On April 25, 1951, as a 53-year-old who had 12 years of life left,
C. S. Lewis discovered forgiveness.
In December of that year, he wrote to his priest (in Latin):
. . . during the past year a great joy has befallen me. Difficult though it is, I shall try to explain this in words. It is astonishing that sometimes we believe that we believe what, really, in our heart, we do not believe.
For a long time I believed that I believed in the forgiveness of sins. But suddenly (on St. Mark's Day) this truth appeared in my mind in so clear a light that I perceived that never before (and that after many confessions and absolutions) had I believed it with my whole heart. . . . Jesus has cancelled the handwriting that was against us. Lift up our hearts! (Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, 3:151-52)
Five years later, in another letter, Lewis related the experience more fully to a woman who had freshly discovered the awe-full reality of Christ's incarnation.
Almost exactly the same thing that happened to you about the Incarnation happened to me a few years ago about the Forgiveness of Sins. Like you, I had assented to the doctrine years earlier and would have said I believed it. Then, one blessed day, it suddenly became real to me and made what I had previously called 'belief' look absolutely unreal. It is a wonderful thing. But not, on inferior matters, so very uncommon. We all in one sense 'believe' we are mortal: but until one's forties does one really believe one is going to die? On the edge of a cliff can't one believe, and yet not really believe, that there's no danger? But certainly this real belief in the truths of our religion is a great gift from God. When in Hebrews 'faith' is defined as 'the substance of things hoped for,' I would translate 'substance' as 'substantialness' or 'solidity' or (almost) 'palpableness.' (ibid., 751)
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Thank you, Dane, for this quote from C.S. Lewis, and for your ministry through books and other avenues. My men’s group has studied both “Gentle and Lowly” and “Deeper” and greatly profited from them.
Over the years, I have read most of what C.S. Lewis has written, including the three volumes of his collected letters and even his Oxford History of English Literature contribution. His letter on experiencing forgiveness of sins was one of the things I wanted to send to a friend who is struggling with this very issue. (The other thing was a quote from John Piper’s “Counted Righteous in Christ” where he argues that δεδικαίωται in Romans 6:7 should be translated “justified” rather than “freed.”)
The quickest way to find the C.S. Lewis quote was to google it, which led me to your blog, which in turn gave me the volume and page number of his letter to Don Giovanni Calabria. The correspondence between C.S. Lewis and the Italian Roman Catholic priest, Don Giovanni Calabria, began in 1947, as Walter Hooper observes:
“Don Giovanni Calabria was the founder of the Congregation of Poor Servants of Divine Providence in Verona. In 1947 he read The Screwtape Letters in Italian. Wishing to write to Lewis about his books and about Christian unity, but not understanding English, he began corresponding in Latin.”
And they corresponded in Latin until Rev. Calabria’s death in December of 1954.
So Rev. Calabria was not actually “his priest” per se—just wanted to clear up a possible source of confusion for readers of this blog entry.
Thank you again for your ministry, which has greatly benefitted me and many others.
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