Despoiling Egypt

Many years ago, I came across The Once and Future King, by T.H. White, though based on Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur. While the story was thoroughly a good one—just the sort of myth that’s great at any age—none of the main characters caught my attention so much as the Black Knight.

Now the Black Knight was the guardian of a certain pass that Arthur attempted to use at an early stage of his reign. After a long and tense battle, neck and neck the whole way, Arthur wins by the skin of his teeth. The great shocker, however, is that once the Black Knight is defeated, he recognizes that Arthur is a worthy king and someone to be followed and so himself becomes one of the Knights of the Round Table.

How could it be that someone could go from being such a great enemy to one of the greatest helps? But what could be more right than that great power should come to be allied with great goodness?

The Church has, from the earliest days, seen precisely this: all beauty, all power, all goodness find their completion in being united to God from whence they preceded. That which is wonderful, but heathen, will be made perfect in being reunited with its maker.

This has always been the modus operandi of Christians. We take everything great in the world and baptize it, be it philosophy, art, music, architecture, or science. Much like the Israelites left Egypt, taking with them the gold and livestock—all that was beautiful—we too can appreciate seeing beauty in secular things and turning them to their true end.

This is why it seems strange that many people will bring up Catholic holidays and point out that they were arranged as replacements for pagan holidays. Why should we not incorporate the best of celebrations and point their happiness towards the happiness of the Birth of Christ, All Saints, or the Resurrection? Joy is the Lord’s, should we not render unto Him what is His?

This principle is likewise true for churches. Perhaps the best example of this is the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. Once a temple to Minerva, the Christians saw that the beauty which had been mistakenly given to a pagan goddess should be set right and used to honor Jesus and His mother.

A fantastic example of this despoiling of Egypt is Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis. The story is based on Cupid and Psyche by Apuleius, a second-century neo-Platonist. Lewis saw that the myth had, by reason of its Platonism, good roots from which he could expand to explain the mystical union of the soul (ψυχή) and God. The result of his effort is one of the most underrated books of the twentieth century and among the greatest true myths of modern history.

So let us take whatever is noble, beautiful, honorable, and true and bring them to their origin. Let us not leave earthly reflections of God’s truth, beauty, and goodness in captivity, but ransom them and use them to show His glory. Let us take every drop of gold, every ingot of silver from Egypt, and take them home to the Promised Land. Let us get the Black Knight on our side.

The Despoiling of Egypt

Not long and all the world shall pass in fire to dust,

And many lovely things be rained and ruined to rust,

But in the world to come there shall be naught but light,

And all things here shall there be made all whole and right.

And that which will endure will be what’s now most full,

The godlike—good and true and even beautiful,

They hold in them the fire that long on earth has been,

The glory of his breath, the Ruah Elohim.

And so as once the promised folk of ancient day,

Bereaved Osiris ere they went and took their way,

And fashioned all the idols’ gold to glory Him,

To crown the Ark with wings of gilded Cherubim.

Let us who dwell in this a world of elder age,

Where many a wisdom once was said by pagan sage,

Be not believing demon hands can wholly stain,

What bears His mark and persists in His reign.

Be menders of the blessed world which has gone wrong,

And toil in His vineyard ere the eschaton,

Immerse the poet, sculptor, and philosopher,

In waters of rebirth and in His holy word.

For who has known His beauty if Hellas has not?

Who carved his face, unknowing, in the stone they wrought,

And sang the nature he had made in Adam’s time,

In Aristotle’s tablet and in Homer’s rhyme?

Or who has known His order save the noble race,

Of Livy and of Virgil who foresung His face?

His glimpse is in the passion of the northern lands,

The honor due Him manifest near Meccan sands.

All Glory be to God who made the world alone,

And fashioned all the beautiful to be His own,

And all the good to come and be with Him at rest,

To praise the Father, Son, and Spirit blest.

-Marcello Brownsberger