The Place of Joy in Times of Crisis
On October 22, 1939, less than two months after England declared war on Germany, C.S. Lewis wrote his memorable essay, Learning in a Time of War. It was a brilliant piece explaining how the desire for truth was such an exalted vocation for man, that not even the terrors of war should distract from it. This essay borrows from Lewis's profoundly Christian insight.
First, permit me to bring you back to the mid 1950s.
Alger Hiss, the notorious State Department spy, had just been sent to prison. Not on the charges of espionage (which the House Committee on Unamerican Activities had failed to convict him) but on the charge of perjury.
The star witness who had brought this traitor to the attention of the American people was a former Communist himself, Whittaker Chambers. Brilliant writer and senior editor of Time, he had recently published Witness, his odyssey from a Communist agent and atheist to American patriot and Christian. It was a tour d force; a gripping tale of Communist tactics and conversion, graced in the elegance of his magical style. These struggles left Chambers resolute, albeit decidedly saturnine.
Fascinated by Chamber's spiritual struggles, the writer and conservative firebrand William F. Buckley lost no time in befriending Chambers. In a now-famous letter to Buckley, Chambers wrote with his characteristic melancholy:
I never really hoped to do more in the Hiss case then give the children of men a slightly better, only slightly better, chance to fight a battle already largely foredoomed...
How odd that most of the world seems to have missed the point in Witness; that it seems to suppose that I said: "Destroy Communism and you can go back to business as usual." Of course, what I really said was: "This struggle is universal and mortal and only by means of it, on condition that you are willing to die that your faith may live, can you conceivably recover the greatness which is in the souls of men. When I left Communism, I knew I was leaving the winning side."
Such a brilliant assessment. Yet shot through with a deadening despair.
Catholics can certainly identify with his unsparing account of our present condition, but not with his gloom. Or they shouldn't. Satan's great temptation in these dark days is to strangle our spirit and leave us with nothing but the darkness. And that darkness leads to madness: a madness of irrational conclusions, unreasonable strategies, intemperate actions, and uncareful speech. How pleasing to the Prince of Lies to watch the best and brightest Catholics yield to this chaos rather than joining arms to make war upon it. Our lesson should come from Sarah, Lot's wife. As they fled Sodom and Gomorrah God commanded them to not turn around and look back. Sarah did. And she turned to salt.
It is always a defeat to steadily gaze at the chaos, for gradually our souls turn to salt. Even a doctrinaire Nihilist like Friedrich Nietzsche possessed the genius to recognize the ugly powers of evil, "Do not look long into the abyss, for you will find it looking back."
Clearly, Catholics have the obligation to know perfectly the evil they face, but not to obsess about it. Such rot does not deserve our attention. We look enough so as to conquer. No more; no less.
C.S. Lewis gives compelling and ingenious commentary to this fascination with chaos in his Screwtape Letters, shining with uncanny insights. In this passage replace 'noise' with 'gloom' as Screwtape, a senior devil, counsels his beloved nephew, Wormwood:
Music and silence - how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered hell - though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years could express - no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise - Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exalted, ruthless, and virile - Noise, which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth. The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it. Research is in progress.
Chambers made a fatal turn in declaring that, in abandoning Communism, he left 'the winning side.' No surprise. He did not enjoy the light of the Catholic Faith. If he did, he would have known that as a Catholic he was on 'the winning side.'
Martyrs embraced their death enveloped in this bright supernatural confidence.
Confessors, like Francis Xavier, traveled the world proclaiming the Holy Faith and planting the Holy Cross in faraway places.
Heroic souls like Saint Peter Claver boarded stomach-turning slave ships in Columbia so that he could console and baptize African slaves.
Why? They knew they were on 'the winning side.'
Similarly, ordinary Catholics today take the Faith to non-Catholics despite every effort by not a few clerics to peddle the fraud of 'universal salvation.' They do, because they know they are on the 'winning side.' Special graces inspire them, even as some Shepherds in the commanding heights of the Church impose a ban on what they call 'proselytizing.'
Being on the 'winning side' is accompanied by a singular and unruffled joy. Too often some Catholics forget that the certain sign of God's favor is the presence of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, which may be a result of too much YouTube and too little Baltimore Catechism. Recall the first three: "charity, joy, and peace." They are the litmus test of God's presence; the sure sign of God's pleasure.
Pause upon joy for a moment. For a Catholic in a state of sanctifying grace and always seeking the will of God, it is a permanent possession.
Impregnable, for it sees all things as part of God's Providential Design: be they sufferings, reversals, contradictions, betrayals, tragedies, or defeats. To this, Saint Paul to the Romans: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Whose name is Love? The Holy Spirit.
