Equity in Joy

“Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

In the last piece I wrote for DCH, I wrote on friendship as the foundation of trust. Indeed, the friendship between John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892 – 1973) and Clive Staples Lewis (1898 –1963) paved the way to openness to the brilliance of Truth, and eventually, to conversion. This conversion involved an experience of joy, that once grasped, one wouldn’t exchange with any object of mere material sensibility.

“Joy has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again. Apart from that, and considered only in its quality, it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But then it is a kind we want. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world.” ― C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life

CS Lewis was a British writer and a member of Inkling, an Oxford literary group he joined with his good friend JRR Tolkien. Up until now, CS Lewis continues to attract a wide readership. In 2008, The Times ranked him eleventh on their list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.

This joy of conversion is illumined with the experience of one’s divine filiation, the acknowledgment that we are not merely creatures of a God who has created all things, but are in fact children of God, with the right to heaven, and with the right to dwell in the bosom of God for eternity. “Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia.” Despite wardrobe change!

As Saint Josemaria Escriva puts it, “Divine filiation is a joyful truth, a consoling mystery. It fills all our spiritual life, it shows us how to speak to God, to know, and to love our Father in heaven. And it makes our interior struggle overflow with hope and gives us the trusting simplicity of little children. More than that: precisely because we are children of God, we can contemplate in love and wonder everything as coming from the hands of our Father, God the Creator. And so we become contemplatives in the middle of the world, loving the world.”

“A son of God fears neither life nor death because his spiritual life is founded on a sense of divine filiation. God is my Father, he thinks, and he is the Author of all good; he is all Goodness.
—But, you and I, do we act as sons of God?”

In his later works, one observes CS Lewis propose ideas not earlier seen in his writings, such as purification of venial sins after death in purgatory (The Great Divorce and Letters to Malcolm) and mortal sin (The Screwtape Letters). These are concepts associated with Roman Catholic teachings, and are very much reflective of the mercy of God, as Father toward His children, who being human, err. Purgatory allows equity as heaven is made accessible to all. There is indeed a reason for Joy. (Honey Lbertine Achanzar-Labor, PhD)