How the devil tempts you – and how love and virtue can win out in the end – were the themes of a special Lenten theater performance March 8 that attracted a capacity crowd from across the Diocese of Allentown.
“The Screwtape Letters” is a thought-provoking play about temptation, sin, grace, virtue, and God’s mercy. It’s also an uncomfortable reminder about how easy it can be to give in to the forces of evil.”
Nearly 500 people packed the auditorium of D.H.H. Lengel Middle School, Pottsville for the play written and performed by actor Anthony Lawton. It’s based on the book of the same name by C.S. Lewis, and it turns the tables on the human perception of temptation by showing the process from the devil’s point of view.
Among the attendees were Carol Twardzik and Karen Corrigan of St. Joseph the Worker, Frackville, who came because they had read Lewis’ work in a book club; Maureen Nicholas of St. Ignatius Loyola, Sinking Spring, who had heard of the religious lessons it contained; and Larry and Conchita Moser of St. Francis of Assisi, Allentown, for whom a deacon recommended the performance.
“I’m sure you will be enthralled to find out how the devil tempts us to that terrible thing – sin,” said Monsignor William Glosser, Pastor of St. Clare of Assisi, St. Clair and Holy Cross, New Philadelphia, during his welcome before the play.
“We are in the middle of the Season of Lent, when it will help all of us good Christian folk avoid those temptations.”
Lawton, a veteran professional stage actor from Philadelphia, portrays Screwtape, a mid-level devil in Hell’s “lower-archy,” who receives letters from his young apprentice about the younger devil’s progress in tempting a human.
Screwtape dictates responses to his pupil, advising him to steer the man away from God and toward all manner of sins large and small. Selfishness, pettiness, infidelity, not being nice to his mother – they all count among the sins in the devil’s bag of tricks.
In the end, though, despite their best diabolical efforts, they fail in their temptations. “All is lost,” Screwtape writes to his nephew. “You let a soul slip through your fingers” and go to Heaven.
The free performance was presented by the Diocese of Allentown in conjunction with the St. Clair and New Philadelphia parishes, as well as the diocesan Office of Evangelization and Formation.
Photos by Vargas Photography.
Copy Permalink
