Hilaire Belloc and Ronald Knox on hope in suffering and sin
We cannot despair
Like his friend and ally G. K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc was a journalist and writer and also briefly a Liberal member of Parliament, but unlike him had been Catholic since birth. Like his good friend Chesterton, Ronald Knox was a convert, a journalist, and a writer, but also and most importantly a priest. Belloc’s insight appears in Letters From Hilaire Belloc, Knox’s in The Creed in Slow Motion.
Hilaire Belloc
Why these things happen I know not — nor does any man.
The matter of a life and its pattern are not to be understood by us. What we do understand during the little passage through the daylight is good and evil — and holiness when we see it, courage, affection and duty. All such things. But suffering and its trial and incidence and quality we cannot understand; but all religion, I mean all the Faith, is based upon a recognition of it. . . .
One day in Africa, I was going as a young man, on foot, through a waste of desert on a hot day. It was all dust and glare and no repose; till I came on a rock-wall and a gorge through it, quite arid and without water; but after a short way through this rock passage I came suddenly on an open valley, all green and with many trees and a clear river running through meadows. It was a new world.
These things happen: these visions of betterness suddenly at the end of Isolation! They are rare, unexpected, sufficient and always to be remembered.
I cannot believe they should be sought, and am sure they should not be induced; still less imagined: they are granted; they are a promise of what will come at the end of a long road. May you have many of them.
Ronald Knox
Life has triumphed over death in our souls. Grace has been implanted in us, a principle of supernatural life, a seed that sprang from our Lord’s tomb. That garden of the Resurrection was the nursery garden of the whole Church.
And that’s why we must never allow ourselves to grow despondent over our sins, even when we find ourselves falling into them again and again; there’s something in us stronger than sin, Divine grace, which is always thrusting up like a plant rooted in our souls, always claiming us for itself.
There is no autumn in your soul; as long as you believe in Jesus Christ and in what his Resurrection has done for you, it is always spring.
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