Lessons from The Power & the Glory

He was a bad priest, he knew it: they had a word for his kind--a whisky priest--but every failure dropped out of sight and out of mind: somewhere they accumulated in secret--the rubble of his failures.  One day they would choke up, he supposed, altogether the sources of grace.

I had to read this book.  One day, through God's grace, I would like to be a published author--a Catholic author--and it seemed unacceptable that I hadn't read what is considered the most well-known work of Catholic fiction: The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene.

I have already read one work by Greene, namely his Heart of the Matter.  In the end, he sold me.  I was a fan, even though for most of the book I couldn't understand how it was an explicitly Catholic novel.  But from the perspective of the final page, I could see the Catholic elements woven through and was struck by the unadorned veracity of the prose and the haunting gravitas of Greene's theme.

A paragraph into The Power and the Glory, I was thrilled to revisit Greene.  What I appreciated most about this author was present yet again, perhaps even more so, along with a suspenseful narrative that made this an unfortunately fast read.  I raced to finish it, desiring to know the fate of the principle character, and--while satisfied with the ending--was disappointed to have come to the conclusion.  At least there is still The End of the Affair!

Greene, a British author, chose somewhat exotic locations for the settings of some of his books.  Greene visited Mexico in 1938 to learn first-hand about the Catholic persecution occurring there.  In some states, churches were closed and priests were forced to marry.  Greene later described what he observed as the "fiercest persecution of religion anywhere since the reign of Elizabeth."

The background of the book, therefore, is this severe persecution.  The protagonist is a priest on the run.  He is the sole remaining priest in the state and the police, led by an unnamed lieutenant, are vowed and determined to hunt him down.  

The priest and lieutenant, the principle characters, are without proper name.  Such an anonymity provides a universality to their characters--perhaps anyone of us could be the face of the priest, or of the lieutenant.  Both are types.

The priest does receive a nickname, however: the whisky priest.  It's an adjective that illuminates his complex character.  On the one hand, there is the priest.  An ordained minister, part of the apostolic succession, he is alter Christus, ipse Christus (another Christ, Christ Himself).  After receiving Holy Orders, an indelible mark is imprinted upon his soul: he is no longer just a man, but a holy priest of God.  And as a priest, he is a servant to God's people.

This is precisely why he cannot simple escape into another adjacent state.  He must remain, because he is a priest.

"But can't you," she said logically, "just give yourself up?"

He had answers as plain and understandable as her questions.  He said: "There's the pain.  To choose pain like that--it's not possible.  And it's my duty not to be caught.  You see, my bishop is no longer here."  Curious pedantries moved him.  "This is my parish...In Mexico City now they are saying Benediction.  The bishop's there...Do you imagine he ever thinks...?  They don't even know I'm alive."

She said: "Of course you could--renounce."

"I don't understand."

"Renounce your faith," she said, using the words of her European History.

He said: "It's impossible.  There's no way.  I'm a priest.  It's out of my power."

The child listened intently.  She said: "Like a birthmark."

The Mexican people hunger for God.  As the priest ventures into their towns, they flock to him to have their confessions heard and children baptized.  For some, it had been years since they received absolution of their sins.  The priest--exhausted, famished, feverish, and under the duress of police pursuit--administers the sacraments to them.  

...soon the police would reach the clearing where his mule had sat down under him and he had washed in the pool.  The Latin words ran into each other on his hasty tongue: he could feel the impatience all round him.  He began the Consecration of the Host...; impatience abruptly died away: everything in time became routine but this--"Who the day before He suffered took Bread into His holy and venerable hands..."  Whoever moved outside on the forest path, there was no movement here--"Hoc est enim Corpus Meum."  He could hear the sigh of breaths released: God was here in the body for the first time in six years.  When he raised the Host he could imagine the faces lifted like famished dogs'.

When the priest speaks the words of consecration, it is Christ who is speaking and Christ fully present in the host held between his fingers. 

As I read these passages, I couldn't help but consider how incredibly blessed I am to have Mass offered multiple times per day, just a few minutes from my home.  Christ comes to me daily.  Do I really treasure and contemplate the greatness of this gift?  Do I hunger for this spiritual food, or does it become mere routine? 

Indeed, the priest is a holy man of God.  But Greene's priest is also a whisky priest.  

In many ways, the protagonist is an anti-hero.  He is a self-professed bad priest.  Quite likely an alcoholic, he has an inordinate fondness for brandy.  He is also the father of an illegitimate child.  Guilt and sorrow grip him as he flees from the authorities.  He is, after all, the only priest left.  Mortal sin weighs upon his soul, but there is no one to hear his confession.  

The priest's journey across the state in a game of cat and mouse with the police is also a profound spiritual journey.  Greene's novel was also published in the United States under the title The Labyrinthine Ways.  The priest's journey toward God is very labyrinthine indeed--sometimes approaching that inner room where God dwells, only to veer off again to the edge where sin and darkness dwell.  But all the time there is suffering.  

The suffering the priest must endure is truly a refiner's fire.  It changes him.  Illustratively, the lieutenant has a picture of the priest on his wall to identify him, taken from a First Communion at the priest's parish years ago.  But now, after his journeying through the wild, the priest looks nothing like he used to--gone is the portly, self-possessed man.

