This is the fifth and final post on Things Worth Dying by Archbishop Chaput.
You
can find post #1 here:
Post
#2 here.
Post
#3 here.
Post #4 here.
Here’s how I breakdown chapter nine.
(1)
Imagine Your Funeral—Candor—The Four Last Things—Royal Road—Quo Vadis—Pilgrim’s
Progress—End of the Journey—Death.
(2)
Only God Knows Another Person’s Soul—Being Judged After Death—Particular
Judgement—Divine Judgement—Purgation—Purgatory—Justice Demands Resolution.
(3)
Doctor Faustus—Hell—Scientism Leads to Delusion—Satan—The Reality of Hell—Building
Hell on Earth—God Does Not Abandon Us.
(4) Heaven—Love—Vladimir Solovyov—Learning to Love God More than Our Appetites—Jesus is the Face of God—Beauty Projects to the Divine—Love That Moves the Sun—The Hound of Heaven—Heaven is Real.
Next a summing statement of each of the sections.
(1)
“The sheer honesty of pondering one’s death forces a person to consider what
matters, to choose a path, to focus on the direction and meaning of his or her
life, and to treat others accordingly” (p. 203).
(2)
The thought of being judged by a just God who knows us better than ourselves is
or should be terrifying.
(3)
“We become what we choose and do” (p. 216).
God gives us the freedom to choose the hell we want to live in, and
justice demands it.
(4) Heaven is the fulfillment of love, “the home of love,” and the desire of God of our end.
To summarize the chapter then we could articulate it as thus. The Catholic tradition teaches us that the four last things cannot be avoided and must be contemplated to complete a successful journey to our everlasting home.
###
My
Comment:
That was a great explanation of the four last things. I enjoyed this chapter very much.
###
Here is a breakdown of the Afterword.
(1)
Journey’s End—Relationship Between Faith, Hope, and Charity—Friendship—Philia
vs. Agape—Candor in Friendship.
(2)
Friend—Old Testament Friendships—New Testament Friendships—To Lay Down One’s
Life for One’s Friends.
(3) Memory—Memory as a Burden—The Future—Henri de Lubac—Love is Stronger than Death—My Job is to Save My Soul—The Good We Do In Life is Not Wasted—Our Lives Matter.
Only three sections in the Afterword. Here’s how I summarize each section.
(1)
“The true and highest form of friendship, for Aristotle, is that of good
persons who resemble and reinforce each other in virtue” (p. 229).
(2)
Friendship is the highest form of love and is ultimately derived from God,
especially through Jesus Christ.
(3) Our lives matter when we give of ourselves and our love.
Finally
the summing of the Afterword can be articulated by this quote.
“The crowning achievement of the Christian life is a community animated and ruled by agape (unselfish love) because of the free and generous philia (friendship-love) of its members” (p. 234).
My
Comment:
I really found this
little digression in the Afterword to be hilarious and from my point of view
spot on. Abp Chaput is speaking on the
friendship of the Inklings: Tolkien, Lewis, and Hugo Dyson. Chaput tells us how Tolkien “dominated some
meetings” by reading from his drafts of Lord
of the Rings:
Thus it was an
exasperated Hugo Dyson, the Tolkien friend, committed Christian, and
distinguished Shakespeare scholar, who finally, and famously, blurted out, Oh
no, not another [expletive] elf!”
Hahaha, that’s exactly how I feel about Lord of the Rings. The elves and dwarfs and hobbits and wizards and orcs and all others fantastical creatures all seem silly after a while. I know many of you are Lord of the Rings fans, and I did enjoy the book, but it’s a bit much.
###
So what are we to make of this book? It seems to have covered a lot of ground, and frankly on the surface one chapter sometimes seems disconnected from either the whole or its predecessor. Chaput starts with memory and within the body of the book we hear of the movie Casablanca, we hear of Cistercian monks dying, of scientism, the bureaucratic nation state, the French Revolution, the decline of the modern family, a survey of what people think of the Church, the four last things, and the nature of friendship, all of which is supposed to wrap up into “things worth dying for.” The Archbishop states that the book is “less a methodical argument or work of scholarship, more a collection of thoughts on a theme that seems to grow in importance along with the years” (p. 8-9). Does this book hold together or is it just a rambling of sorts of things the Archbishop wants to get off his chest before he passes? Let me try to find the central thesis. Let me take the main theme of each chapter and lay them side by side and see if I can discern the development of thought. Here are how I had summed up the central point of each chapter.
(1)
Having established the link of memory of the past with that of the integrity of
being, having suggested that the modern world has weakened the bonds to our
memory, the Archbishop asks the question of whether we modern Catholics are
able to suffer and even accept martyrdom for that integrity of being.
(2)
“How a culture deals with death, reveals how it thinks about the meaning of
life and the nature of the human person,” and the Cistercian monks deal with it
best.
(3)
Sarcasm and scientism, has led to a cultural nihilism that has deprived society
of its moral coherence and deprived of what truly matters in life.
(4)
Though God has revealed Himself, modern man in rejecting God has replaced Him
with idols.
(5)
The modern nation state, with its administrative bureaucracy, does not inspire
the love and sacrifice for one’s nation as in previous generations.
(6)
Since the French Revolution to the present, ideologies have rested on the
notion of perfecting human society and has had catastrophic consequences. All these ideologies fail because they either
fail to take the love that stems from God as its operating mode or reject that
love outright.
(7)
The
modern family is in decline because of four main factors, and we need to repair
the family by putting into proper perspective human sexuality and marriage.
(8)
Most laity, priests, and the Archbishop himself love the Catholic Church and
want to make it holier.
