Cecilia and C.S. Lewis

St.Cecelia's Music Society's Tiffany window

Well, the Episcopal liturgical calendar gives today to C.S. Lewis but, as an old musician by (earlier) trade, I really need to honor St. Cecilia as well. Here's a little something about her:

Cecilia is the patron saint of musicians, and her name is often invoked before a performance. One performer who said a prayer to St. Cecilia before he sang was the famous tenor, Luciano Pavarotti. Cecilia is associated with music because she was credited with the invention of the keyboard, a claim which is not strictly true, as there were keyboards on much earlier Greek instruments called water organs. St. Cecilia was reputed to have lived around 200 AD. Though there may have been an historical Cecilia, the role of a female inspirer of music and musicians predates both her and Christianity..

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C.S. Lewis died, as some of us well remember, on the same day as John F. Kennedy. Here's something he said that is very consoling, really:

Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ.

Undoubtedly, his best work of fiction is Till We Have Faces. If you have not read it yet, do yourself a favor and don't put it off much longer.