Saturday in the 4th Week of Lent: Letter 26
The Scripture Lessons for Today are HERE!
You can listen to John Cleese read Letter 26 by clicking on this link or cut and paste it in your browser. https://youtu.be/MA5SKy5Eg28?si=AHbcZquyDD1z93hr
I want to begin today by encouraging you to listen to John Cleese’s reading of Letter 26 on YouTube and you can find the link on my blog at Innerdriving.blogspot.com.
I would also read our appointed scripture lessons for today before reading Letter 26, especially our Gospel reading for this Saturday in the 4th week of Lent from John chapter 7. And while the reading for today is verses 37-52 and I encourage you to read it all, it is verses 37-39 that I want to focus on.
Jesus is in the temple in Jerusalem. It is the end of the Jewish Festival of Sukkot which is also known as the Feast of Tabernacles or the Feast of Booths. Sukkot celebrates the Exodus from Egypt and our dependence on God. It also marks the end of the harvest.
Festive meals are eaten in a temporary wood-covered hut called a SUKKAH and all guests are to be welcomed and hospitality is to be extended to all. As stated in Leviticus, it is also reminiscent of the type of fragile dwellings used by the Israelites during their 40 years in the wilderness.
The festival lasted 7 days and each morning the Water Libation Ceremony was held to give thanks for God’s gift of water and rainfall. Water for the ceremony was drawn from the Pool of Siloam and carried up to the Temple. This is the setting for Jesus’s words in our Gospel reading for today. Streams of living water would have great significant meaning to those observing Sukkot and taking part in the Water Ceremony.
Now our Psalm fits in wonderfully well with Letter #26 and especially verses 9 and 11.
Give judgment for me
according to my righteousness, O Lord,*
and according to my
innocence, O Most High.
God is my shield and defense;*
he is the savior of the true
in heart.
God calls us to follow and when we do, he makes us right. That is what it means to be righteous. It is also then that God protects us from all temptations of the demons like Screwtape and Wormwood.
Now in letter 26, the primary temptation in play is UNSELFISHNESS. This may be surprising because we would normally consider unselfishness to be a virtue. Lewis uses the word CHARITY to describe the virtue of putting another’s needs first. When we care for someone else out of love for our neighbor, then we are practicing CHARITY.
However, when we do something for someone else as a means of self-righteousness or simply because we want them indebted to us, then we are, according to Screwtape, practicing the vice of UNSELFISHNESS.
Each of The Screwtape Letters highlights a particular virtue and its corresponding vice. We have gone over this several times and multiple letters will focus on the same virtue and vice.
Let us remember that only God can create a virtue, and vices are the demons’ way of corrupting that virtue from something good into something bad. Demons cannot create, they can only twist something good into something bad.
Now if you are ever wondering if you are practicing a virtue or a corresponding vice, check your motivation. If you are acting out of love for God and your neighbor, it is a virtue. If it’s all about you, it’s likely a vice.
Now with all this in mind, Screwtape opens Letter 26 talking about Love and particularly that the Patient and his girlfriend are in love. Screwtape says to Wormwood:
Avail yourself of the ambiguity in the word “Love”: let them think they have solved by Love problems they have in fact only waived or postponed under the influence of the enchantment.
We have all heard the cliché, “Love is blind” and can be when it come to temptation. One of these ways is through UNSELFISHNESS.
Note, once again, the admirable work of our Philological Arm in substituting the negative unselfishness for the Enemy’s positive Charity
Philology is the study of language and it appears that the Kingdom Below has a special branch dedicated to taking good words and works and making them bad. Here they have taken Charity which is about serving others and made it all about the person who ultimately helps others because it makes them feel superior to others. Plus, if I sacrifice then I can be a martyr in my own mind. False unselfishness produces those tiresome self-appointed “servants” who seem to drone on and on about how much they are always sacrificing.
As Screwtape says:
Thanks to this you can, from the very outset, teach a man to surrender benefits not that others may be happy in having them but he may be unselfish in forgoing them. That is a great point gained.
Now an important lesson found in this Letter for us is the idea that genuine CHARITY and LOVE do not have to mandated, because as we grow into the image of Christ, we genuinely do desire the best for others; Justice, Mercy, and Compassion come from God working in us rather than us having to make a personal sacrifice to do them. 1
But back to temptation, Screwtape gives Wormwood several good examples of how this false unselfishness often works out in the lives of humans. He describes what he calls the Generous Conflict illusion that we have all seen played out at one time or another.
Screwtape uses Tea in the Garden as the setting for one or more family members taking up the martyr role and the others doing their best to please this unhappy person at the expense of their own happiness:
He insists on doing “what the others want”. They insist on doing what he wants. Passions are roused. Soon someone is saying “Very well then, I won’t have any tea at all!”, and a real quarrel ensues with bitter resentment on both sides.
Screwtape emphasizes that the best work of a demon is often done by starting small and allowing that annoying little thing in someone else’s behavior to grow bigger and bigger over time. Much more damage to the soul can be done that way than depending on one supposedly big event that occurs just once.
As I was finishing up my thoughts on this letter, I remembered the invitation to confession in the Holy Eucharist, Rite I. We use Rite 1 at our 8:00 am Sunday Eucharist and the shorter of 2 options for calling us to confession. But take a look at the longer version on page 330 of the BCP.
Ye who do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbors, and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways: Draw near with faith, and make your humble confession to Almighty God, devoutly kneeling.
I think this is an excellent example of honestly and prayerfully discerning if we are acting out of charity or out of selfish unselfishness in our relationships with others. Our prayer for today reminds me that a conscience is an excellent way to discern if I am living according to God’s will or my own.
Mercifully hear our prayers, O Lord, and spare all those who confess their sins to you; that those whose consciences are accused by sin may by your merciful pardon be absolved; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.