Dead Language Gives Life to Friendship

I just finished reading The Latin Letters of C.S. Lewis (St. Augustine’s Press, 1998). The book was an anniversary gift from some dear friends in 2000. (I'm slow, but I eventually chip away at my reading list.) The book follows a 14-year correspondence between author C.S. Lewis and Fr. Don Giovanni Calabria, an Italian Catholic priest. The correspondence is fascinating because it crossed the barriers of language, faith, and culture, on the bridge of a dead language.

Fr. Calabria spoke no English, and Lewis spoke no Italian. But as the former was a Catholic clergyman, the latter a scholar of ancient literature, they shared a common language: Latin. Fr. Don initiated the correspondence in 1947, after reading the Italian translation of Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. What ensued was a warm friendship in which the two shared their thoughts about theology, society, and their own personal struggles.

The book presents the Latin letters with their English translations, in a parallel format. I know only a handful of Latin words, so I couldn’t begin to understand the original letters, but it was fun to try my hand at it from time to time. ("Gratia et pax" = "Grace and peace." Easy enough.)

The correspondence is somewhat broken, like hearing one side of a telephone conversation, because Lewis’ actually destroyed Fr. Don’s letters in the interest of privacy. As Lewis explained:

“It is my practice to consign to the flames all letters after two days – not, believe me, because I esteem them of no value, rather because I do not wish to relinquish things often worthy of sacred silence to subsequent reading by posterity.”

Nevertheless, some of Fr. Don’s letters to Lewis survived in the form of Italian manuscripts or rough Latin drafts that preceded the letters sent. These help fill gaps in the conversation.

Fr. Don’s opening letter expresses concerns over the state of Europe, which both writers saw as entering a post-Christian era. World War II was a recent memory and both were distressed over how two Christian nations had engaged in such a deadly war. Lewis ascribed this to the “apostasy of the great part of Europe from the Christian faith,” predicting a grave future for the continent once enlightened out of paganism:

“For no one returns from Christianity to the same state he was in before Christianity but into a worse state: the difference between a pagan and an apostate is the difference between an unmarried woman and an adulteress. For faith perfects nature but faith lost corrupts nature.”

Still, Lewis held out hope for the younger generation:

“In younger people, although we may see much cruelty and lust, yet at the same time do we see very many sparks of virtues which perhaps our own generation lacked? How much courage, how much concern for the poor do we see! We must not despair. And (among us) a not inconsiderable number are now returning to the faith.”

The strongest recurring theme in the letters is a mutual longing for Christian unity, not only in Europe but all Christendom. “Ut omnes unum sint (that they may be one),” as both quoted Jesus’ prayer in the garden from John 17:31.

It struck me many times how these two men, one Catholic, one Anglican, celebrated the common ground between them, not ignoring their differences, but discussing them openly like friends raised in different households in the same country. The differences between them did not seem nearly as great as those that separate Catholics and Protestants in the U.S. today. Lewis’ letter on November 25, 1947 addressed key agreements and disagreements between the two, but then Lewis concludes:

“United action, prayer, fortitude, and (should God so will) united deaths for Christ – these will make us one. … By doing the truth which we already know, let us make progress towards the truth which as yet we are ignorant of. Then, without doubt, we shall be one: for truth is one.”

The most intriguing and frustrating letter was in June 1953 when Lewis asked Fr. Don a brilliant question about the nature of intercessory prayer, but Fr. Don’s response was likely “consigned to the flames” by Lewis. The question focuses on Jesus’ prayer before his arrest: “If it be possible, let this cup pass … nevertheless, not as I will but as Thou wilt.” Lewis says:

“How is it possible for a man, at one and the same moment of time, both to believe most fully that he will receive and to submit himself to the Will of God – Who perhaps is refusing him?”

“How is it possible to say, simultaneously, ‘I firmly believe that Thou wilt give me this,’ and, ‘If Thou shalt deny me it, Thy Will be done?’ How can one mental act both exclude possible refusal and consider it?”

I call Lewis’ question brilliant because he strikes at the very issue that divides “prosperity gospel” proponents from those espousing a more supplicatory faith.

“It creates no difficulty for me that God sometimes does not will to do what the faithful request. This is necessary because He is wise and we are foolish: but why in Mark 11:24, does He promise to do everything (whatsoever) we ask in full faith? Both statements are the Lord’s; both are among what we are required to believe. What should I do?”

I marvel at Lewis’ candor and so wish I could have read his friend’s reply.

Fr. Don Giovanni Calabria died in December 1954, but his successor, Fr. Don Luigi Pedrollo, continued the Latin correspondence with Lewis. The next letters continued previous threads, such as lamenting divisions in the church, but Lewis also occasionally requested prayer for current projects, such as his book, The Four Loves.

The dialogue becomes increasingly personal as Lewis describes the terminal cancer that afflicts his wife, Joy, who eventually died in July 1960. From other biographies of Lewis, I know that the loss of Joy struck a terrible blow to his faith. In the last letter he wrote to Fr. Don Luigi in April 1961, he describes himself “now bereaved as it were halved,” and that he must now “journey on, through this Vale of Tears, alone.” Lewis himself died two and a half years later in November 1963.

Latin Letters provided a very personal view of one of my favorite authors that none of his own published works offered. In hindsight some of it feels strange, as though I had eavesdropped on personal conversations. But most of the book actually reads like Paul’s letters to the early Christian church, with mutual encouragement and prayers and doctrinal discussions.

It was enlightening to read such intelligent and respectful dialogue between two Christian brothers committed to final unity of the Faith, and it was comforting to know that for them that final unity is realized. How beautiful that in post-war Europe, their commitment that unity forged a friendship that bridged gaps between nations and denominations, on an ancient and common foundation of faith and language.