Future Priests of the Third Millennium

A little insight into the life of seminarians from various dioceses preparing for ministry as Roman Catholic priests, including daily activities, personal interests, special events, the spiritual life, news from the seminary, and almost whatever comes to our minds!



Wednesday, January 14, 2009

On Laughter, or Why Satan Fell

This is an excerpt from George Weigel's book, Letters to a Young Catholic. This is one of the outstanding books we are reading for our J-term class, Christian Theological Tradition. Weigel is currently commenting on GK Chesterton's Orthodoxy.


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Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one's self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light. Satan fell by force of gravity. -GKC

His own, that is: Satan fell by force of his own gravity. By taking himself too seriously - by taking himself with ultimate seriousness - Satan fell. His weight became too much for him to bear, and so he fell. Crashed. Cratered. Isn't that rather like the modern gnostic mind-set? Because nothing in the world counts, only I count: only my imperial, autonomous, self-generating self counts. Now that's heavy; far too heavy. A sacramental outlook on the world teaches us that, yes, we count (and infinitely). But so does everyone else. (Weigel, 95)