Collected Letters Volume Three: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963. Walter Hooper

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СКАЧАТЬ if I may. Lovely.

I’ve just been having Mumps. Humphrey¹³⁰ kept on quoting me bits out of The Problem of Pain, which I call a bit thick. Love and deep thanks to both.

      J

      

       TO GENIA GOELZ (P):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. September 12, 1951

      Dear Mrs Goelz

      There is no doubt that laymen, and women, can baptise. The validity would, I suppose, depend on whether you regard the church into which the child is baptised as a part of the true church. I am very impressed that an Episcopalian will not accept Presbyterian baptism (and at the rudeness of his method) but I dare say he knows the rule. I fear I don’t. If I were you I would ask another (quieter and more amiable) Episcopalian parson. Personal animosities or friendships ought to have nothing to do with the question. In great haste.

      Yours sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

      Magdalen etc

      Sept 12/1951

      Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

      It is v. remarkable (or wd. be if we did not know that God arranges things) that you shd. write about our vicarious sufferings when another correspondent has recently written on the same matter.

I have not a word to say against the doctrine that Our Lord suffers in all the sufferings of His people (see Acts IX.6)¹³¹ or that when we willingly accept what we suffer for others and offer it to God on their behalf, then it may be united with His sufferings and, in Him, may help to their redemption or even that of others whom we do not dream of. So that it is not in vain: tho’ of course we must not count on seeing it work out exactly as we, in our present ignorance, might think best. The key text for this view is Colossians I.24.¹³² Is it not, after all, one more application of the truth that we are all ‘members of one another’?¹³³ I wish I had known more when I wrote the Problem of Pain.

      God bless you all. Be sure that Grace flows into you and out of you and through you in all sorts of ways, and no faithful submission to pain in yourself or in another will be wasted.

      Yours ever

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. Sept 12/51

      Dear Mrs. Jessup

Yes, I shd. jolly well think I have met that problem of the division between loving hearts when one comes to believe and have known something of it in my own life.¹³⁴ The poem on Galahad at Caerleon¹³⁵ touches it, doesn’t it? Our Lord foresaw it: see Luke XII 49-53.¹³⁶

I have not the ghost of anything that cd. be called a ‘solution’. Perhaps this pain cannot be avoided: is it not the tension between the Church and the World breaking out in each household. Sometimes the unconverted party, hitherto quite kind, becomes almost diabolical:^* but the other often wins him (or her) over in the end. (I don’t think you are conceited at all!)

      Yours sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford, England Sept. 13th 1951

      Dilectissime Pater—

      Insolito gaudio affectus sum tuâ espistolâ et eo magis quod audivi te aegritudine laborare; interdum timui ne forte mortem obisses. Minime tamen cessavi ab orationibus pro te: ñeque enim debet illud Flumen Mortis duke commercium caritatis et cogitationum abolere. Nunc gaudeo quia credo (quamquam taces de valetudine–noli contemnere corpus, Fratrem Asinum, ut dixit Sanctus Franciscus!) tibi iam bene aut saltern melius esse. Mitto ad te fabulam meam nuper Italice versam; in qua sane magis lusi quam laboravi. Fantasiae meae liberas remisi habenas haud tamen (spero) sine respectu ad aedificationem et meam et proximi. Nescio utrum hujusmodi nugis dilecteris; at si non tu, fortasse quidam juvenis aut puella ex bonis tuis líberís amabit. Equidem post longam successionem modicorum morborum (quorum nomina Itálica nescio) iam valeo. Quinquagesimum diem natalem sacerdotii tui gratu-lationibus, precibus, benedictionibus saluto. Vale. Oremus pro invicem semper in hoc mundo et in futuro.

      C. S. Lewis

      *

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford, England Sept 13th 1951

      Dearest Father—

      I was moved with unaccustomed joy by your letter and all the more because I had heard you were ill; sometimes I feared lest you had perhaps died.

      But never in the least did I cease from my prayers for you; for not even the River of Death ought to abolish the sweet intercourse of love and meditations.

Now I rejoice because I believe (although you keep silent about your health—do not condemn the body: Brother Ass, as St Francis said!)¹³⁷I believe you are well or at least better.

I am sending you my tale recently translated into Italian in which, frankly, I have rather played than worked.¹³⁸I have given my imagination free rein yet not, I hope, without regard for edification—for building up both my neighbour and myself. I do not know whether you will like this kind of trifle. But if you do not, perhaps some boy or girl will like it from among your ‘good children’.

      For myself, after a long succession of minor illnesses (I do not know their Italian names) I am now better.

      I salute the fiftieth anniversary of your priesthood with congratulations, prayers and blessings. Farewell. May we always pray for one another both in this world and in the world to come.

      C. S. Lewis

      

TO BERNARD ACWORTH (W): ¹³⁹

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford СКАЧАТЬ