Some of you have mentioned your favorite works by Lewis. Manuel, you have indicated that you have read The Screwtape letters 7 times. Wow! The Screwtape Letters was the first work by Lewis I read, at about the age of 16, and it got me hooked on Lewis forever. Could you elaborate on why you read it so many times? I’ve read almost everything Lewis has written, except for most of the first volume of the 3-volume collection of his letters, because those letters were written before his conversion to Christianity and because they are very repetitive (e.g. he often writes the same thing to his brother and to his friend, Arthur Greeves).
I’m not sure I have a favorite Lewis work, but one thing that Lewis wrote that I constantly think of, since it comes up when I recite the Our Father (i.e. every day): his explanation, in Letters to Malcolm, of the meaning of the word "temptation: i.e. that in the original Greek it means “trials”, which includes temptations, but also “difficulties”, etc. In other words, it’s OK for us to ask God to keep us from trials of all kinds, just as Christ asked the Father to have the cup removed from Him. But, of course, having said that, we must also say “but Thy will be done”.
Dimitry
“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Love will last forever.” (1 Corinthians 13: 4-8)
I read the book twice immediately (the second one “viva voce” to my wife). Four months later, in January 1981, I read it again, this time alone. My fourth reading was in 1985, to a group of young people. The fifth was in 1990, to my children. Then there was a long wait until my sixth reading in 2009. And finally, last year, I read it aloud: the seventh time for me, and the second for my wife.