That is why I tell you that heaven is here: this is a part of heaven just as pain is a part of pleasure...Pray that you will suffer more and more and more.  Never get tired of suffering.  The police watching you, the soldiers gathering taxes, the beating you always get from the jefe because you are too poor to pay, smallpox and fever, hunger...that is all part of heaven--the preparation.  Perhaps without them--who can tell?--you wouldn't enjoy heaven so much.

For most of the novel, I desired to see the priest reach safety.  He is, after all, a relatable, sympathetic character.  Which one of us can't see ourselves in him: a person flawed, somewhat broken, sinful yet trying to strive for what is good and true?  I wanted the best for him.  And then, surprisingly, I got my wish.  The priest, remarkably, under the very nose of the lieutenant, escaped!  Freedom was just within his grasp!  

The suffering removed, the whisky priest immediately began to descend the slippery, sinful slope back to what he used to be.  For example, he begins calculating how much brandy he can purchase, based on the number of children needing to be baptized.

Then I saw.  The point was never about the priest escaping from the police; it was about his escape from sin, from Satan.  I began to desire that the priest be caught.  The suffering was making him better; he needed it.  We need it.

He was a man who was supposed to save souls: it had seemed quite simple once, preaching at Benediction, organizing the guilds, having coffee with elderly ladies behind barred windows, blessing new houses with a little incense, wearing black gloves...it was as easy as saving money: now it was a mystery.  He was aware of his own desperate inadequacy .

About to take the road to freedom, the priest is confronted by a Judas figure with a message.  The other criminal the police had been tracking (a murderer) is on his deathbed and desires to have his confession heard.  The priest goes, knowing it is his death sentence.  He goes in the effort to save the soul of the criminal, but the question remains: can the priest save his own soul?

And that becomes the central question of the novel: is the priest saved in the end?  He is captured by the police, but that is of little matter ultimately.  Is he saved from his sin?

Tears poured down his face: he was not at the moment afraid of damnation--even the fear of pain was in the background.  He felt only an immense disappointment because he had to go to God empty-handed, with nothing done at all.  It seemed to him at that moment that it would have been quite easy to have been a saint.  It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage.  He felt like someone who has missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place.  He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted--to be a saint.

I think the greatest lesson of the book comes back to this point.  Greene entitled his novel The Power and the Glory.  Well, whose power?  Whose glory?  The phrase is taken from the doxology proclaimed after the conclusion of the Our Father at Mass.  We pray, "For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, now and forever, amen." 

The power and the glory belong to God and--this is key--are manifested profoundly and powerfully even in the sinful, imperfect, muddied hands of the whisky priest.  There is a Latin phrase ex opere operato, meaning "by the work worked."  The sacraments confer grace solely because of the power of God; they are not dependent on the disposition or sanctity of the priest.

We are all weak instruments, but we are each made in God's image.  This is what the whisky priest comes to see.  As he spends a dismal night in a cramped, dank prison cell with fellow inmates, he comes to love and have compassion for those around him.  God was present in each one of those prisoners, even though His image had been sullied and twisted and deformed through sin.  

...at the centre of his own faith there always stood the convincing mystery--that we were made in God's image--God was the parent, but He was also the policeman, the criminal, the priest, the maniac, and the judge.  Something resembling God dangled from the gibbet or went into odd attitudes before the bullets in a prison yard or contorted itself like a camel in the attitude of sex.  He would sit in the confessional and hear the complicated and dirty ingenuities which God's image had thought out: and God's image shook now, up and down on the mule's back, with the yellow teeth sticking out over the lower lip; and God's image did its despairing act of rebellion with Maria in the hut among the rats...He said, "Do you feel better now?  Not so cold, eh?  Or so hot?" and pressed his hand with a kind of divine tenderness upon the shoulders of God's image.

From all outward appearances, the priest's life has ended in failure.  His death is far from a courageous stand as a soldier of Christ; he is carried by the police, unable to walk due to his shaking legs, and is shot before he can utter a word.  He dies with his sins unconfessed.  

Yet, God's glory and power elevate what seems a failure into a channel of grace.  Paralleling the narrative of the priest is a mother reading her children the story of St. Juan, a martyr for Christ.  Unlike the whisky priest, Juan was a man of outstanding virtue and died proclaiming his faith in God.  However, her eldest son is untouched by the account and, in fact, seems rather intrigued by the cause and stance of the lieutenant.  

In the final chapter, his mother informs them of the whisky priest's death.  The son is startled--the whisky priest had previously stayed with them one evening during his flight.  Had he really encountered a martyr?  

The boy contemplates that notion and, as he sleeps, dreams of the priest.  He is laid out in a coffin for burial, but the boy is shocked to see the priest wink in his direction.  Immediately after that, the boy awakes to the sound of knocking at their door.  He opens it to find a stranger, who asks for housing for the night.  He is a priest.  Before the stranger can reveal his name, the boy excitedly grasps his hand to reverently kiss it.

One soul has been converted due to the whisky priest's death for Christ.  Perhaps it was just the first of many.  Greene does not tell us, nor does he definitely answer whether the whisky priest has experienced salvation.  (My wager, however, considering the mercy of God is yes.)

