Category: CONTENTMENT

  • From The Screwtape Letters—a fictional work written from a senior demon’s perspective, advising a junior tempter.

    The woman is in what may be called the ‘All-I-want’ state of mind. All she wants is a cup of tea properly made, or an egg properly boiled, or a slice of bread properly toasted. But she never finds any servant or any friend who can do these simple things ‘properly’—because her ‘properly’ conceals an insatiable demand for the exact, and almost impossible, palatal pleasures which she imagines she remembers from the past; a past described by her as ‘the days when you could get good servants’ but known to us as the days when her senses were more easily pleased and she had pleasures of other kinds which made her less dependent on those of the table.

    The Screwtape Letters
    C. S. Lewis

  • From The Screwtape Letters—a fictional work written from a senior demon’s perspective, advising a junior tempter.

    You mentioned casually in your last letter that the patient has continued to attend one church, and one only, since he was converted, and that he is not wholly pleased with it. May I ask what you are about? Why have I no report on the causes of his fidelity to the parish church? Do you realise that unless it is due to indifference it is a very bad thing? Surely you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that ‘suits’ him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.

    …

    So pray bestir yourself and send this fool the round of the neighbouring churches as soon as possible.

    The Screwtape Letters
    C. S. Lewis

  • From The Screwtape Letters—a fictional work written from a senior demon’s perspective, advising a junior tempter.

    It follows then, in general, and other things being equal, that it is better for your patient to be filled with anxiety or hope (it doesn’t much matter which) about this war than for him to be living in the present. But the phrase ‘living in the present’ is ambiguous. It may describe a process which is really just as much concerned with the Future as anxiety itself. Your man may be untroubled about the Future, not be cause he is concerned with the Present, but because he has persuaded himself that the Future is going to be agreeable. As long as that is the real cause of his tranquillity, his tranquillity will do us good, because it is only piling up more disappointment, and therefore more impatience, for him when his false hopes are dashed. If, on the other hand, he is aware that horrors may be in store for him and is praying for the virtues, wherewith to meet them, and meanwhile concerning himself with the Present because there, and there alone, all duty, all grace, all knowledge, and all pleasure dwell, his state is very undesirable and should be attacked at once. Here again, our Philological Arm has done good work; try the word ‘complacency’ on him. But, of course, it is most likely that he is living in the Present’ for none of these reasons but simply because his health is good and he is enjoying his work. The phenomenon would then be merely natural.

    The Screwtape Letters
    C. S. Lewis

  • From The Screwtape Letters—a fictional work written from a senior demon’s perspective, advising a junior tempter.

    The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather. You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it—all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition. If, on the other hand, the middle years prove prosperous, our position is even stronger. Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is ‘finding his place in it’, while really it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home in earth, which is just what we want.

    The Screwtape Letters
    C. S. Lewis

  • Ama nesciri, says the Imitation of Christ. Love to be unknown. We are happy with ourselves and with the world only when we conform to this precept.

    The Trouble With Being Born
    Emil Cioran

  • Inasmuch then as our Master knew that if He carved out only one road for us, many must shrink from it, He carved out various roads. It may be you cannot enter the Kingdom by the way of virginity. Enter it then by the way of single marriage.

    Can you not enter it by one marriage? Perchance you may by means of a second marriage. You cannot enter by the way of continence? Enter then by the way of almsgiving. Or you cannot enter by the way of almsgiving? Then try the way of fasting. If you cannot use this way, take that—or if not that, then take this. Therefore the prophet spoke not of a garment of gold, but of one woven with gold. It is of silk, or purple, or gold. You cannot be a golden part? Then be a silken one. I accept you, if only you are clothed in My raiment. Therefore also Paul says, “If any man builds upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones” (1 Cor. 3:12). You cannot be the precious stone? Then be the gold. You cannot be the gold? Then be the silver, if only you are resting upon the foundation. And again elsewhere, “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars” (1 Cor. 15:41). You cannot be a sun? Then be a moon. You cannot be a moon? Then be a star. You cannot be a large star? Be content to be a little one if only you are in the Heaven. You cannot be a virgin? Then live continently in the married state, only abiding in the Church. You cannot be without possessions? Then give alms, only abiding in the Church, only wearing the proper raiment, only submitting to the queen. The raiment is woven with gold; it is manifold in texture.

    I do not bar the way against you, for the abundance of virtues has rendered the dispensation of the King easy in operation. Clothed in a vesture woven with gold, manifold in texture. Her vesture is manifold: unfold, if you please, the deep meaning of the expression here used, and fix your eyes upon this garment woven with gold. For here indeed some live celibate, others live in an honorable estate of matrimony being not much inferior to them; some have married once, others are widows in the flower of their age. For what purpose is a paradise? And wherefore its variety? Having various flowers and trees and many pearls. There are many stars, but only one sun; there are many ways of living, but only one Paradise; there are many temples, but only one mother of them all.

    There is the body, the eye, the finger, but all these make but one man. There is the same distinction between the small, the great, and the less. The virgin has need of the married woman; for the virgin also is the product of marriage, that marriage may not be despised by her. The virgin is the root of marriage. Thus all things have been linked together, the small with the great, and the great with the small. The queen stood on your right hand clothed in a vesture wrought with gold, manifold in texture.

    Saint John Chrysostom
    HOMILY TWO, After Eutropios, having been found outside the church, was taken captive
    On the Vanity of Riches

  • Never call the rich man happy; never call any man miserable save him who is living in sin: and call him happy who lives in righteousness. For it is not the nature of their circumstances, but the disposition of the men which makes both the one and the other.

    Saint John Chrysostom
    HOMILY TWO, After Eutropios, having been found outside the church, was taken captive
    On the Vanity of Riches

  • You felt you were Christ’s companion; that He was using you, and there was a constant interchange of holy fellowship between Him and you. But for some reason which you cannot understand the morning light has died out of your life, and instead of your sitting with Christ upon the throne, in the conscious enjoyment of fellowship with Him, you have been brought down into the very dust of neglect and forsakenness; and for a long time now you have been saying, “My God, my God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?” You cannot imagine why. The probability is, that in your case it is not the result of any sin on your part, or of any neglect of your duties, but because God is desirous of ascertaining whether you love Him for the light of His face or for Himself.

    The Gift of Suffering
    by F.B. Meyer

  • It is awful to want to go away and to want to go nowhere.

    —Sylvia Plath

  • Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.

    —Epicurus