the Lord Himself is present: therefore let [us] [wash His feet].

[soso]

TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA, who had sent [Lewis] [the Litany of Humility /composed by Cardinal Merry del Val]:

On the danger of being too aware of global worries and of forgetting to help Christ in the people close at hand;

on the dignity //to which God raises human beings /when they receive Holy Communion;

and on Lewis’s besetting temptations against humility.

27 March 1948

I was glad to receive your letter—so full (as is your wont) of Charity.

Everywhere things are troubling and uneasy—wars and rumours of war: 

perhaps not the final hour but certainly times most evil.

Nevertheless, the Apostle again and again bids us ‘Rejoice’[Philippians 4:4].

Nature herself bids [us] [do so],

the very face of the earth /being now renewed, after its own manner, at the start of Spring.

I believe that the men of this age (and among them you Father, and myself) think too much about the state of nations 

and the situation of the world. 

Does not [the author of The Imitation] warn us /against involving ourselves too much with such things?

We are not kings, we are not senators. 

Let [us] [beware] lest, while we torture ourselves in vain about the state of Europe, we neglect either Verona or Oxford.

In the poor man //who knocks at my door, in my ailing mother, in the young man //who seeks my advice,

the Lord Himself is present: therefore let [us] [wash His feet].

I have always believed that Voltaire, infidel though he was, thought /aright /in that admonition /of his to cultivate your own garden: likewise William Dunbar (the Scottish poet //who flourished in the 15th century) when he said

Man, please thy Maker and be merry;

[This whole world] rate we at a penny!

Tomorrow we shall celebrate the glorious Resurrection of Christ. 

I shall be remembering you /in the Holy Communion.

Away with tears and fears and troubles!

United in wedlock with the eternal Godhead Itself, our nature ascends /into the Heaven of Heavens.

So it would be impious [to call ourselves ‘miserable’].

On the contrary, Man is a creature //whom the Angels—were they capable of envy—would envy.

Let [us] [lift up our hearts]!

‘At some future time perhaps even these things it will be a joy to recall.’ [Virgil, Aeneid, I, 203]

For the Litany /composed by Cardinal Merry many thanks.

You did not know, did you, that [all the temptations //against which he pours forth these prayers] I have long been exceeding conscious of?

[From the longing to be thought well of, deliver me, Jesus, . . .

from the fear of being rejected, deliver me, Jesus, . . .] Touché, you pink me!

Let [us] [pray for each other always]. Farewell.

From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume II
Compiled in Yours, Jack