But Greene does make clear that the priest's witness has produced the fruit of conversion in the heart of a young boy.  And the priesthood has not died with the whisky priest's death.  Governments cannot stymie God's power and glory; neither can human weakness.  

In fact, maybe it's precisely in those moments that God's power and glory are best revealed. 

Lessons from Crime & Punishment

Kill her and take her money, so that afterwards with its help you can devote yourself to the service of all mankind and the common cause: what do you think, wouldn't thousands of good deeds make up for one tiny little crime?  For one life, thousands of lives saved from decay and corruption.  One death from hundreds of lives--it's simple arithmetic!  And what does the life of this stupid, consumptive, and wicked old crone mean in the general balance?  No more than the life of a louse, a cockroach, and not even that much...

Rodion Raskolnikov has a lot of time on his hands.  He can no longer financially support himself as a student, so he withdraws into the narrow confines of the single room he rents.  In melancholic isolation, an idea which has long been in the back of his mind takes root and begins to ferment.  Idleness is the devil's workshop, as they say.  

The idea is the crime in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment.  Raskolnikov had peddled a few items to a niggardly old woman named Alyona Ivanovna.  He happens to overhear a conversation about the pawnbroker, which confirms thoughts he had already been considering--namely, that Alyona Ivanovna is a miserly louse who doesn't need to live; her money would be put to much better use if she were dead.  The notion becomes more concrete when Raskolnikov happens to overhear another dialogue, which confirms that the the old woman would be alone on such a day at such a time.  

He now has the rationalization and the perfect opportunity.  What were the chances everything would fall into place so neatly...so conveniently?  Even when Raskolnikov is unable to secure the axe from his landlady's kitchen, the plan is unhindered: he finds another in the caretaker's room.

"When reason fails, the devil helps!" he thought with a strange grin.

So Raskolnikov goes to Alyona Ivanovna's apartment and kills her with the axe.  As he tears through her chest, looking for money, he hears footsteps.  The dead woman's sister, who is mentally disabled, has entered the unlocked apartment and stares aghast at the crime.  Raskolnikov, desperate to protect himself, murders her as well.  He narrowly escapes the crime scene and returns to his apartment, suspected by no one and leaving no incriminating evidence behind.

But though is free, he is not.  Thus the punishment begins.

Dostoyevsky is brilliant at writing in such a way that the reader feels as though he or she is in the mind of Raskolnikov.  Crime and Punishment is a psychological work of literature.  The agony, torment, suffering, and pain Raskolnikov endures from his crime are almost entirely internal.  And you, the reader, feel it by the way Dostoyevsky writes.

I have never murdered anyone, but I am a sinner and I could eerily recall some of the same sentiments and feelings Raskolnikov experienced.  Perhaps you have known them, too--having to pretend around others that everything is perfectly fine when, behind your mask, you know that you have done something terribly wrong.  The heavy weight of guilt bearing upon your conscience.  Walking among others and feeling divided from them, as though an abyss exists between you, because you have been marked by your own evildoing, which has set you apart.  Sin leads to isolation--from God and from the people around you.

"...if the room were now suddenly filled not with policemen but with his foremost friends, even then, he thought, he would be unable to find a single human word for them, so empty had his heart suddenly become.  A dark sensation of tormenting, infinite solitude and estrangement suddenly rose to consciousness in his soul...he sensed clearly, with all the power of sensation, that it was no longer possible for him to address these people in the police station..."  

"It seemed to him that at that moment he had cut himself off, as with scissors, from everyone and everything."

No matter the sin, no matter the crime, those feelings are identical because--in all its variety, sizes, and shapes--the root of the act is evil.  And intrinsic evil is always evil.  There are no mitigating circumstances.

Raskolnikov had tried to rationalize his crime.  He saw himself as a kind of Napoleon, a "super" man, who could "step over" the law.  

I merely suggested that an 'extraordinary' man has the right...that is, not an official right, but his own right, to allow his conscience to...step over certain obstacles, and then only in the event that the fulfillment of his idea--sometimes perhaps salutary for the whole of mankind--calls for it...In my opinion, if, as the result of certain combinations, Kepler's or Newton's discoveries could have become known to people in no other way than by sacrificing the lives of one, or ten, or a hundred or more people who were hindering the discovery, or standing as an obstacle in its path, then Newton would have the right, and it would even be his duty...to remove those ten or hundred people, in order to make his discoveries known to all mankind.

Could we call this the "right to choose?"

But, of course, this rationalization fails because each person--even a miserly "louse"--has dignity and worth.  

As I was preparing to write this post and was thinking about Crime and Punishment, I couldn't help but notice the interplay between Dostoyevsky's work and the anniversary of Roe V. Wade on January 22.

"The little old crone is nonsense!" he thought, ardently and impetuously.  "The old woman was a mistake perhaps, but she's not the point!  The old woman was merely a sickness...I was in a hurry to step over...it wasn't a human being I killed, it was a principle!"

