Long before Indiana Jones ever donned a fedora and cracked a bullwhip, and well before the creator of Robert Langdon of The DaVinci Code fame was even born, there was Archdeacon Julian Davenant.
Who? you might ask. Most people know the symbologist played by Tom Hanks in the movies, and you must have lived under a rock not to know Indy, but too few people know the humble Anglican cleric, responsible for the suburban church of Fardles. It is a shame. Like the other two characters, the Archdeacon was on an age-old quest: To find the Holy Grail.
Archdeacon Davenant is one of the heroes in the 1930 novel War in Heaven, by British author Charles Williams. Williams was a member, with the better-known C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien among others, of the informal group of Oxford-area writers known as “The Inklings.” Unlike Tolkien’s sprawling medieval Middle-Earth or Lewis’s allegorical Narnia, Williams wrote fantasies that begin solidly in the real world. Into this very mundane twentieth-century England, something supernatural finds its way, drawing his characters deeper and deeper into the strange and the wondrous. A mystical hyper-reality that may in fact be how the world really is all along.
War in Heaven opens in a publisher’s office—not unlike the office the author himself worked in—with a dead body under a desk; standard mystery novel fare. However, this is not the sort of tale Williams is telling. We’re told early on whodunit; the more important question has to do with why the murder happened. It has everything to do with an unassuming chalice in the vestry of Archdeacon Davenant’s church. An eminent historian of folklore has determined that that chalice is in fact the Cup used at the Last Supper: The Holy Grail. (Williams, following Arthur Machen, prefers the archaic spelling, Graal.)
The man behind the murder wants to use the Grail in a ritual of dark magic to bind the soul of a four-year-old boy to his, and thus increase his own power. He steals the chalice by force and uses his wealth and influence to dupe the mother of the child to entrusting him to his care. Archdeacon Davenant, a Catholic duke, and a skeptical editor form an unlikely band of knights errant resolved to recover the Grail from this dark sorcerer and save the boy.
The novel has all the twists and turns of a thriller, complete with car chase. Without getting into spoilers, I’ll only say that it ends at the only place such a novel could end: On the threshold of Heaven. In the context of an utterly engrossing fantasy story, War in Heaven underlines the same point that Dr. Scott Hahn makes in his book of popular theology, The Lamb’s Supper. The apocalyptic warfare of the Book of Revelation and the perennial battle between good and evil within the human heart both intersect in the Liturgy of the Eucharist.
G.K. Chesterton once wrote that fairy tales “say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green.” In a similar fashion, Williams spoke of the Holy Grail as a way to point us toward the mystery and miracle that happens at every celebration of the Eucharist. The Chalice literally becomes a vessel of the Blood of Christ, and when we receive Holy Communion, so do we.
The question is, as with every gift we are given, what will we do with it? The Grail, and the Precious Blood which it contains, is not meant to be kept for oneself. The true Knight of the Grail will use it for the healing and salvation of others. We strive and overcome in our own battles when we fight for others. Living a eucharistic life is how Heaven is won, and no one is in that battle alone.
Those perhaps are the most important thoughts to take away from War in Heaven.
