On March 19, the feast of St. Joseph, young adults of the Diocese gathered for a fittingly upbeat Theology on Tap presentation at St. Joseph the Worker, Orefield. The event featured Joseph Grabowski of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton speaking on Chesterton’s “philosophy of wonder.”
“The enduring relevancy of G.K. Chesterton consists simply in how he saw the world,” said Grabowski. “Chesterton was in continual and genuine astonishment at the universe.”
Chesterton was an English journalist and apologist, and one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. He believed that, since the real world and the fairytale world are equally inexplicable, our world can be said to be “magical,” and life itself “an eccentric privilege.”
Born and baptized Anglican in 1874, Chesterton was raised as an agnostic, but converted to Catholicism in 1922. In his writings, he employed wit and humor to effectively present the ultimate truth of Catholicism.
“Between the years 1900 and 1936 Chesterton wrote, on average, 1,250 words a day,” said Grabowski. “He did that every other day for 36 years straight, producing 6,000 essays, hundreds of poems, and 70 books. When Chesterton died at age 62, people said he had worked himself to death.
“He expended himself building up the Kingdom of God.”
Grabowski pointed to the thousands of testimonials of people who have written to the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton and credited Chesterton with their conversion to the faith.
Admitting that “Chesterton makes [him] laugh out loud,” Grabowski said that while “we need to fight for the truth of our faith … you can go into battle with joy, which is what Chesterton had. He kind of laughed his way through fighting with the monsters in the world.”
“Chesterton emphasizes the joy of being Catholic,” said Christine Angeles, a parishioner of St. Joseph the Worker. “I think we need that.”
While young adults mingled and enjoyed a lavish buffet of finger foods, Father Nikolai Brelinsky tended a bar whose offerings included “Manalive! Cream Ale” after Chesterton’s novel “Manalive;” and “Pint, Pipe, and Cross Porter,” after Chesterton’s observation that “In Catholicism, the pipe, the pint, and the Cross can all fit together.” An adjacent dry bar was stocked with options for those abstaining from alcoholic beverages.
A nearby table held prayer cards, promo flyers for young adult events, and copies of “The Pelican’s Fountain,” a literary magazine started by Father Brelinsky.
“A couple times a year, we'll put out the magazine with a collection of young adults’ writings, prayers, poems, and art,” said Father Brelinsky, who encouraged prospective contributors to lend their talents.
The food, drink, and fellowship invited lingering, but Grabowski had other ideas. “My goal in this talk is to make you go away,” he said, “and read some G.K. Chesterton.”
He went on to share a well-known passage from Chesterton’s “Orthodoxy,” in which the author argues that repetition in nature is not due to dull necessity, but to vitality:
“Grownup 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 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.”
Grabowski ended his talk with the thought-provoking question, “Do we have the will, the humility to cooperate with God's grace, to finally be astonished at the world?”
The next Theology on Tap will be Thursday, May 7 from 7 to 9 p.m. at The RiverWalk in Parryville, with Dr. Imrich Gombar on “Faith and Science.”
Photos by Norm Steinruck.
Copy Permalink
