I loved the way C.S Lewis in the Narnia series as , 'Aslan' the Lion (The Lion of Judah). Revelation 5:5 and one of the elders *said to me, “Stop weeping; behold, the Lion that is from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome so as to open the book and its seven seals.” Genesis 49:9-10 “Judah is a lion’s whelp; From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He couches, he lies down as a lion, And as a lion, who dares rouse him up? “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, Until Shiloh comes, And to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. The Lion is wonderful to encounter but not to be messed about. After all He is a Lion. This has sometimes been my own experience with the Lord in prayer. he is my best friend but He can scare too. Sometimes in prayer He has been like someone who hugs a very little child with so much love I though I was going to die. Painful but wonderful at the same time. But twice in my life I have experienced something very wonderful that brought a certain joyful Fear and Terror, once on the island of Cyprus and once in the city of Jerusalem. It was as if there was a roaring sound in the distance and a feeling of holiness so intense it did bring a real Holy Fear and Terror and experience of the Numinous. With it is was a though a Great Rushing Fire swept around me as though at Pentecost. It was , not so much an inner experience but one all around me as though like a mighty whirlwind of light and fire sweeping all around me and sweeping away into the distance. No apparent reason for it to come, no apparent reason for it to go. Just a random visitor. It took me a while studying Scripture to discover what it was. The Shekinah, the Glory of the Lord. Psalm 18:7-15 Then the earth shook and quaked; And the foundations of the mountains were trembling And were shaken, because He was angry. Smoke went up out of His nostrils, And fire from His mouth devoured; Coals were kindled by it. He bowed the heavens also, and came down With thick darkness under His feet. read more. He rode upon a cherub and flew; And He sped upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness His hiding place, His canopy around Him, Darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies. From the brightness before Him passed His thick clouds, Hailstones and coals of fire. The Lord also thundered in the heavens, And the Most High uttered His voice, Hailstones and coals of fire. He sent out His arrows, and scattered them, And lightning flashes in abundance, and routed them. Then the channels of water appeared, And the foundations of the world were laid bare At Your rebuke, O Lord, At the blast of the breath of Your nostrils. Ezekiel 10:18 Verse Concepts Then the glory of the Lord departed from the threshold of the temple and stood over the cherubim. Hebrews 9:5 Verse Concepts and above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat; but of these things we cannot now speak in detail.
I love what one lady wrote about God, 'God is not a pussy cat, you cannot take Him on your knee and pet Him!' It is at the very moment that we think we understand Him, that in some sense we won Him or have control Him that He will jump out of our arms and race away. It is not for us to take God captive, it is for God to take us prisoner. That is why I often think of the Holy Spirit as a prankster, a practical joker, the blower over of all our Houses of Cards. He loves being Random and keeping us a little on edge. He hates us when we have any trace of smugness or complacency. When He comes to visit the homes of our hearts He never rings ahead first. He loves to surprise. he loves being random. He loves having the Edge and being the Edge. Like a Bass player in a Heavy Metal Band. He thinks a little bit of shock is good for our inner systems. If He thinks a good solid punch on the nose will help us out a good solid nose punch is what we'll get. He won't hesitate for a second and if He reckons we need a few such reminders , He'll wallop away on in. He can be very kind , but He's just as willing to be very, very brutal. He'll do whatever it takes, as often as it takes.
I think the warning will reveal the Shekinah Glory of God to us mere mortals - Luke 2:9 And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened.
https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-all-along-the-watchtower-lyrics Padraig, your notion of the Holy Spirit as a 'Joker' might fill a gap in a small puzzle that has intrigued me for years with Bob Dylan's song, 'All Along the Watchtower'. In this song, which I interpret as being about The Second Coming, I have long taken the 'thief' as The Thief Who comes 'in the middle of the night', but I couldn't figure out the identity of the 'joker'. If the second of the two riders is indeed the Holy Ghost, He is intriguingly described as being a Person who has become quite frustrated and wishing for 'relief' from the excess of 'confusion' that He sees all around Him. I can imagine to some tiny human degree that, if a Divine Person can become frustrated, the awareness of His Holy Name being invoked by blasphemous heretics as an excuse to oppose Divine Teaching, most particularly that which we received directly from Our Lord Himself, could be a most likely cause. Yet, the two riders keep on approaching. This ominous song is best listened to in the sparse, original version. There is too much storm und drang in the Hendrix one. I have read most of Lewis. It's fair to say that I owe most of what hope there is for the salvation of my soul to this great Belfastman. I haven't read the Narnia books, but as they were written for children, perhaps I am not ready for them yet. I'm now reading Father Faber's 'Bethlehem'. This wonderful, mystic priest had such a deep insight into the reality of God, and such a wondrous way with words to describe the indescribable, that the first chapters I found very heavy going. I ploughed on, trying to grasp as much as I could and now I'm finding the going a little easier. Worth reading for his explanations of the Life of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Immaculate Conception and much else...and I'm only quarter-way through the book, so far. One particular detail of Father Faber's stands out for me at the moment. Having already described Christ as The Word from all eternity, He who has created us along with the entire universe, maintains all creation and will judge us at the moment of our death, he describes how the unborn Jesus in His Mother's womb continued these Divine Functions. That, even as Our Lady was visiting Elizabeth up in the hills and going about her business in Bethlehem, the Unborn was judging those souls who were dying around Him. Sobering.