(9)
The Catholic tradition teaches us that the four last things cannot be avoided
and must be contemplated to complete a successful journey to our everlasting
home.
(A) “The crowning achievement of the Christian life is a community animated and ruled by agape (unselfish love) because of the free and generous philia (friendship-love) of its members”
What I find is a subtle pattern of a journey, sometimes with diversions, but mostly with a focused trajectory. It starts from a question—are modern Catholics able to suffer and even accept martyrdom for their integrity of being? Chaput then shows us first what constitutes proper acceptance of such willingness as seen in the ancestral values of the Cistercian monks. From there he then identifies the root illness of modernity, culminating in the decline of the modern family. He then takes some sort of assessment of the current state of the Church, which, of course, is the home and guide of Catholics. And finally the Archbishop ends with the four last things and the nature of Christian friendship. It strikes me that the Archbishop never actually answers his question: Are contemporary Catholics willing to suffer and die for what they believe? Unless I missed it, I think it’s left as an open question.
But I do think in the two last movements of the book, one individualistic and one communal, Chaput provides his accumulated wisdom as to how to build this internal integrity. The first of these movements—meditating on the four last things—is an act that builds internal strength, that integrity of being he is questioning. Every individual is faced with death, judgement, and the fate of his soul in either hell or heaven. It is an individual destiny which comes from individual choices along one’s journey to the end. The Archbishop seems to be saying, focus on these four last things and you will build that integrity of being that will give you the fortitude to be a martyr if that choice comes upon you.
The second of the last movements is friendship, a communal act that in effect builds the integrity of the Catholic community. Through friendship we build a community, a society, a nation, and a universal Church. Through friendship we build a tradition, a culture, a city, a nation, a history, a memory, and that Holy Land we hold dear in our hearts. Through friendship we build what we are willing to suffer and die for. I don’t know if the Archbishop is optimistic—sometimes he seems exasperated with the current state of things—but he is pouring out his heart as to how to right the ship of society.
If the Archbishop is not optimistic for this generation, his optimism for the future and for God’s people is unquestioned. After his exhortation to build friendships and “to make the world a better place in the light of the Gospel,” he concludes with this vision.
We rarely see the full effects of the good we do in this life. So much of what we do seems a tangle of frustrations and failures. We don’t see—on this side of the tapestry—the pattern of meaning that our faith weaves. But one day we’ll stand on the other side. And on that day, we’ll see the beauty that God has allowed us to add to the great story of creation, the richness we’ve added to the lives of our family and friends, the mark for the better we’ve left the world, and the revelation of his love that goes from age to age no matter how good or bad the times. We are each an unrepeatable, infinitely treasured part of the story. (p. 239-40)
Perhaps one would have wanted a wrap up at the end to pull all the threads together. Chaput doesn’t give it to us at the end, but it’s there in the beginning. Once you are done with the book, re-read the first chapter. It pulls it all together. Perhaps this little paragraph sums up everything:
Love is demanding. It draws us outside ourselves. The more we love, the greater our willingness to sacrifice. When we know, honestly, what we’re willing to sacrifice for, even to die for, we can see the true nature of our loves. And that tells us who we really are. (p. 9)
This is a fine and sober book that comes from a loving heart.
###
So what are we to make of this book? It seems to have covered a lot of ground, and frankly on the surface one chapter sometimes seems disconnected from either the whole or its predecessor. Chaput starts with memory and within the body of the book we hear of the movie Casablanca, we hear of Cistercian monks dying, of scientism, the bureaucratic nation state, the French Revolution, the decline of the modern family, a survey of what people think of the Church, the four last things, and the nature of friendship, all of which is supposed to wrap up into “things worth dying for.” The Archbishop states that the book is “less a methodical argument or work of scholarship, more a collection of thoughts on a theme that seems to grow in importance along with the years” (p. 8-9). Does this book hold together or is it just a rambling of sorts of things the Archbishop wants to get off his chest before he passes?
What I find is a subtle pattern of a journey, sometimes with diversions, but mostly with a focused trajectory. It starts from a question—are modern Catholics able to suffer and even accept martyrdom for their integrity of being? Chaput then shows us first what constitutes proper acceptance of such willingness as seen in the ancestral values of the Cistercian monks. From there he then identifies the root illness of modernity, culminating in the decline of the modern family. He then takes some sort of assessment of the current state of the Church, which, of course, is the home and guide of Catholics. And finally the Archbishop ends with the four last things and the nature of Christian friendship. It strikes me that the Archbishop never actually answers his question: Are contemporary Catholics willing to suffer and die for what they believe? Unless I missed it, I think it’s left as an open question.
But I do think in the two last movements of the book, one individualistic and one communal, Chaput provides his accumulated wisdom as to how to build this internal integrity. The first of these movements—meditating on the four last things—is an act that builds internal strength, that integrity of being he is questioning. Every individual is faced with death, judgement, and the fate of his soul in either hell or heaven. It is an individual destiny which comes from individual choices along one’s journey to the end. The Archbishop seems to be saying, focus on these four last things and you will build that integrity of being that will give you the fortitude to be a martyr if that choice comes upon you.
The second of the last movements is friendship, a communal act that in effect builds the integrity of the Catholic community. Through friendship we build a community, a society, a nation, and a universal Church. Through friendship we build a tradition, a culture, a city, a nation, a history, a memory, and that Holy Land we hold dear in our hearts. Through friendship we build what we are willing to suffer and die for. I don’t know if the Archbishop is optimistic—sometimes he seems exasperated with the current state of things—but he is pouring out his heart as to how to right the ship of society.
This
is a fine and sober book that comes from a loving heart. Four and a half stars, and I rounded up to
five.
