Once a week I take the coach just
outside Blackfriars to get to Burford, which is a charming country town only
forty minutes away, for my tutorial. I always sit on the same side of the bus
and go to the same bakery on the main street of the town—and my tutorial is
always scheduled to commence promptly at 1:35 (the bus arrives at half past). My
tutor is the renowned Newman scholar Fr. Ian Ker, who has recently written a
biography on Chesterton contending that he is a successor of Newman. The short trip
that I make to Fr. Ker’s house is always thoroughly enjoyable: I’m traveling so
that I can learn from an expert rather than sitting in a classroom or simply walking
into a building on a college campus. The experience of going to Burford is such
a blessing—one that I still enjoy though I have been three times already.
Last
week, Fr. Ker was finishing attending to some work, so he told me that I could
peruse his Chesterton Library in the meantime. How many people have a “Chesterton
Library?” The Library is truly the dream of any Chesterton enthusiast. Not only
does Fr. Ker have the complete works of Chesterton but also various secondary
sources on the great apologist. On this same occasion, it was a typically rainy
English afternoon, so he suggested that I stay for a while and read some of his
books. The book that I chose to peruse is by a Dominican who teaches at
Cambridge, Fr. Aidan Nichols. It’s called A
Grammar of Consent and is a very interesting study of the various arguments
for the existence of God made by a range of thinkers.
Chesterton’s
is towards the end of the chronological list. Perhaps fans of Chesterton will
hazard a guess as to how Nichols characterizes the main theme of Chesterton’s
apologetics. I won’t say that I was surprised, but instead I’ll say that I was
truly moved into a state of profound awe to learn that Nichols asserts that Chesterton’s
apologetics centers around joy. In
another one of his books, G.K. Chesterton,
Theologian, Nichols claims that Chesterton advocates “the gratuitously
joy-provoking character of existence.” What does this mean? It connotes the
extreme, inexplicable joy that we feel to be alive: to be in this world. I can only try to describe this joy that I
feel each time that I go to Burford—whether in miserable rain that obliges me
to stand at the bus stop for an hour for a bus that never comes or whether strolling
along the streets of Burford guided by rare rays of sunshine.
Regardless,
I exist in a world that allows me to enjoy the charm of Burford: an
unpretentious British town nestled in the Cotswolds of Oxfordshire. Chesterton
said that “we are perishing for want of
wonder, not for want of wonders.” Yesterday it
was a beautiful day, so I decided to be adventurous and keep walking down the
main road of the town until I encountered the next village, called Fulbrook. The
road was virtually empty, and so I was left alone with my beauteous surroundings.
After a while of meandering, I saw a sign that indicated a Norman Church—I can’t
tell you how much that excited me! My pace became quicker, and soon I unlatched
the gate and was face to face with a Church built nearly a millennium ago. There
wasn’t a soul in the Church of St. James the Great, so I was free to explore.
A
brochure explaining the dynamic history of the church said that “any stained
glass there had been in windows other than the Sanctuary all disappeared in the
16th century, during the upheavals of the Reformation.” Today, the
edifice belongs to the Church of England. In Burford there is also an old church (now Anglican) called St. John the Baptist that Laura and I visited, which dates from the twelfth century.Fr. Ker is the Catholic priest in the town, and I find it very amusing
and telling of the history of Catholic persecution in England that when we go
to a town, the Catholic Church is labeled “Catholic Church” whereas there are
always various Anglican Churches. When Laura and I were in London, we saw that
one of the stops on the Tube was called “Blackfriars,” so we got off the train,
thinking that this must be where the Dominicans have their stadium and Church. We
were wrong. On our return to Oxford, one of the Dominicans told us that
Blackfriars had been home to Dominicans before
the Reformation, but everything was destroyed.
The
Dominican Father Godfrey Anstruther wrote a book about fifty years ago called A Hundred Homeless Years which tells the
story of the English Dominicans from1558-1658, when they were persecuted and their
priories closed, forcing them into exile on the continent. He says that “on the
eve of the Reformation, the English Province consisted of fifty-three houses of
men….and the total [number of friars] for England and Wales could not have been
far short of two thousand.”
It
shocked me to learn that though the Dominicans were first established at Oxford
in 1221 by St. Dominic himself, they were only allowed to return seven hundred years later in 1921. Yet
they did survive the centuries of persecution and some even endured martyrdom
for the defense of their Catholic Faith. In The
Everlasting Man, Chesterton remarks that “Christendom has had a series of
revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has
died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the
grave.” That’s why I can be joyful sitting in the Blackfriars Library that was
built last century and not in the Middle Ages. That’s why it’s always such a
pleasure to spend the day in Burford.
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