Sense and Nonsense: The Pleasure of Meeting in Heaven

In February, I was invited by my colleague, Professor Jan Karski, to attend a performance at the Kennedy Center of the Washington Dance Society. Professor Karski’s wife, Pola Nirenska, is a well-known director of modern dance. The final dance of the evening, set to some music by Ernest Bloch, was entitled “Dirge, 1981,” based on the following phrase from the Roman Stoic Seneca: “In memory of those I loved . . . who are no more.” The dark mood of this dance did somehow embody that sense of individual disappearance into total oblivion that we often associate with the Stoics, ancient and modern.

I bring this up in the light of another amusing incident in the Grand Tour that James Boswell took in 1764. It seems he was in Mannheim on the 7th of November, where he decided to visit the local Jesuit College. Boswell seems to have known of a French Jesuit teaching there by the name of Monier. “He was a black, handsome man, between thirty and forty. He showed me their refectoire, but told me that although their college had a good outside, it was but poor within.” What a good Jesuit procurator has said that before!

The two walked in the college garden for awhile, where they talked of “the favorite subject of the Jesuits, the Catholic controversy.” Monier, it turned out, had been in Canada and was thoroughly annoyed at the French for abolishing the Society. “They will see the terrible consequences,” Monier warned. “They will see the decline of literature. Not precisely that the Jesuits sustained it all alone, but they aroused emulation.” (I wonder if Secretary Bennett knows about this?)

In any case, Pere Monier inquired if Boswell were a Catholic. Boswell replied negatively, adding that “I hope that I shall not be damned for that.” He asked Monier, somewhat wickedly, if he thought that he (Boswell) would be so damned. The French Jesuit replied, “Sir, it is hard; but it is absolutely necessary for me to believe it. You have not the excuse of a poor peasant. You are enlightened.” To this latter comment, in a passage I dearly love, Boswell, in the beginnings of the Aufklarung itself, added: “I smiled modestly.”

Boswell then explained that he was “of no sect,” but he believed in Jesus and “endeavored to adore God with fervency.” Boswell in fact enjoyed worshipping in the “Romish church,” while his own notions of God made him not fear Him “as cruel.” In reply, the French Jesuit remarked that he was indeed sorry that Boswell was not a Catholic. Boswell, in his turn, noted that the Jesuit was “so agreeable,” that he almost regretted that he could not please him. Finally, taking leave in the garden of the Jesuit College in Mannheim, Boswell said to Monier: “Sir, I shall have the pleasure of meeting you in heaven.

How different this was from Seneca and from his friends whom “we shall see no more.” What is the difference? In his Notebooks, Jacques Maritain included a chance correspondence he had with a young man, Pierre Villard was his name, in the French Army during World War I, a man of great piety who was killed in late June 1918. Villard had lost all of his family and was in search of intellectual and spiritual guidance which he received from Maritain. This particular correspondence is very moving. Indeed, it may be the most inspiring spiritual discussion of a soldier about his relation to God one can find.

Amid the distraction and temptations of combat life, in an attempt to keep a clear conscience and Christian view of life, Villard had asked Maritain about introducing seriousness into our lives. “Can total confidence exist if an essential goal is not recognized and practiced?” he asked.

Maritain answered that, of course, we needed a single goal, but that such a goal existed. “It is to do that for which we are made, that is to say, to save our soul, which is not made for the earth or for any terrestrial goal, but to be united with God in eternity. All the rest is purely secondary.”

Ignatius of Loyola said pretty much the same thing: “Man is created to praise God, our Lord, to show Him reverence, to serve Him, and through these things to save his soul; and the other things on the face of the earth are created because of man, to help him achieve the end for which he was created.”

When Villard was killed, Maritain received a letter (June 30, 1918) from Abbe Charles Rolin, “stretcher-bearer Sergeant, 26th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Battalion, Section 126” — we mush recall that the anti-clerical French had drafted priests for regular service during World War I, something ironically that did much to reconcile France with the Church.

Villard “leaves among his comrades and with his leaders many regrets,” Rolin wrote, “because for the latter he was the model of a conscientious soldier and for the former of a goodness which touched even the most insensitive.” The Abbe then lamented the deaths of so many good young men during World War I (Maritain had already seen his friends Charles Peguy and Ernest Pschiari killed), but Rolin added, “fortunately, thanks to the Communion of Saints, they will continue to live among us, to speak to us, to teach us, to raise us towards Heaven.”

Dirges, the excuses of poor peasants, the salvation of the soul, essential goals, deaths at the end of the Great War, Communion of Saints, gentility in college gardens — let me remind you of these “favorite subjects of Catholic controversy”:

  • 65 A.D. Seneca, Roman philosopher, suicide under Nero’s threats: “In memory of those I loved who are no more.”
  • 1541 A.D. Ignatius of Loyola, Spanish soldier: “Man is created to praise God, Our Lord, to show Him reverence, to serve Him, and through these things to save his soul.”
  • 1918 A.D. Jacques Maritain to a French soldier on the Western Front: “Our goal in life is to do that for which we were made, that is, to save our soul.”
  • 1764 A.D. James Boswell to a French Jesuit in a garden in Mannheim: “Sir, I shall have the pleasure of meeting you in Heaven.”

Author

  • Fr. James V. Schall

    The Rev. James V. Schall, SJ, (1928-2019) taught government at the University of San Francisco and Georgetown University until his retirement in 2012. Besides being a regular Crisis columnist since 1983, Fr. Schall wrote nearly 50 books and countless articles for magazines and newspapers.

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