How eerie it was, to be reading Raskolnikov's thoughts and to consider that in light of the evil that is abortion...how incredibly similar the rationales and assertions.  But maybe I shouldn't have been surprised.  Assassinating an old woman and having an abortion are two sides of the same coin: murder.  Evil.

"There was something else I wanted to know; something else was nudging my arm.  I wanted to find out then, and find out quickly, whether I was a louse like all the rest, or a man?  Would I be able to step over, or not!  Would I dare to reach down and take, or not?  Am I a trembling creature, or do I have the right..."

"To kill?  The right to kill?" Sonya clasped her hands. 

One of the themes that struck me the most throughout this brilliant work is the value of each and every life: innocent and guilty alike.  What Raskolnikov had done in killing two people was evil--and he suffers for it.  He has his punishment.  And though his thinking is incredibly wrong and he has done something abhorrent...Raskolnikov's life has worth.  

At the start of the novel, I detested Raskolnikov.  I remember saying to my husband, "I have to stay with this character for the whole novel?!"  But somewhere along the way, Dostoyevsky touched my heart.  I could see the good in Raskolnikov, along with the bad, and I wanted the good to win.  I wanted him to be redeemed because, no matter how great the evil he had done, he still had worth.  His life mattered.

There is a fascinating interplay between Raskolnikov and one of the other main characters, Sonya.  Sonya comes from a destitute family and her parents force her into prostitution so she can help support them.  Raskolnikov feels great pity for her and believes that they are similar in the sense that they have both done great wrong.  (Though he fails to see at first the degree of culpability for Sonya, who does her evil with great sorrow and only to help others, is very different compared to his act of selfishness.)  

Sonya's evil is clear to everyone.  She is known by all as a prostitute.  And when Sonya is accused of stealing, everyone save a few is quick to condemn her.  

Yet Raskolnikov sees the beauty and goodness within her. 

"Listen," he [Raskolnikov] added, returning to her [Sonya] after a minute, "I told one offender today that he wasn't worth your little finger...and that I did my sister an honor by sitting her next to you."

"Ah, how could you say that to them!  And she was there?" Sonya cried fearfully.  "To sit with me!  An honor!  But I'm...dishonorable...I'm a great, great sinner!" 

In contrast, Raskolnikov's guilt is hidden.  No one knows of Raskolnikov's crime...save Sonya.  Raskolnikov, overcome with the weight of his act, unloads his guilt, anxiety, and suffering on Sonya.  She is the only one who knows that he is the murderer.  Even with this knowledge, Sonya loves him.  She responds with pity and sorrow.  She sees how much he has suffered and how urgently he needed to confess his guilt.

It is this ability to see the inherent value and goodness within each other that allows for Raskolnikov's redemption.

Sometimes evil appears as the "easy" path.  Raskolnikov's plan to murder unfurled itself almost effortless before him.  Sometimes an abortion seems the easiest way.  

Doing what is right almost always requires suffering.  But, the key is that this suffering--contrary to the suffering that accompanies evil--will bring forth new life.  Raskolnikov is a Lazarus figure.  He was dead and, by the epilogue, through the help of Sonya who encourages him to confess, he is brought slowly to life.  He had killed Alyona Ivanovna, but in reality, it was he who had been dead.  

And suffering is a good thing, after all.  Suffer, then...I know belief doesn't come easily--but don't be too clever about it, just give yourself directly to life, without reasoning; don't worry--it will carry you straight to shore and set you on your feet.  What shore?  How do I know?  I only believe that you have much life ahead of you...So, go and do what justice demands.  I know you don't believe it, but, by God, life will carry you.

I read these words as I thought of marchers gathered in Washington D.C. to mark the anniversary of the legalization of abortion.  May the crime of abortion be completely eradicated by the conversion of hearts to the truth that every life--old, young, innocent, guilty--is beautiful.

Give yourself to life.

Lessons from the Moviegoer

...when I awake, I awake in the grip of everydayness.  Everydayness is the enemy.  No search is possible.  Perhaps there was a time when everydayness was not too strong and one could break its grip by brute strength.  Now nothing breaks it--but disaster.  Only once in my life was the grip of everydayness broken: when I lay bleeding in a ditch.  

In a sudden rage and, as if I had been seized by a fit, I roll over and fall in a heap on the floor and lie shivering on the boards, worse off than the miserablest muskrat in the swamp.  Nevertheless I vow: I'm a son of a bitch if I'll be defeated by the everydayness.  

(The everdayness is everywhere now, having begun in the cities and seeking out the remotest nooks and corners of the countryside, even the swamps.) 

Jack "Binx" Bolling is the Moviegoer.  He enjoys watching movies, making money, and romancing his secretaries.  He is selfish, unfeeling, and uncommitted.

He sits back in his theater seat to casually watch the unfolding of life, an observer rather than a participant.  Most people mark their memories by critical, moving events in their lives: births, marriages, deaths.  Binx, on the contrary, recalls the movies he has seen.  They are an escape from reality, from responsibility and ownership.

Yet, on the eve of his thirtieth birthday, Binx feels the nudge of the "search."  Something is missing.  Something is not quite right.

The idea of a search is the basis of Walker Percy's The Moviegoer.  The novel was Percy's first and most well-known work.  It was published in 1961 and won the U.S. National Book Award.  The narration is definitively Southern in tone and detail, the events of the book taking place within the week of Mardis Gras in New Orleans.  

