Youth Space
Books can open up our hearts and minds to God, writes Matthias Conroy
I had never attended a book club when I heard about the opening meeting of a new reading group for the writings of C.S. Lewis which would be operating out of St Saviour’s Priory on Dominick Street, led by Fr Conor McDonough OP (the group that would later come to be known as ‘the Reepicheeps’, after the swash-buckling mouse from The Chronicles of Narnia). I was going through a rather serious bout of reader’s block at the time; I had picked up several volumes over the last months and even years, but it had been far too long since I had actually made it from start to finish. However, almost from my first hearing about it, I knew that I wanted to give attending this group a try. Although I had only read, in totality, one of Lewis’s volumes in the past, I had heard so much praise and received so many recommendations for his work that I was certainly intending to expand my knowledge at some point. Going into the first meeting I wasn’t worried about the group itself; I knew a number of the attendees previously, and anyone who has witnessed Fr Conor’s preaching or perused his eclectic and insightful Facebook feed, as I had, would have no doubts about his capabilities. Rather, my worry going into that first meeting in January of this year was that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the pace. I simply thought that the monthly deadlines would be too demanding for me in my current situation.
Now, skipping forward half a year or so, I haven’t missed a meeting or failed to finish a single book (even if that has required some last-minute catch-up, frequently into the late hours of the night before the meeting itself!). Why was this such a success for me, you might ask? I’ll humbly suggest three reasons:
The first, and perhaps least glamorous, of the reasons, is that the pressure of an external deadline is a powerful motivator for getting the reading done. Fr Conor stressed in the first meeting that one should treat finishing the books and coming regularly to the meetings as an act of charity for the other members of the group, and this is something I’ve tried to take to heart.
Secondly, the writings of Lewis are exceptionally accessible and succinct, he rarely will say in a thousand pages what he could in two hundred. His writing style is engaging, insightful, hopeful, even innocent. It has been mentioned at the group in the past that after reading Lewis one almost has a bemused bewilderment as to why you (or indeed anyone else) would ever do something you knew to be wrong or sinful. This is largely because Lewis has a profound sense of the Good, and he has expertly woven this into his stories and apologetics, which we alternate between each month.
Thirdly, it is, as Uncle Andrew from the Narnia series might describe it, “a dem fine group of people”. We hail from all over Ireland and further beyond, comprised of a variety of academic and professional disciplines, but all “caring about the same truth” as Lewis (borrowing from the thought of Ralph Waldo Emerson) says describing friendship in The Four Loves. The truth being, of course, Christianity. As a result of this, we are all able to contribute to the discussion, safe in the knowledge that we come from a shared tradition of thought and faith. This, of course, comes at the risk of becoming, as Lewis warns against in the same section of The Four Loves, a “mutual admiration society”, but the group’s emphasis on humility goes a long way in dispelling the chance of falling into such a silly trap.
This emphasis is particularly important for a group of people who may have very wide-ranging levels of comfort with voicing their opinion. For those of us who find it all too easy to blab on about our own insights, thoughts and experience, it is a welcome reminder that every single person in the group has something to contribute and in most cases that is how it turns out as well. I have had my view of a number of things in the books positively changed and developed by the group, from Edmund’s character arc in Narnia; to the manner in which one should react to the vision presented in our most recent book, The Screwtape Letters; to the very nature of allegory in Christian storytelling.
In The Four Loves, Lewis describes the feeling that can arise when one truly experiences the joys of Philia, or the Love of Friendship, “In a perfect Friendship this Appreciative Love is, I think often so great and so firmly based that each member of the circle feels, in his secret heart humbled before all the rest. Sometimes he wonders what he is doing there among his betters. He is lucky beyond desert to be in such company. Especially when the whole group is together, each bringing out all that is best, wisest, or funniest in all the others. Those are the golden sessions…Life -natural life- has no better gift to give. Who could have deserved it?” This is, I think, a good summing up of the mission of the Reepicheeps. May Almighty God help us in achieving it!