Reeling but Erect: That the material cause of evil is a bad sense of humor, with an illustration from Chesterton

Saturday, September 24, 2011

That the material cause of evil is a bad sense of humor, with an illustration from Chesterton

Incongruity is the essence of humor; contradiction is the essence of evil. The formal cause of evil is the contingent being rejecting its contingency. It is humorous to joke about wanting to kill your mother-in-law; it is evil to actually do so. Rudeness and insults are quite often funny when intended as a joke/teasing, but become mean when taken seriously. The incongruity of sex in certain situations forms the material for dirty jokes; yet to take such seriously is called fornication. (Likewise, to take sexual pleasure from such jokes of a sexual nature – and not just that pleasure of incongruity – is fornication of the heart.)

To take an example, Sunday in G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday is an “anarchist” leader, yet in an entirely playful manner. It is Gregory who takes it seriously, and who is the evil one.

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“It is the instinct for Beauty which makes us consider the world and its pageants as a glimpse of a correspondence with Heaven… It is at once by poetry and through poetry, by music and through music, that the soul divines what splendors shine behind the tomb; now when an exquisite poem brings tears to the eyes, such tears are not the sign of an excess of joy, they are rather a witness to an irritated melancholy, an exigency of nerves, a nature exiled in the imperfect which would possess, on this very earth, a paradise revealed.” - Charles Baudelaire

"In church I was listening to a reading from the prophet Isaiah, and at the words, 'Wash you, make you clean,' I reflected, 'Maybe the Mother of God sinned at one time or another, if only in thought.' And, marvelous to relate, in unison with my prayer a voice sounded in my heart, saying clearly, 'The Mother of God never sinned even in thought.' Thus did the Holy Spirit bear witness in my heart to her purity." - St. Silouan the Athonite

Mother! Whose virgin bosom was uncrost
With the least shade of thought to sin allied;
Woman! above all women glorified,
Our tainted nature's solitary boast;
Purer than foam on central ocean tost;
Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn
With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon
Before her wane begins on heaven's blue coast:

Thy image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,
Not unforgiven, the suppliant knee might bend
As to a visible power, in which did blend
All that was mixed and reconciled in thee
Of a mother’s love with maiden purity,
Of high with low, celestial with terrene.

-Wordsworth

Whence comes, O God, this peace which floods over me?
Whence comes this faith with which my heart overflows?
To me who, not long ago, uncertain, restless,
And tossed on waves of doubt by every wind,
Sought the good, the true, in the dreams of worldly sages
And peace in hearts resounding with tempests?
Scarcely have a few days brushed past my brow,
And it seems that a century and a world have passed away,
And that, separated from them by an immense abyss,
A new man is reborn and begins again in me.

-Lamartine

“What a world there is in prayer! what an invisible but powerful union between beings, mutually known or unknown, and praying either together or apart, for each other. It has always appeared to me that prayer, the natural instinct of our frail nature, is the only real, or at least the most effective, strength of man. He understands not its effects - but what does he understand? The feeling which impels him to breathe, proves of itself that air is necessary for his existence. Thus also the instinct of prayer proves singly to the mind its efficacy. Let us then learn to pray. And thou, O our God, who hast inspired us with this wondrous means of communion with thyself, thy creatures and the invisible world, hear us graciously; grant us beyond what we request.”

-Lamartine (Voyage to Holy Land, July 11, 1832)

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour...”

-William Blake

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards Heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire, and he said to him, “If you will, you can become all flame.”

-from the Apophthegmata Patrum

“Man prays and prayer fashions man. The saint has himself become prayer, the meeting-place of earth and Heaven; and thus he contains the universe and the universe prays with him. He is everywhere where nature prays and he prays with and in her: in the peaks which touch the void and eternity, in a flower which scatters itself, or in the abandoned song of a bird. He who lives in prayer has not lived in vain.”

-Frithjof Schuon

"If I can write in myself the thought and devotion of Eastern and Western Christendom, the Greek and Latin Fathers, the Russian and Spanish mystics, I can prepare in myself the reunion of divided Christians. From that secret and unspoken unity in myself can eventually come the visible and manifest unity of all Christians. We must contain all divided worlds in ourselves and transcend them in Christ. "

-Thomas Merton

What shall we offer Thee, O Christ,
Who for our sakes hast appeared on earth as man?
Every creature made by Thee offers Thee thanks.
The angels offer thee a hymn; the heavens a star;
The Magi, goats; the shepherds, their wonder;
The earth, its cave: the Wilderness, the manger:
And we offer Thee a Virgin Mother;
O Pre-Eternal God, have mercy on us.

-idiomela for Nativity Vespers