down and talk with C. S. Lewis for a day? All that sheer goodness, faith, and brilliance. He has been a gift from God to keep my faith strong.
Sep '10
Re: Prayer In A Time of War
At the risk of being accused of excessive atonality and modernism, I can't help but think of Zbigniew Preisner's Requiem for My Friend
Edited on September 10, 2011 at 9:39pmApr '11
Re: Prayer In A Time of War
Pseudo, thanks as always for you posts. I'm now reading through "Mere Christianity" again and am struck by Lewis' ability to instruct without lecturing. He always respects each person's ability to see the truth for themselves. He is more like a lantern showing you that the path to truth is before you and can be discovered but never like a map in giving me the roads he has used to get there.
Excellent my friend, excellent.
Jun '10
Re: Prayer In A Time of War
That picture is amazing.
Aug '11
Re: Prayer In A Time of War
I've always thought C.S. Lewis was a tedious, over-rated writer. This passage reminds me why.
War is some sort of blessing because it reminds us of mortality? Ask the actual victims of war what sort of blessing it is; I suspect they have a more realistic perspective about war's "blessings" than the author of fantastic novels and pseudo-intellectual religious tracts.
Edited on September 11, 2011 at 8:10amFeb '11
Re: Prayer In A Time of War
Tom, you are, of course, entitled to your opinion of Lewis as a writer, however one would think you would at least be cognisant of not only his battlefield experience in WWI, but the loss of many close friends in that horrendous war.
Lewis speaks from deep personal experience, can you say the same?
Apr '11
Re: Prayer In A Time of War
A day? Would a day be enough? I think I'd need a day just to get past some feeble stumbling attempts to express something he'd wrap up in a sentence or two. But yeah, absolutely.
Apr '11
Re: Prayer In A Time of War
Tom Paine: I've always thought C.S. Lewis was a tedious, over-rated writer. This passage reminds me why.
War is some sort of blessing because it reminds us of mortality? Ask the actual victims of war what sort of blessing it is; I suspect they have a more realistic perspective about war's "blessings" than the author of fantastic novels and pseudo-intellectual religious tracts. · Sep 10 at 9:58pm
Edited on Sep 10 at 11:10 pm
I'm pretty sure Lewis would encourage us to "look through" his writing to the message contained within it.
Feb '11
Re: Prayer In A Time of War
Pseudodionysius - Can you tell us more about that picture? I assume it is an actual photograph?
Sep '10
Re: Prayer In A Time of War
CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien both fought in the Battle of the Somme in World War I. John Garth wrote an excellent book on the influence of that war on Tolkien:
Edited on September 11, 2011 at 10:52pmSep '10
Re: Prayer In A Time of War
According to the comboxes at the New Liturgical Movement blog, its St.Paul Cathedral, Munster, Germany, AD 1946, after World War II, with the wreckage still very much in evidence. Oh, and contrary to rumor, I have no idea who the commenter "Boethius" is in the thread Mass in Wartime
Jan '11
Re: Prayer In A Time of War
The grace that God promises transcends this life. Although we treasure this life, our mortality reminds us that God is beyond it. If we cling to this mortal life, we abandon the God who exists beyond it.
He who would save his life must lose it.
A young man can't seriously contemplate death from old age or cancer; his youth alone distracts him. But war is death also, and it cares nothing about age. A young man may ignore the mortality of old age, but a soldier can't ignore the mortality of war. It aggressively chases him.
9/11 was the same kind of event; it was death that barged into consciousness, and forced us to confront mortality. We contemplated other things as well, like justice, honor, evil, courage. But among our reflections, most of us spent some time confronting our mortality. Death appeared for those people literally out of the blue - we couldn't help but wonder how we would have responded?
And yet, confronting mortality is a challenge to your allegiance. Do you belong to this world alone, or are you willing to believe in a world beyond this one?
Who said grace was soothing?