Percy was a reader of Kierkegaard and begins his novel with a quote from the philosopher: "...the specific character of despair is precisely this: it is unaware of being despair."

On the surface, it seems like Binx has everything he needs.  He leads a comfortable life, has a secure job, enjoys the company of his interchangeable secretaries--romances with no responsibility or commitment required.  Yet, he is a man riddled with despair, constantly plagued by "the malaise."

Upon entering a movie theater, Binx must speak with the ticket-seller or owner of the theater, to ground himself in the concrete "here" and "now."  Otherwise, he fears slipping into the mercurial "anywhere" that threatens him, for this very movie he will watch could be seen in any city in any state by any person.  He doesn't want to be Anybody in Anyplace.

He wants to have meaning.  And therein begins the search.

Binx describes one morning looking at the collection of items loosely scattered across his dresser's surface: his wallet, a notebook, pencil, keys.  They are objects he fingers every day, places in his pocket each morning and carries along with him.  Yet he never stops to truly examine them, to note their details or individual qualities.  Though with him at all times, they are for the most part, invisible.  

It seems to be an insignificant scene of little weight, but I think it points to the lesson Percy addresses in his work.

What do we carry around with us, each day, without ever being fully aware of its presence?  How often do we stop to examine grace?  Grace keeps us alive.  It is our life-source.  But are we even aware of it?

The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life...To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something.  Not to be onto something is to be in despair.   

To realize that there is a search...that there is something more...is the first step.  Without a search, there is despair: the daily grind, the wheel of time spinning day in and day out.

The Moviegoer is a book about existentialism.  What's the purpose of existing?  Are we all just movie-goers, set to watch life unfold?  The despair of apathy, of lukewarmness is the enemy here.  "So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth" (Revelation 3:16).  In a passage with similar meaning, Percy writes:

Christians talk about the horror of sin, but they have overlooked something.  They keep talking as if everyone were a great sinner, when the truth is that nowadays one is hardly up to it.  There is very little sin in the depths of the malaise.  The highest moment of a malaisian's life can be that moment when he manages to sin like a proper human being (Look at us, Binx--my vagabond friends as good as cried out to me--we're sinning!  We're succeeding!  We're human after all!) 

Percy's novel is highly subtle.  It is not plot-driven and there isn't much resolution.  It seems, in the end, that Binx has changed a little, in the sense that he isn't wandering but now committed in marriage to someone else.  

There is no St. Paul conversion moment for Binx.  Like I said, the book is quite muted in its message--very nuanced.  Maybe it harkens to Percy's own religious experience.  Percy was no stranger to tragedy, both of his parents having committed suicide.  Over time, Percy was drawn to Catholicism by the example of his roommate, who faithfully attended daily Mass. That quiet witness was the spark of conversion.

Percy may have written The Moviegoer as a critique of contemporary America.  It certainly is relevant today, fifty-four years later.  So many Americans live affluent, comfortable lives and are utterly depressed.

The Moviegoer isn't a "feel-good" book.  I don't know if Binx lived "happily ever after."  But  life isn't a movie and things don't always wrap up perfectly in the end.

Maybe, however, that's the point.  Things aren't supposed to be tied together and solved.  It's all about the search.  And the minute someone abandons the search, he or she is already lost.

Lessons from Ivan Ilyich

Maybe I didn't live as I should?

A friend once said that we should pray for final perseverance at least once per day.  Final perseverance is the gift of remaining in a state of grace--of being united with God--until the moment of death.  As Our Lord said, "He that shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved" (Matthew 10:22).

So, upon this wonderful recommendation, I've acquired the habit of praying for final perseverance right before I fall asleep.  As my head hits the pillow, I close my eyes and pray to God that mortal sin will never separate me from Him.  I pray that my husband, our children, our parents, my siblings, all our family & friends, and those souls most in need of God's mercy...that all of these people will know God's friendship and be reconciled and united with Him before death comes.

This has been on my mind frequently as I recently finished Leo Tolstoy's novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich.  Tolstoy wrote this short work in 1886, after his religious conversion.  I enjoyed his Anna Karenina so much (and was still awaiting my next book from interlibrary loan!) that I decided to read about Ivan Ilyich.

The book opens the day of Ivan Ilyich's funeral.  A friend and coworker, upon paying his respects, notes:

He had grown much thinner and was considerably changed since Piotr Ivanovich last saw him, but his face, as with all the dead, was more beautiful and, more important than that, more meaningful than it had been in his lifetime.  The expression on the face suggested that what needed to be done had been done, and done as it should be.

The reader's curiosity is immediately piqued: what, exactly, needed to have been done?

Tolstoy then moves back in time and, starting with Ivan Ilyich's childhood, narrates the dead man's life--much like one would read in an obituary.  There emerges two clear pursuits of his life: pleasure and propriety.  He marries, but doesn't love his wife.  They have children, but he seeks his pleasure outside the family--often in playing cards.  Ivan Ilyich enjoys his career as a judge, but mostly from the power it affords him to ruin another man's life.

