I think that the Church is the only thing that is going to make the terrible world we are coming to endurable; the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.
This may explain the lack of bitterness in the stories. The stories are hard but they are hard because there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism. I believe that there are many rough beasts now slouching toward Bethlehem to be born and that I have reported the progress of a few of them, and when I see these stories described as horror stories I am always amused because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.
I myself am afflicted with time, as I do not work out on account of an energy-depriving ailment and my work in, being creative, can go on only a few hours a day. My avocation is raising peacocks, something that requires everything of the peacock and nothing of me, so time is always at hand. One of the awful things about writing when you are a Christian is that for you the ultimate reality is the Incarnation, the present reality is the Incarnation, and nobody believes in the Incarnation; that is, nobody in your audience.
My audience are the people who think God is dead. At least these are the people I am conscious of writing for. Dogma can in no way limit a limitless God. The person outside the Church attaches a different meaning to it than the person in.
For me a dogma is only a gateway to contemplation and is an instrument of freedom and not of restriction. It preserves mystery for the human mind. Henry James said the young woman of the future would know nothing of mystery or manners. He had no business to limit it to one sex.
For you to think this would be possible because of your ignorance of me; for me to think it would be sinful in a high degree. I am not a mystic and I do not lead a holy life. Not that I can claim any interesting or pleasurable sins my sense of the devil is strong but I know all about the garden variety, pride, gluttony, envy and sloth, and what is more to the point, my virtues are as timid as my vices.
I think sin occasionally brings one closer to God, but not habitual sin and not this petty kind that blocks every small good. A working knowledge of the devil can be very well had from resisting him. However, the individual in the Church is, no matter how worthless himself, a part of the Body of Christ and a participator in the Redemption. There is no blueprint that the Church gives for understanding this.
It is a matter of faith and the Church can force no one to believe it. When I ask myself how I know I believe, I have no satisfactory answer at all, no assurance at all, no feeling at all. I can only say with Peter, Lord I believe, help my unbelief. It is inseparable from Christian contemplation. Dogma is inseparable from contemplative love.
What happens in the simplicity of contemplation is not that dogma is surpassed, but rather that, the person knows that there is truth in the revealed mysteries and in the explicit words used to bring them to us, but more truth than they can express.
It is the overflow of meaning that is experienced, not the lack of meaning. Charles Cardinal Journet writes that, in contemplation,. All the dogmas thus subsist in the faith of the contemplative, but like the stars in the midday sunlight.
In fact they are never so necessarily, so effectively present. The passing light which throws them into the shade strengthens them to a wonderful degree. When it withdraws, they reappear like stars in the evening sky, but invested with, and illuminated by, a little bit of its brightness. After they are covered with the yet-simpler light of the sun, we understand their light better.
Their light is more connatural to us. It is more understandable to us — but deeper, too. Dogma gives the only outline of where it is safe to lay our head in contemplation. Contemplation strengthens the intensity of the meaning of the words of dogma.
The map of dogma becomes clearer and more easily followed. Contemplation again can strengthen the intensity of the loved truth.
And so the cycle can spiral out of control — in Love. Contemplative in the Mud. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account.
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