A couple Sundays back, a delegation of the Cornell Society for a Good Time was in Scranton, at St. Michael’s, after Mass, to hear Mr. Dale Ahlquist, President of the American Chesteron Society. None of the group has a particular love of affair with Chesterton, as some Catholics do, but we were curious enough to hear what Mr. Ahlquist had to say. He shared some passages from Chesterton relating to the Blessed Sacrament; the talk wasn’t exactly memorable, but I did come away thinking about the title which Mr. Ahlquist has given to Chesterton, “The Apostle of Common Sense.”

This title came back to me as I read Lectio III from the old Roman Breviary (not to be confused with the old old Roman Breviary) for the fourth Sunday in Lent. The reading was from Tractatus 24 on the Gospel of St. John by St. Augustine.

The miracles, which our Lord Jesus Christ performed, are indeed divine works, and they move the human mind, by means of visible things, to perceive God. For He is not such a substance as may be seen with the eyes; and His miracles, by which He rules the whole world and governs the entire creation, are accounted nothing by their constant occurence, so much so that hardly a soul deigns to notice the marvelous and stupendous works of God in any grain of seed: according to His own mercy, He has reserved certain miracles to himself, which He performs, at an opportune occasion, beyond the common course and order of nature; in order that they might marvel by seeing, not greater things which they had despised as daily occurences, but those to which they are unaccustomed.

Miracula, quae fecit Dominus noster Iesus Christus, sunt quidem divina opera, et ad intellegendum Deum de visibilibus admonent humanam mentem. Quia enim ille non est talis substantia, quae videri oculis possit; et miracula eius, quibus totum mundum regit, universamque creaturam administrat, assiduitate viluerunt, ita ut pene nemo dignetur attendere opera Dei mira et stupenda in quolibet seminis grano: secundum ipsam suam misericordiam servavit sibi quaedam, quae faceret opportuno tempore praeter usitatum cursum ordinemque naturae; ut non maiora, sed insolita videndo stuperent, quibus cotidiana viluerant.

St. Augustine’s words reminded me of the following passage from Chesteron’s Orthodoxy:

All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstacy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore. Heaven may encore the bird who laid an egg. If the human being conceives and brings forth a human child instead of bringing forth a fish, or a bat, or a griffin, the reason may not be that we are fixed in an animal fate without life or purpose. It may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry galleries, and that at the end of every human drama man is called again and again before the curtain. Repetition may go on for millions of years, by mere choice, and at any instant it may stop. Man may stand on the earth generation after generation, and yet each birth be his positively last appearance.

This was my first conviction; made by the shock of my childish emotions meeting the modern creed in mid-career. I had always vaguely felt facts to be miracles in the sense that they are wonderful: now I began to think them miracles in the stricter sense that they were wilful. I mean that they were, or might be, repeated exercises of some will.

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