"God walked again in the garden"

"ON the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn."

~G.K. Chesterton: The Everlasting Man, Part II, Chap. III. ─The Strangest Story in the World.

"Not to be humiliated by the limitations of pain and death"

"CHRIST came on earth to smash the man who felt himself strong. And He did, in the most effective and final manner, smash the man who felt himself strong; for He opposed to him the God who felt Himself weak. Human beings henceforward were not to be humiliated by the limitations of pain and death; for Deity itself has admitted them... Marred by a million other mistakes, betrayed and tortured through the agony of eighteen centuries, Christianity has never lost its strongest and most distinctive note, the physical note; the talk of the body and the blood. Ever since the Crucifixion a certain actuality, and, therefore, a certain sanctity, has clung round the hard pain of prosaic men."

~G.K. Chesterton: Daily News, Apr 11, 1908.

h/t: Mike Miles

GKC

"The Crucifixion"

"YOU will not be able rationally to read the Gospel and regard the Crucifixion as an afterthought or an anti-climax or an accident in the life of Christ; it is obviously the point of the story like the point of a sword, the sword that pierced the heart of the Mother of God."

~G.K. Chesterton: St. Francis.

Triptych, by Jacobello Alberegno. Tempera on panel, 1360-90;
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice.

"The Creator truly groaning and travailing with his Creation"

"IN EVERY century, in this century, in the next century, the Passion is what it was in the first century, when it occurred; a thing stared at by a crowd. It remains a tragedy of the people; a crime of the people; a consolation of the people; but never merely a thing of the period. And its vitality comes from the very things that its foes find a scandal and a stumbling block; from its dogmatism and from its dreadfulness. It lives, because it involves the staggering story of the Creator truly groaning and travailing with his Creation; and the highest thing thinkable passing through some nadir of the lowest curve of the cosmos. And it lives, because the very blast from this black cloud of death comes upon the world as a wind of everlasting life; by which all things wake and are alive."

~G.K. Chesterton: The Way of the Cross.

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"Drink, for the trumpets are blowing for battle"

"Jesus Christ...made wine, not a medicine, but a sacrament. But Omar makes it, not a sacrament, but a medicine. He feasts because life is not joyful; he revels because he is not glad. "Drink," he says, "for you know not whence you come nor why. Drink, for you know not when you go nor where. Drink, because the stars are cruel and the world as idle as a humming-top. Drink, because there is nothing worth trusting, nothing worth fighting for. Drink, because all things are lapsed in a base equality and an evil peace." So he stands offering us the cup in his hand. And at the high altar of Christianity stands another figure, in whose hand also is the cup of the vine. "Drink" he says "for the whole world is as red as this wine, with the crimson of the love and wrath of God. Drink, for the trumpets are blowing for battle and this is the stirrup-cup. Drink, for this my blood of the new testament that is shed for you. Drink, for I know of whence you come and why. Drink, for I know of when you go and where.""

~G.K. Chesterton: Heretics.

The Last Supper, by Philippe de Champaigne.
Oil on canvas, c. 1652; Musée du Louvre, Paris.

"Let us begin the League of the Free Families!"

"YOU believe in Home Rule for Ireland; I believe in Home Rule for homes," he cried eagerly to Michael. "It would be better if every father COULD kill his son, as with the old Romans; it would be better, because nobody would be killed. Let's issue a Declaration of Independence from Beacon House. We could grow enough greens in that garden to support us, and when the tax-collector comes let's tell him we're self-supporting, and play on him with the hose…. Well, perhaps, as you say, we couldn't very well have a hose, as that comes from the main; but we could sink a well in this chalk, and a lot could be done with water-jugs…. Let this really be Beacon House. Let's light a bonfire of independence on the roof, and see house after house answering it across the valley of the Thames! Let us begin the League of the Free Families!"

~G.K. Chesterton: Manalive.

"If a god does come upon the earth"

"IF a god does come upon the earth, he will descend at the sight of the brave. Our prostrations and litanies are of no avail our new moons and sabbaths are an abomination. The great man will come when all of us are feeling great, not when all of us are feeling small. He will ride in at some splendid moment when we all feel that we could do without him."

~G.K. Chesterton: Charles Dickens.