Things take a turn for the worse when Ivan Ilyich, attempting to hang curtains in his family's new, high-society  home, falls and injures himself.  His pain increases, medical help is sought, but no remedy relieves his discomfort.  Instead, it only becomes more acute.  He who once enjoyed the power of directing someone else's fate finds himself powerless over his own.

Ivan Ilyich saw that he was dying and was in continual despair.

Ivan Ilyich cannot reconcile the notion of death with himself.  Death is natural, of course, but certainly not something that should happen to him...not now, not in this way.  I am sure many of us might feel the same.   

But soon Ivan Ilyich can pretend no longer.  Ivan realizes the dreadful truth and suffers from the baneful lies offered to him by the doctors and his family and friends.  His wife chastises him for not taking his medicine properly--that if he only did this or that, he would get better.  His doctors offer false hope.  Conversation at his bedside politely side-steps the blatant truth that Ivan Ilyich is dying, the subject matter instead revolving around trite and trivial matters.

 Ivan Ilyich suffered most of all from lies--the lie that everyone accepted, for some reason, that he was just ill, not dying, that he need only keep calm and take his medicine and something splendid would come of it...this was the propriety he had served all his life.  He saw that no one would pity him, because no one even wanted to understand his position.

There is greater suffering to come for Ivan Ilyich, though not of a physical sort.  His pain grants him some insight and, for the first time, as he lays on his deathbed, Ivan Ilyich begins to see that he has not lived as he should.  

He once, as a young professional, donned a medallion inscribed with respice finem: look to the end.  Ironically, this is the very thing Ivan spent his life not doing, as he was intent on pleasure and propriety.

Ivan Ilyich searches his memory, recalling the moments of his life, questioning what is missing.  As he is dying, Ivan Ilyich sees with great clarity that his life was not what it should have been, but still he listens for the answer as to what he had done wrong.  The answer is given to him when--through his immense pain and affliction--he feels his sons's compassionate kiss on his hand.  

It was jut as this point that Ivan Ilyich fell through, saw the glimmer of light, and it became clear to him that his life had not been what it should have been, but that it could still be put right.  He asked himself, what is it, and fell silent, listening.  Here he felt someone kissing his hand.  He opened his eyes and glanced at his son.  He felt sorry for him.  His wife came up to him.  He glanced at her.  She was gazing at him, with a look of despair on her face, her mouth open, unwiped tears on her nose and cheeks.  He felt sorry for her...He was sorry for them, he had to stop them suffering.  Free them and free himself from all this pain.

His whole life, Ivan Ilyich lived for himself.  But he died for others.  He died with compassion in his heart.

I was grateful Ivan Ilyich found his answer before it was too late.  I am grateful God seeks out every possible means to bring back the lost sheep.  So many points when reading The Death of Ivan Ilyich I was reminded of Relient K's song "Deathbed."  

Yet, it is tragic to reflect that here is an individual who spent his entire life living the wrong way.  Thank goodness he corrected his error before death, but how different would things have been had Ivan Ilyich lived the right way originally?

In our culture, Christmas crowds out Advent in so many ways.  But we need Advent: the sobering, quiet time preparing one's soul for Christ's coming...on Christmas, yes, but also for His Second Coming.  Am I living as I should?  If death should meet me today, would I be ready?

That's why I am so grateful for the habit of praying for final perseverance at the end of the day.  Each night, as day ends and darkness comes, I am reminded: how am I living?  

And I recall the end for which God created me, the end for which Christ was born on Christmas and died so that I may one day know the eternal bliss that is heaven.  Am I striving for that end?  Is that my focus...or is it pleasure and propriety? 

Respice finem.  This Advent and always. 

Lessons from The Heart of the Matter

...perhaps after all something may yet happen before he reaches me: some incredible interposition...But with open mouth (the time had come) he made one last attempt at prayer.  "O God, I offer up my damnation to you.  Take it.  Use it for them," and was aware of the pale papery taste of his eternal sentence on the tongue.  

Graham Greene is famous for writing three novels that are specifically "Catholic": The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, and The End of the Affair.  He objected to this label, arguing that he was an author who happened to be Catholic...not a Catholic novelist.  Yet the label endured and his works are divided into the two categories of "entertainments" (thrillers) and Catholic novels.

In reading The Heart of the Matter, I found myself frequently troubled by the notion that the novel was Catholic.  What, exactly, gives a work of fiction this delineation?  Is it because the imagery, actions, language, customs are Catholic?  Think: feast days, saints, Our Lady, sacraments, fasting from meat on Friday, papacy & Church hierarchy.  Or is it that the theme and message resound with Catholic theology?  Is it Catholic because it has the trappings of Catholicism, or because the novel's theme is Catholic in its teaching?

I had picked up The Heart of the Matter with a sense of reassurance and security.  It is, after all, a Catholic novel!  What matter could I find objectionable?  I was taken by surprise, therefore, when I found many things objectionable...troubling...  At many points I had to ponder where Greene was going with his plot and had to hope the "Catholic" message would triumph in the end.  There was certainly the elements of Catholicism in the plot (the main character being a Catholic himself), but the ideology residing behind in the protagonist's actions--was it Catholic?

