Friday, April 26, 2019

On the Paradox of Christians Caring for the Sick

“Of all men, we hope most of death; yet nothing will reconcile us to — well, it’s unnaturalness. We know that we are not made for it; we know how it crept into our destiny as an intruder; and we know Who has defeated it. Because our Lord is risen we know that on one level it is an enemy already disarmed; but because we know that the natural level also is God’s creation we cannot cease to fight against the death which mars it, as against all those other blemishes upon it, against pain and poverty, barbarism and ignorance. Because we love something else more than this world we love even this world better than those who know no other.” (C.S. Lewis from the essay, Some Thoughts, written one evening in 1948 at the White Horse Inn at Drogheda, Ireland at the request of the Medical Missionaries of Mary who founded Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital there.The essay was one of many later published in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics by C.S. Lewis published in 1970.)