Readings for the Feast Day of G. K. Chesterton
1 Chronicles 29:10-13
Psalm 8
1 Corinthians 15:50-52
John 1:43-51
This reflection was shared at the Transfiguration House at the monthly gathering of Associates and Oblates of the Community of the Transfiguration on June 13, 2018.
The great Christian author and apologist G. K. Chesterton has some excellent pithy quotes such as:
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”[1]
“Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags.”[2]
And, one of my personal favorites:
“Angels can fly is because they take themselves lightly.”[3]
There is one particular passage from Chesterton’s oeuvre that the Gospel (John 1: 43-51) brings to mind. The Calling of Nathanael has always fascinated, intrigued and bemused me. It’s full of comedy, wit, mystery, and surprise. When Jesus speaks to Nathanael, I imagine a twinkle in his eye as he says, “If you’re impressed with that insight, just wait. There’s a lot more where that came from. In fact, you should except to have your heart and mind blown completely wide open.” It almost seems like Jesus is temporarily withholding something that he really can’t wait to give away. G.K. Chesterton considers this in the final paragraph of his masterful book Orthodoxy: The Romance of Faith.
He writes, “Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed his tears; he showed them plainly on his open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of his native city. Yet he concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained his anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of hell. Yet he restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that he hid from all men when he went up a mountain to pray. There was something that he covered by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when he walked upon our earth, and I have sometimes fancied that it was his mirth.”[4]
[1] G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World? (Dodd, Mead and Co.: New York, 1912), 48.
[2] G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy: The Romance of Faith (Doubleday: New York, 1908, Image 1990), 118.
[3] Ibid, 120.
[4] Ibid, 160.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 