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The pulpit from which Lewis preached The Weight of Glory
I have a number of favorite passages in
today’s reading. 2 Corinthians 1:3-9, 20; 2:14-16; 3:2, 17-18; and 4:8-10 are
among some of my favorite verses in the Bible. However, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18,
perhaps, ranks higher than all the rest. I remember seeing these verses carved
on a rock in Corinth when I visited the ruins of that ancient city in 1984:
So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is
wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight
momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all
measure. Because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen;
for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.
I cannot hear or read that phrase, “an eternal weight of
glory,” without thinking of C. S. Lewis and his marvelous sermon of the same
title, preached in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford, on June 8, 1941.
I commend the entire sermon to your reading pleasure. It is reprinted in a
collection of sermons and essays by Lewis entitled, The Weight of Glory. Though it is tempting to quote many parts
here, allow me to simply share, or remind you of the marvelous conclusion to
that sermon….
It may be possible for each to think too much of his own
potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or
too deeply about that of his neighbour. The load, or weight, or burden of my
neighbour’s glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility
can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing
to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the
dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature
which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a
horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.
All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of
these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it
is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct
all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all
politics. There are no ordinary
people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts,
civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a
gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and
exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we
are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that
kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who
have, from the outset, taken each other seriously---no flippancy, no
superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love,
with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere
tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.
Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object
presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in
almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere
latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden. (The Weight of Glory, pp. 18-19)
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