Father Below News Today

This morning’s Gospel reading is Matthew 22:1–14: Jesus again in reply spoke to the chief priests and elders of the people in parables, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who gave...

C. S. Lewis, Reluctant Churchman: by Wayne Martindale

Life is short. Eternity presses near. Don’t let Satan tempt you into wasting the few breaths you have on what is trivial.

My dear Globdrop, I have received your perspective concerning your man’s most recent incident. He drew swords with his atheist classmate and succeeded, did he? He made the Enemy and the hope of a hereafter seem almost “reasonable”? In those ten minutes, the clouds pulled back and heaven appeared to triumph over hell, did it? You call it “a true embarrassment . . . a humiliating defeat.” You repeatedly assure me that you “take full responsibility.” O my dear ne...

February 11, 2021 “The next few years will be ghastly,” wrote C.S. Lewis in September 1939, just two weeks after Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Although a man of faith, Lewis confessed to a friend that his nerves were “often staggered” by the news from week to week. A combat veteran of World War I, Lewis described “the ghostly feeling that it has all happened before.” Writing at about the same time, an Oxford University colleague, J.R.R. Tolkien, explained to his publisher that “the...

Regretfully, I have received your last letter. Centuries serving his Lowliness — lifetimes damning souls and training young devils — and yet you still find ways to surprise me. Are you or are you not but one soul away from active duty, from wearing our legion’s darkest colors on the frontlines? If so, what should I expect to find you consumed with? Trapping? Spoiling? Sabotaging? Or, should I — with so much at stake — expect to find you playing with your food like a h...