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A New Spin on Charity and Hope

A New Spin on Charity and Hope. Lewis’ thoughts on two theological virtues. . CHARITY. The modern meaning of ' Charity ' is giving to the poor, or 'alms.' Charity is a 'state of the will .'. “ Charity means 'Love, in the Christian sense'. But love, in the Christian sense ,

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A New Spin on Charity and Hope

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  1. A New Spin on Charity and Hope Lewis’ thoughts on two theological virtues.

  2. CHARITY The modern meaning of 'Charity' is giving to the poor, or 'alms.' Charity is a 'state of the will.'

  3. “Charity means 'Love, in the Christian sense'. But love, in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of the feelings but of the will; that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have about other people” (MC,129).

  4. Does the human race range on affectionate feelings towards others? “Do not waste your time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbour; act as if you did” (131). “When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him” (131).

  5. “But whenever we do good to another self, just because it is a self made (like us) by God, and desiring its own happiness as we desire ours, we shall have learned to love it a little more or, at least, to dislike it less” (131). According to this spiritual law: *We may end up liking others that we could never have imagined liking at the beginning.

  6. Acts of affection can manifest themselves towards us liking men, but also God. Nobody can always have devout feelings for God. Christian love is an affair of the will. “But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not” (133).

  7. HOPE A theological virtue that looks forward to the eternal world (not as a form of escapism). Encourages us to not leave the present world as it is. “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither” (134).

  8. HEAVEN How would you define the word: Heaven? *Eternal life with God; communion of life and love with the Trinity and all the blessed. *Heaven is the state of supreme and definitive happiness, the goal of the deepest longings of humanity. (CCC, 1023).

  9. HEAVEN Often difficult to grasp the concept of heaven: • Our training/education fixes our minds on this world. • Fail to recognize the real want for Heaven present in us.

  10. “Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world” (135). We have longings that can never be fully satisfied in this world. Those longings are an indication of a fulfillment only available in the next world/Heaven.

  11. Three Ways Man Handles the “Quest for Fulfillment” 1.The Fool’s Way *Continual chasing of the 'next thing.' -Wives, husbands, hobbies, jobs, cars, etc, etc. * “Puts the blame on the things themselves” (135). 2. The Way of the Disillusioned 'Sensible Man’ *"[H]e settles down and learns not to expect too much and represses the part of himself which used, as he would say, 'to cry for the moon.' *... It tends to make him a prig (he is apt to be rather superior towards what he calls 'adolescents'), but, on the whole, he rubs along fairly comfortably” (136).

  12. Three Ways Man Handles the “Quest for Fulfillment” 3. The Christian Way • “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desiresexists… • If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that I was made for another world” (136-137).

  13. Man should be thankful and enjoy earthly blessings but also: “…Keep alive in myself the desire for my true country…I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others do the same” (137).

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