Only the Holy Spirit's divine work can produce such startling results. Recall the old story of Caligula. This demented Roman emperor would delight in the games of the Coliseum, especially when Christians were exposed to ghoulish tortures and death. It is told that after the spectacle he would order his Praetorian Guard to escort him to the arena to take sadistic pleasure at the corpses, imagining he would see the faces of the martyrs twisted in torment. After inspecting body after body, in a fit of madness, he roared; "but why do all have smiles on their faces?!"
Why indeed.
It is important not to confuse joy with giddiness or hilarity. The latter are the mere reflections of sentimentality or feelings. They are fleeting, followed by instant dissipation. Their origins are purely human and disordered, preambles to compromised souls.
Joy of the Holy Spirit saturates man to his metaphysical depths, with as indelible a possession as his own name. For it is not of human making, or it would be as fragile as human life. The Third Person's fruit of joy bears the mark of Heaven, hence invincible. This fruit is not contrived or invented; not produced in a laboratory, or conjured in a therapy session.
Neither can it be roused by the fabricated pseudo-liturgies whose number is legion. Nor the Pelagian antics of some prayer groups, where hysteria parades as piety. All of this is what Saint Paul meant when he wrote to the Ephesians: "And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption."
Yet this fruit of joy does not injure the ontological nature of man: It repairs, complements, and elevates it. Tears will still be shed at heartbreaks, tragedies, and catastrophe, but always commingled with joy. Joy does not camouflage these inevitable woes indigenous to this valley of tears. Quite marvelously, joy is the result of a supernatural vantage point that leaves a tormented soul still seeing grand divine truths writ large.
Jean Paul Sartre's dilemma was that he only saw the wrenching coils of human suffering and cursed it as absurdity. Without seeing through God's eyes, who wouldn't? Never ought we to hide from the reality of suffering and the chaos of this world; neither should we be fixated upon it. But when we look at it through the eyes of Faith, anguish becomes redemptive, releasing us from its brutalizing clutches to enjoy the "glorious liberty of the sons of God" (Rom. 8:21).
Joy proceeds from one more source: the supernatural virtue of Hope. Because this virtue is supernatural (theological, cf. caused by God alone), it is never to be confused with optimism. Optimism is its pale stepchild. It is born of the natural calculations of men, and therefore stands upon the shifting sands of human naivete. It is unreliable, untrustworthy, and often a traitor, as are all human creations. Supernatural Hope is the granite-like confidence that with God's grace all things are possible and no obstacle insuperable. It is the thick bedrock upon which our efforts stand. Yes, it shocks the world, for the men of this world see only dread and impossible escape. Hope shouts into the deepest parts of our souls, "with God all things are possible" (Mk. 10:27). W.H. Auden's poetry captures this chiaroscuro mystery, "stumbling forward, rejoicing."
In these days Catholics are not made to crouch in hiding, or to wring our hands in self-pity. We are made of better stuff. Grace is knitted into our souls. Joy too.
We are on the 'winning side.' It's time to act like it.
Editor’s Note - Corrections
In regard to Dr. Kwasniewski’s article “How Protestants, Orthodox, Magisterialists and Traditionalists Differ on the Three Pillars of Catholicism,” it has been brought to the editor’s attention by an archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia that, in point of fact, many Orthodox theologians teach that contraception is a serious sin and contrary to the tradition of the Fathers (and many pieces of evidence were provided by the priest). Inasmuch as the article implied that the Orthodox tout court allow or accept contraception, this error deserves to be corrected.
In the Winter-Spring 2022 issue p. 72, the claim was incorrectly made that “There are seven traditional orders: four major (bishop, priest, deacon, and subdeacon), and three minor (acolyte, exorcist, and porter).”
The book under review states, correctly, that Catholic tradition speaks of three major orders (priest, deacon, subdeacon) and four minor orders (lector, acolyte, exorcist, porter), with the episcopate as a separate rank of governance.
In the Summer 2022 issue there is an inaccuracy in Michael Foley’s review of Americana Latine by Andrew Dinan. The Vatican letter to the President of the Republic of Texas was written by Cardinal Giacomo Filipo Fransoni under the reign of Pope Gregory XVI and addressed to then-President Mirabeau B. Lamar.
We sincerely regret these mistakes.
Father John A. Perricone is Professor of Philosophy at Saint Francis College (Brooklyn, NY). He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Fordham University (Bronx, New York). Numerous talks by Father Perricone can be found on our website www.KeepTheFaith.org. Father Perricone offers the Tridentine Mass each Sunday at 9:00 am at Our Lady of Sorrows Church, Jersey City. To reach Father: jper287@aol.com
(Article was originally published in The Latin Mass Magazine: The Place of Joy in Times of Crisis, Fall 2022)
[ Image credit: La Descente du Saint Esprit by Charles Le Brun, 1854 ]
