Men With Chests

"'Great art thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is thy power, and infinite is thy wisdom.' And man desires to praise thee, for he is a part of thy creation; he bears his mortality about with him and carries the evidence of his sin and the proof that thou dost resist the proud. Still he desires to praise thee, this man who is only a small part of thy creation. Thou hast prompted him, that he should delight to praise thee, for thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee."

-St. Augustine, Confessions

Welcome to Men with Chests. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Matthew Kennel. I graduated this past May 22, in the Year of Our Lord 2005, from VIllnaova University in Villanova, PA with a BS in Computer Engineering and minor in Theology and Religious Studies. I am a software engineer in Ardmore, PA, but my real passion is theology. I was raised as a Mennonite, but last year I converted to the Holy Catholic Church.

Although my twenty-two years have been all too short, I have had many challenging and heart changing experiences. I had a generally happy childhood. I was blessed with a beautiful mother, Joanne, a strong, wise father, Harold, and two amazing sisters, Sara, whose wisdom and beauty are immense, and Rebecca, whose sincere heart, strength of spirit, and love for God amaze me. However, my happy childhood came to a sudden end on September 18, 1999. I awoke to the shrill ringing of my room phone. The voice on the other end told me that my father and Sara had been in a terrible accident. Sara was ok, but my dear father, my best friend, was crushed and almost killed. But worse yet, even though he survived he suffered a terrible brain injury. (My eyes well up with tears as I write this, console me O Holy Mother of God!) So now, he gets neither the peace of Heaven nor the peace of family life, but instead the purgatory of the life of an invalid, but an invalid who can neither comprehend nor respond to his disability.

Tough as it has been, our family has somehow coped and come together more strongly than ever. My mother, may the dear Lord bless and console her, has been, even in the midst of her suffering, a tower of strength and faithfulness, both toward us and my father. My sisters have tried their best to have a normal childhood without dad. As for me, how many times have I coveted his advice, his love, his hugs, his sweet and strong voice! Oh dad, how we are all lost without you!

"But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumph, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ." (2 Cor 2:14-15). I for my part, have not given up hope in life or in God. That is why I hope for my whole life to be an offering to God, who in spite of my suffering is given me so much. To that end, I propose this blog! I have long wanted a place to post my thoughts and musings, to share with the rest of the world the bizarre and interesting things that go through my head. The title of this blog is "Men With Chests." This comes from C.S. Lewis' book, The Abolition of Man, in which he critiques the tendancy of modern "Intellectuals" to attempt to destory morals, natural law, and objective truth in man. Criticizing a book he calls The Green Book, he says

"The operation of The Green Book and its kind is to produce what may be called Men without Chests. It is an outrage that they should be commonly spoken of as Intellectuals. This gives them the chance to say that he who attacks them attacks Intelligence. It is not so. They are not distinguished from other men by any unusual skill in finding truth nor any virginal ardour to pursue her. Indeed it would be strange if they were: a persevering devotion to truth, a nice sense of intellectual honour, cannot be long maintained without the aid of a sentiment which [the authors of The Green Book] could debunk as easily as any other. It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so.

"And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive', or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. "
-C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, Chapter 1

Lewis points out that these "Intellectuals" are robbing men of their heart and soul. This disturbing trend, in my view, continues today with increased vigor and effectiveness. It is the great fall of Christendom that she has cut out her heart of flesh and replaced it with a heart of metal and silicon. Only by a sort of heart transplant can she satisfy her intense longing for freedom, peace, and rest. Only by regaining the Christ whom she has lost, will Christendom become alive again. O Christ, replace our heart of metal and silicon with thine own Sacred Heart, that we may become one in heart and mind with thee. Truly, "restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee." Set us free, that we may be free indeed (c.f. John 8:36). We are dead in tresspasses and sins, make us alive (cf. Ephesians 2), for "the glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God. If the revelation of God through creation already brings life to all living beings on the earth, how much more will the manifestation of the Father by the Word bring life to those who see God." (St. Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies IV, 20, 7). Amen.