Love the picture in your moniker! The likes of the Fatima (and Narnia) children have that uncompromised, trusting, innocent sincerity necessary for encounter with the Divine. It's so hard to keep this and, once lost, so very, very hard to get it back. We need some kind of 'warning', without a doubt.
I listened to the most beautiful and very funny talk from CS Lewis on , 'Xmas', which had me laughing last night: It is very short 10 minutes but worth listening to. Did you know that the Mountain of Mournes was the inspiration for, 'Narnia'? There is a recent film about him which I am dying to see. I had no idea he was a militant atheist who converted: You can rent the whole film on utube. I must do this. Wonderful.
Imagine a ten year old boy walking down the street with his father. Imagine someone tries to rob them, the father fights him and knocks the guy out. The little boy will never regard his father in the same light, his relationship with the dad has changed, he now regards his father with a certain reverential awe or loving fear. Or again his father returns from a war, wounded. The little boy on seeing the dads wound certainly is aware that people tried to kill his father and his father may have killed other men. Things change forever. It was like that at Fatima when the kids were shown hell. If you have tears, prepare to shed them!
Apparently there is a very holy priest in the USA who said it will be next March 25th. He just said this privately to a very few people. I have been thinking and praying about this. He may well be right. I was reading today the latest message from St Michael the Arcangel to Valeria Copponi and he warns of a Great Sign from Heaven approaching.
A St Paul for the twentieth century...and beyond. Lewis made his way to Christ seemingly mostly through his exercise of reason. His powers of reason were formidable and yet he was very humble about them. His first edition of the book 'Miracles', an argument for the existence of God, was critiqued by the great English Catholic philosopher, Elizabeth Anscombe (along with her philosopher husband, she was responsible for ensuring that a priest was present at Ludwig Wittgenstein's deathbed), who found a flaw in one of his arguments. Reputedly, Lewis was devastated, but dusted himself off, put back on his thinking cap, refined his case and ran it by Anscombe again, who passed the revision, which was entered into the 2nd edition. It's reassuring to see such great minds as these finding Christianity so reasonable. Despite all the atheistic and scientistic propaganda, the atheists aren't the smart ones. Unlike being the open-minded, free-thinkers as they like to look upon themselves, their big problem is their narrow-mindedness and adamant refusal to follow where logic leads.
St Alphonsus Ligouri once famously said that God is inclined to have a, 'I have had it up to here', moment with individual souls. That God forgives and forgives and forgives but that finally He has a kind of breaking point when He says, 'Enough is enough 'I've had it with this person. No more forgiveness. He also said to St Faustina, 'Those who will not enter through the door of my Mercy will enter through the door of my Justice'. From Marian apparitions we know that God has reached a , 'I've had it up to here ', moment with the entire planet.
The Feast of the Annunciation and the day of the Incarnation of Our Lord. Highly appropriate and not only because perhaps the primary theme of the Warning will plausibly be the killing of the innocent, so-called 'non-persons' in their mothers' wombs.
https://apilgriminnarnia.com/2021/08/30/tolkien-lewis-eliot/ 'C.S.L. of course had some oddities and could sometimes be irritating. He was after all and remained an Irishman of Ulster. But he did nothing for effect; he was not a professional clown, but a natural one, when a clown at all. He was generous-minded, on guard against all prejudices, though a few were too deep-rooted in his native background to be observed by him. That his literary opinions were ever dictated by envy (as in the case of T. S. Eliot) is a grotesque calumny. After all it is possible to dislike Eliot with some intensity even if one has no aspirations to poetic laurels oneself. Well of course I could say more, but I must draw the line. Still I wish it could be forbidden that after a great man is dead, little men should scribble over him, who have not and must know they have not sufficient knowledge of his life and character to give them any key to the truth. Lewis was not ‘cut to the quick’ by his defeat in the election to the professorship of poetry: he knew quite well the cause. I remember that we had assembled soon after in our accustomed tavern and found C.S.L. sitting there, looking (and since he was no actor at all probably feeling) much at ease. ‘Fill up!’ he said, ‘and stop looking so glum. The only distressing thing about this affair is that my friends seem to be upset.’ And he did not ‘readily accept’ the chair in Cambridge. It was advertised, and he did not apply. Cambridge of course wanted him, but it took a lot of diplomacy before they got him. His friends thought it would be good for him: he was mortally tired, after nearly 30 years, of the Baileys of this world and even of the Duttons. It proved a good move, and until his health began too soon to fail it gave him a great deal of happiness.' J. R.R Tolkein. C S Lewis Square, Belfast.
Lovely. Lovely window in on CSL by one who knew him well. I especially like Tolkien's comment that after a great man's death littler men should not scribble over him.
It is certainly now the case that modernism in poetry has ultimately preceded the near-demise of the genre. Like so many other things, perhaps Lewis could see this coming...hence his dislike of Elliot's poetry?
Yes. So true. I always have admired CSL's genuine humility. He said of his younger self " a young man cannot be too careful of what he reads" because he read his way to God. Or rather God baited him with Fr Brown's golden hook and pulled him in with a silver line.
