CS Lewis is best known for The Chronicles of Narnia. A lot of people don’t realize that his intellectual journey carried him from the faith of his youth, through a protracted period of committed atheism to one of the most insightful Christian writers of the 20th century.
Lewis gave a speech in 1942 called, “The Weight of Glory” that makes a profound case for love of our neighbor. He says that it is impossible to think too long or too deeply about the future heavenly glory of our neighbor and that we must bear this weight daily in our interactions with others. Here are the final few paragraphs:
All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations (heaven or hell). It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.
Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him is also Christ —the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.
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