In his great novel The Great Divorce,C. S. Lewis elucidates that condemnation does not happen through circumstances, feelings, or ideas, but rather through the choices one makes on one’s journey. From small errors continually chosen follows the gradual loss of vision – the blindness towards the good, true, and beautiful. Unless one drops his own self-satisfaction, capriciousness, and ego mania, so that ears will be opened, one remains in the grey, in a perpetual rain.
Reading through the ghosts’ responses to the spirits is quite exhausting. They are stuck and unable to listen, like houses with closed doors and windows, so not a single ray of light can penetrate them.
A comparison with a scene in The Last Battle in The Chronicles of Narnia comes to mind. The dwarves, who are usually trapped in the stable, do not realize that they are now in the new Narnia. They think they are still in the dark stable, but they are actually in an open field bathed in splendid daylight. Old Narnia, darkened by the setting sun, had disappeared, swallowed by the vast ocean. Yet the dwarves see light as darkness and good things as rubbish.
This reflects what is inside them, of what they prefer for themselves – the shadow of death, the grey or hell. They dwell securely in the illusion of their own self-image. Not even Aslan himself can pull them out of this. He explains to Lucy, who took pity on them, why. As for what happens to the dwarfs afterwards, we do not know, for everybody must go onwards and “further up.”
In The Great Divorce, the wonderful vehicle, blazing with golden light, that suddenly appears to the little crowd at the bus stop in a corner of the hellish city, somehow stands for mercy. It is a “mercy transport.” Being transported does not require a great deal of orderly desire or an alteration of ideas and behavior, as the motivations of the crowd waiting to ride are despicable.
They board the bus in search of their unfulfilled worldly desires, seeking to enhance their state according to their own design. They try to put new wine into an old, patched wineskin. We know what will happen. One by one, they either retreat or shrink and vanish. They are ghosts: light and without consistency.
Christ came into the world to make us “solid.” For this reason, he was crucified so that man’s freedom could be formed in him. The formless, transparent, and hideous appearance of ghosts implies their misshapen condition.
When they land in Paradise, its beauty amazes them, and little by little, the ghost-passengers come out of the bus. The excruciating pain they experience is their possibility to overcome their misery, but engrossed as they are with their own “ego,” they are unaware of it.
Even though the solid ground wounds them like a sword, they begin to advance step by step, driven by curiosity. The captivating power of beauty that held them for a moment diminishes rapidly.
They are frightened by suffering, consumed by disappointments and self-pity, and engulfed by the hardness of their hearts and minds. They prefer to dwell in their own wretchedness.
The same experience could be applied to our fallen physical world. Hell, purgatory, and heaven play an intrinsic role in our souls. While grace is unrecognized, the soul remains distant and despondent. Mercy – the bus – is the threshold through which one can glimpse the joys of eternal life, as described in the story’s magnificent scenery. This is the grace that magnanimously affects the soul.
The ghosts do not need to return to the bus to be taken back to Hell. That would be illogical. Mercy accepts everyone, and its banner points upwards.
Once they grow bigger, they only need to see. Seeing in this respect is not obscured, since it is completely given. Denying it is contemptuous, as it is rejected.
The return, then, is the consequence of possession of one’s ego (self-love), and its offspring comes marching along. By licking the sores of past wounds and pride, they have chosen their path and have sealed their own fate.
These can be likened to the “wood, straw, and chaff” mentioned in one of St. Bernard’s sermons.
The story tells of only one instance of perseverance, and this soul is saved as if by fire. Heaven is indeed a narrow gate, set with conditions and order. Childish whims cannot pass through it.
In his sermon 34 De Diversis, St.Bernard says: “God forbid that we believe heaven to be a place of sorrow and sin… How can human weakness understand such affection, where there is mercy without misery? A love which rejoices with those who rejoice but does not weep with those who weep…”
Desire and perseverance are important for climbing the steep road towards the light. The prerequisite is the “combustion” of hearing; faith arises from hearing, and through hearing comes seeing. Until this spark is ignited, the vision remains hidden, leaving one to stand in either hope or despair. Grace works in the heart’s secret abode. This is the flame written in blood whose impetus startles those who hear the whispers of the deep. It lifts the small corner of the blinds and sets the sleeping giant in motion.
Time is the decisive event of life. Towards the end of the book, we read:
“Time itself, and all acts and events that fill Time, are the definition, and it must be lived. The Lord said we were gods. How long could you bear to look (without Time’s lens) on the greatness of your own soul and the eternal reality of her choice?”
Yet in between time and eternity, ‘the world between worlds’, there is a pause where hope swiftly glides to the soul. This is a great mystery. When all things are unveiled, the answers to the questionnaires are revealed, and the exams are over. We stand naked before the Splendor, saying: “We have all been wrong, that’s the great joke.”
Adam and Eve have seen Paradise, but for us, their children, who have not seen it, magnanimous mercy has been poured out. We all have been born blind, with the yearning to see, yet unable to bear the rays of so bright a “Morning,” we enter by the clefts of the rock, The Heart of Jesus opened by the lance on the Cross. ◼
Sr. Roxanne Acaylar is a solemn-professed nun of Our Lady of Mt. Matutum Abbey, Philippines.
Many thanks to Olha Khoturianska, a Ukrainian artist, for the illustrations featured on this article.