Friday in the 5th Week of Lent: Letter 31
The Scripture Readings for Today are HERE!
We have reached the end – Letter 31 and the first thing you should notice is that Screwtape addresses Wormwood in a whole new way. We have gone from MY DEAR WORMWOOD to an added MY VERY DEAR and he now calls him MY POPPET - which in England is a term of affection for a sweet or pretty child – and MY PIGSNIE which is another British term of endearment – sort of like sweetheart.
And if you think he might be using just a bit of sarcasm,
you would be right. Wormwood has lost
the Patient forever. He was killed in a
bombing and is now in heaven.
And as promised by his uncle in previous letters, for demons
it is either bring a soul to the Kingdom Below to be consumed or that demon
becomes food. As we have said before on
several occasions, love is beyond the understanding of demons.
Screwtape’s rants against his nephew, however, tell us
several important things about death and resurrection.
1.
Death is a moment of release. Screwtape tells Wormwood, “How well I know
what happened at the instant when they snatched him from you! There was a sudden clearing of his eyes (was
there not?) as he saw you for the first time and recognized the part you had
had in him and knew that you had it no longer.”
Screwtape compares it to a scab falling off an old sore. The Patient is now healed of his demon and knows it.
In 1 Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul tells
the early Christians, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to
face. Now I know in part; then I shall
know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
We believe that in God’s kingdom we will know faith, hope, and love perfectly. That includes seeing your demons and knowing you are now free.
Death is a relative thing – rather than something horrible. Screwtape calls it sheer, instantaneous liberation. I particularly like the statement from Screwtape to Wormwood where he says “How all his doubts became, in the twinkling of an eye, ridiculous!”
I will never forget standing in a hospital with a woman who was a member of one of the previous parishes where I served. Her husband had just passed away after a long struggle. We stood in silence. There really was nothing I could say. Then she smiled and said, “Now he knows for sure, what I still have to just believe in.”3.
Death is a moment of coming home when we are
reunited and where we come face to face with the Love of God and the love we
shared all through our life on earth.
Screwtape tells Wormwood,
a.
But when he saw them he knew that he had
always known them and realized what part each one of them had played at many an
hour in his life when he had supposed himself alone, so that now he could say
to them, one by one, not “Who are you?” but “So it was you all the time.”
b.
Just as we know our demons at that moment of
death and know that we are now free from their temptation, we will also know in
all certainty our guardian angels who were with us all through life.
c.
As Screwtape also notes, we will see God in all
of His Glory and it will be a feeling of love and joy. We will no longer be finite human beings
trying to comprehend an infinite God. We
will know God.
d.
Screwtape tells Worwood:
i.
He saw not only Them; he saw Him. This animal, this thing begotten in a bed,
could look on Him. What is blinding,
suffocating fire to you, is now cool light to him, is clarity itself, and wears
the form of a Man.
4. We have lots of experience with death but no experience with RESURRECTION other than through faith. We need to believe that heaven is real and love is eternal and we will come to know both in all their eternal fullness.
The last Letter ends with one final point of how love is
such a mystery to Screwtape, Wormwood, and all who do not believe in the
possibility of God’s Grace. For such
people the law of hell reigns, “Bring us back food or be food yourself.” God does not have to consign those persons to
hell; they simply choose it, make it, and inhabit it daily.
Tomorrow we will wrap up our study with some final
thoughts. Let us close today in prayer.
O Lord, you relieve our necessity out of the abundance
of your great riches: Grant that we may accept with joy the salvation you
bestow, and manifest it to all the world by the quality of our lives; through
Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one
God, now and for ever. Amen.