I find that when reading fiction, you enter into the head of the author.  That can sometimes be a dangerous thing, but it's always fascinating.  What life experiences, ghosts of the past, lessons learned do the author intertwine with the lives of his or her characters?  How much does Greene put of himself into the words he writes?  Is this a "Catholic" mind you are entering as you progress through the chapters?

But, I ask myself, what is a "Catholic mind?"  Greene was a convert to Catholicism, but he was not always practicing.  In fact, he was a committed adulterer with multiple women and left his family.  He self-identified as a "Catholic agnostic." 

Surely, few of us are saints.  When one reads a work of fiction, the author generally tends to be a sinner.  However, when one seeks out Catholic fiction, should the expectation be that the author is a faithful, practicing Catholic?  Or can the Catholic dimension still shine truthfully through a sinful--perhaps even lapsed--lens?

Greene wrote The Heart of the Matter in 1948.  It was based on his experiences in Sierra Leone during WWII, when he was stationed there as part of the British Secret Service.  And in many ways, it was based on his own life, specifically his faith life.

Sierra Leone

Henry Scobie, the main character, is a police officer stationed on the west coast of Africa during WWII.  As the novel opens, he is presented as a strikingly honest man--whereas most of the police officers will accept bribes or engage in under-the-table exchanges, Scobie is known for his truthfulness and forthrightness.  Except when it involves his wife, Louise, that is.

Scobie perceives his goal to be making Louise happy, a goal which sometimes means omitting or avoiding the truth.  He is drawn to her, not out of love necessarily, but pity: he feels bad for her, who is socially outcast and trapped in the rainy, humid, foreign climate of Africa.  Like an actor in a play, he says the rehearsed lines to console her and reassures her of his affection, though there is little depth to his words.

He gave her a bright fake smile; so much of life was a putting off of unhappiness for another time.  Nothing was ever lost by delay.  He had a dim idea that perhaps if one delayed long enough, things were taken out of one's hands altogether by death.

This concept of pity becomes increasingly important as the novel progresses.  It is, in fact, the cause of Scobie's ultimate downfall.  Louise deeply desires to leave and travel to South Africa for a little while.  Scobie can't pull together the funds for such an excursion and so--against better judgment--takes a loan from Yusef, a Syrian who works for the black market.

 Pity smouldered like decay at his heart.  He would never rid himself of it.  He knew from experience how passion died away and how love went, but pity always stayed.  Nothing ever diminished pity.  The conditions of life nurtured it.  

Scobie hangs a pair of rusty, old handcuffs on the wall in his office.  They symbolize the pity that keeps him chained--to Louise, and then to Helen.  Helen is a young widow (married only about a month), who is found with a few others in a boat that was in the open sea for 40 days.  She is alone, ugly, without future...she is to be pitied.  

...he watched her [Helen] with sadness and affection and enormous pity because a time would come when he couldn't show her around in a world where she was at sea.  When she turned and the light fell on her face she looked ugly, with the temporary ugliness of a child.  The ugliness was like handcuffs on his wrists.

Scobie and Helen have an affair and it seems as though she may be drawing out of him genuine love and affection.  But perhaps not as Louise's unexpected return adds a whole degree of complication to things.  His greatest desire is not to cause pain to either one of them, but that means never telling Louise what has occurred while simultaneously never abandoning Helen.  

It may appear to be a sort of love triangle, but Greene's plot is more involved than that, as the Catholic dimension brings another layer of confusion and conflict.  Scobie and his wife are both Catholic.  After Louise returns home, she tells Scobie they will go to Mass together the next day.  Scobie immediately finds himself in the greatest predicament yet: to not receive Holy Communion would be a great indictment, yet to receive while in a state of mortal sin would mean his damnation.

"Now I'm just putting our love above--well, my safety.  But the other--the other's really evil.  It's like the Black Mass, the man who steals the sacrament to desecrate it.  It's striking God when he's down--in my power."

She [Helen] turned her head wearily away and said, "I don't understand a thing you are saying.  It's all hooey to me."

"I wish it were to me.  But I believe it."

Scobie believes and therein is the source of the conflict.  He is a practicing Catholic who knows what is right and wrong, who is torn up on the inside when contemplating receiving Communion while in a state of sin--yet, who still willingly commits adultery.  

Perhaps this is one reason why the book is "Catholic."  The climax of the book, at least in my opinion, is not a scene involving either Helen or Louise, but rather God.  Scobie doesn't want to hurt either woman and he pities each.  He also pities God though: God who places Himself helplessly and at the mercy of man in Holy Communion.  And Scobie is equally wracked with guilt that he is wounding God by receiving Him in a state of grave sin.  He kneels at the altar rail, Louise at his side, hoping for some deliverance from the situation in which he has placed himself through his sin.

The words of the Mass were like an indictment.  "I will go in unto the altar of God: to God who giveth joy to my youth."  But there was no joy anywhere.  He looked up from between his hands, and the plaster images of the Virgin and the Saints seemed to be holding out hands to everyone, on either side, beyond him...the fear and the shame of the act he was going to commit chilled his brain...he had no love or evil or hate of God: how was he to hate this God who of His own accord was surrendering Himself into his power?  He was desecrating God because he loved a woman--was it even love, or was it just a feeling of pity and responsibility?  

