The Weight of Glory

Last night, I attended a brilliant talk hosted by the University of Minnesota's MacLaurinCSF, the campus's Christian study center (which, under the leadership of the energetic Bryan Bademan, is thriving in its mission of  "Strengthening Christian thinking & bridging Church and University").  The talk was by Roger Lundin, Arthur F. Holmes Professor of Faith and Learning at Wheaton College, on the topic: "No Ordinary People: C.S. Lewis on the Life of the Mind and the End(s) of Love."

Lundin focused on this 1942 sermon of C.S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory" which ends with these brilliant words.  I wonder how different a Presidential debate (and for that matter, all political discourse) might sound if THIS were on the forefront of everyone's minds?

The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour's glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.  It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.  All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.  It is in light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.  There are no ordinary people.  You have never talked to a mere mortal.  Nations, cultures, arts, civilization -- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.  But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn.  We must play.  But our merriment must be of that kind (and, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously--no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.  And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner--no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.  Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. . . .