Why Study Classics During a Crisis?

Mrs. Jocelyn Jekel, our inestimable director of curriculum, has been guiding our students and faculty this week as we adapt to teaching and learning online. Thank you, Mrs. Jekel, for keeping our eyes on the prize. Thank you to all of our faculty for adapting so quickly, and especially to Mrs. Keara Mooberry for being savvy about the technology and generous with her help. Thank you to our students for being flexible and trying something new, and to our parents for being adventurous and supportive.

Yesterday Mrs. Jekel reminded our faculty of a sermon preached by C.S. Lewis in 1939, rallying Oxford students to their vocation as students, even in the midst of a great war. With a few adjustments, it could have been written this week about our pandemic.

As you read it, bear in mind that Second Lieutenant Clive Staples Lewis was a veteran of World War I's trench warfare. He was wounded by a shell that instantly killed the man next to him. Years later, when the second World War began, he had a hero's authority. And yet he did not give an inch on the necessity for scholars and students to recommit to their books, to study the liberal arts and maintain their academic focus. Below is a short excerpt from his sermon to get you started, but here's a link for reading the whole thing when you're ready:

"… I think it important to try to see the present calamity in a true perspective. The war creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun. We are mistaken when we compare war with 'normal life.' Life has never been normal. Even those periods which we think most tranquil, like the nineteenth century, turn out, on closer inspection, to be full of cries, alarms, difficulties, emergencies. Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right.

But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They wanted knowledge and beauty now, and would not wait for the suitable moment that never comes. Periclean Athens leaves us not only the Parthenon but, significantly, the Funeral Oration. The insects have chosen a different line: they have sought first the material welfare and security of the hive, and presumably they have their reward. Humans are different. They propound mathematical theorems in beleaguered cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on scaffold, discuss the last new poem while advancing to the walls of Quebec, and comb their hair at Thermopylae. This is not panache; it is our nature…"

This excerpt prompted Mrs. Jekel to write to our faculty: "I've read and re-read this passage a few times, and the following line keeps sticking with me: 'If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun.' So, though we are not in the midst of a war, thank you for not postponing the search for knowledge and beauty and for forging ahead to make the most of remote learning during a pandemic. I'm hearing good things from students and parents alike, and I hope we're all finding blessings in the midst of the difficulties many are facing."

Friends, there is a lot of grief and uncertainty all around us, but I have no doubt that there is also grace available at this time, that God is still with us. Treasure your sublimely honorable vocation as a teacher or a student, for your studies help make us human. And when we study the good, true, and beautiful, we eventually naturally hunger for worship and prayer. If you haven't checked out the Archdiocesan nightly rosary against the coronavirus, I encourage you to try it tonight. Bishop Robert Barron's daily Mass, streamed from his chapel, is also getting rave reviews. Oremus pro invicem!