Loneliness overpowers him and courts him like a demonic companion.  Scobie can see no escape from his trap.

He said, O God, I am the only guilty one because I've known the answers all the time.  I've preferred to give you pain rather than give pain to Helen or my wife because I can't observe your suffering.  I can only imagine it.  But there are limits to what I can do to you--or them.  I can't desert either of them while I'm alive, but I can die and remove myself from their blood-stream.  They are ill with me and I can cure them.  And you too, God--you are ill with me.  I can't go on, month after month, insulting you.  I can't face coming up to tha altar at Christmas--your birthday feast--and taking your body and blood for the sake of a lie.  I can't do that.  You'll be better off if you lose me once and for all.  I know what I'm doing.  I'm not pleading for mercy.  I am going to damn myself, whatever that means.

The heart becomes the central matter: Scobie feigns angina and commits suicide by overdosing on medication.  

What is the "heart of the matter?"  What is the message Greene, lapsed Catholic, trying to give in this Catholic novel?

In many ways, Scobie is Greene.  They share the same first name (Henry) and are stationed in the same location during the war.  They both converted to Catholicism to marry and then, once married, committed adultery.  And both grappled with a guilty conscience.

George Orwell, in a review of the novel after it was first published, said that Scobie was incredible because "the two halves of him do not fit together."  In many ways, I agree.  He obviously has deep faith: his incredible guilt and grief over receiving Holy Communion comes from his conviction that Christ is present in the Eucharist.  He believes in God.  Yet, he kills himself...to spare God pain?  They are two extremes that can't seem to be reconciled--extremes that, perhaps, speak to Greene's bipolar disorder.

“To me the idea of willing my own damnation for the love of God is either a very loose poetical expression or a mad blasphemy, for the God that accepted that sacrifice could be neither just nor lovable.” ~ Evelyn Waugh in a review of The Heart of the Matter

If The Heart of the Matter is a Catholic novel, I find it a dangerous one, simply because I think you need to be Catholic to understand it.  If you do not understand or believe in transubstantiation, how can you commiserate with Scobie's grief concerning Holy Communion?  His desperation over offending God in this way leads him to suicide, but if you believe Communion to be "all hooey," as Helen did, then Scobie comes across as someone in a fit of insanity.  It also becomes easy to interpret Greene's writing as a condemnation of the Church's supposedly harsh and unmerciful teaching regarding sin and punishment.

Is there a Catholic message in this Catholic novel?  Yes, I think so, but it's only gleaned through Scobie's errors.  There is no example to emulate here.  As Greene wrote to fellow author and friend, Evelyn Waugh:

A small point – I did not regard Scobie as a saint and his offering his damnation up was intended to show how muddled a mind full of good will could become when “off the rails."

Scobie's fault was pity, which was in fact a masked pride.  To pity one, you must feel yourself somehow or someway above him or her.  It's different from compassion, which literally means "to suffer with."  Pity puts one above, not beside, the sufferer.  For Scobie to willfully end his own life is seizing a power that belongs only to God.  As Robert Coles writes in the New Oxford Review, "...Suicide is a kind of ultimate willfulness...Those who believe God has given us life know full well that it is for Him for end it."

Pity is a very different matter from love; as Greene himself described, "...Pity can be the expression of almost a monstrous pride."

As Scobie finds himself deeper and deeper in lies, he loses his ability to trust.  If he himself, once so upright and guileless, could deceive, who could be trusted?  Scobie couldn't bear to cause either Louise or Helen suffering--he felt too responsible for both of them.  He couldn't trust that God would take care of them.  He, Scobie, had to ensure everyone's happiness--even God's.  And in this Scobie committed the greatest sin that is pride.  

The Heart of the Matter takes the reader into the confusing, conflicted, and complicated place that is the internal, eternal soul.  In the end, Greene reminds us that--as wrong as Scobie's action was--it is God's place to judge him.  In one of the last lines of the book, Greene has Father Rank remind Louise, "The Church knows all the rules.  But it doesn't know what goes on in a single human heart."  

Scobie is a sinner in the same manner that Greene was a sinner.  The following quote is from Greene, though it could easily be placed on the lips of his protagonist.

We…become hardened to the formulas of confession and skeptical about ourselves: we…only half intend to keep the promises we make, until continual failure or the circumstances of our private life, finally make it impossible to make any promises at all and many of us abandon Confession and Communion to join the Foreign Legion of the Church and fight for a city of which we are no longer full citizens.

But this same man also wrote:

I can tell myself now that my lack of belief is a final proof that the Church is right and the faith is true. I had cut myself off for twenty years from grace and my belief withered as the priests said it would. I don’t believe in God and His Son and His angels and His saints, but I know the reason why I don’t believe and the reason is—the Church is true and what she taught me is true. For twenty years I have been without the sacraments and 1 can see the effect. The wafer must be more than wafer.

Maybe that is what makes Greene a "Catholic author."  He may not have been faithful, but he knew the faith and knew that it was true.  For most of us, sin makes the path of faith very messy at some points.  Maybe it's in that struggle that Greene is Catholic at his best.