St. Paul's Episcopal Church

It is Advent—hooray!

...“The question before each of us is not “Can someone lead a good life without Christianity?” The question is, “Can I?” ...

It’s our time of preparing ourselves spiritually for the birth/coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Top help do that, we are holding our Wednesday evening celebrations this year on the subject of C.S. Lewis, one of the great Anglican spiritual writers of our time!    

C.S. Lewis is famous for writing “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” and many other works of serious spiritual theology, such as “Mere Christianity.” Here is a brief excerpt from his writing:

“The question before each of us is not “Can someone lead a good life without Christianity?” The question is, “Can I?” I hear someone whimpering on with his question, “Will it help me? Will it make me happy? Do you really think I’d be better if I became a Christian?” Well, if you must have it, my answer is “Yes.” But I don’t like giving an answer at all at this stage. Here is door, behind which, according to some people, the secret of the universe is waiting for you. Either that’s true or it isn’t. And if it isn’t, then what the door really conceals is simply the greatest fraud, the most colossal “sell” on record. Isn’t it obviously the job of every man (that is a man and not a rabbit) to try to find out which, and then to devote his full energies either to serving this tremendous secret or to exposing and destroying this gigantic humbug? Faced with such an issue, can you really remain wholly absorbed in your own blessed “moral development”?

All right, Christianity will do you good—a great deal more good than you ever wanted or expected. And the first bit of good it will do you is to hammer into your head (you won’t enjoy that!) the fact that what you have hitherto called “good”—all that about “leading a decent life” and “being kind”—isn’t quite the magnificent and all-important affair you supposed. It will teach you that in fact you can’t be “good” (not for twenty-four hours) on your own moral efforts. And then it will teach you that even if you were, you still wouldn’t have achieved the purpose for which you were created. Mere morality is not the end of life. You were made for something quite different from that. The people who keep on asking if they can’t lead a decent life without Christ, don’t know what life is about; if they did they would know that “a decent life” is mere machinery compared with the thing we men are really made for.

Morality is indispensable: but the Divine Life, which gives itself to us and which calls us to be gods, intends for us something in which morality will be swallowed up. We are to be re-made. All the rabbit in us is to disappear—the worried, conscientious, ethical rabbit as well as the cowardly and sensual rabbit. We shall bleed and squeal as the handfuls of fur come out; and then, surprisingly, we shall find underneath it all a thing we have never yet imagined: a real Man, an ageless god, a son of God, strong, radiant, wise, beautiful, and drenched in joy.

“When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.” 2 The idea of reaching “a good life” without Christ is based on a double error. Firstly, we cannot do it; and secondly, in setting up “a good life” as our final goal, we have missed the very point of our existence. Morality is a mountain which we cannot climb by our own efforts; and if we could we should only perish in the ice and unbreathable air of the summit, lacking those wings with which the rest of the journey has to be accomplished. For it is from there that the real ascent begins. The ropes and axes are “done away” and the rest is a matter of flying.”

So, please, I urge and implore you, please come Wednesdays for Evening Prayer at 6:00pm, and then these edifying spiritual programs and refreshments.

Next, I hope you’ve noticed that we now have a Labyrinth! Thanks to Stephen Geib and his fellow Boy Scouts and adult leaders for building it! Labyrinths started centuries ago in European cities and cathedrals as a path for spiritual pilgrims—seekers, like all of us—to slowly walk through as a tool for slowing, centering, and meditating. I am confident that you will find it helpful to your own prayer life; we will soon distribute instructions, dedicate it, and so on, so please watch for that, although of course you can certainly start using it immediately in any way that helps you pray and meditate, preferably on the Scriptures or materials in the Prayer Book.      

Father Bruce