This is an excerpt from George Weigel's book, "Letters to a young Catholic". This is one of the outstanding books we are reading for our J-term class, Christian Theological Tradition. Weigel is currently commenting on GK Chesterton's "Orthodoxy".
Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one's self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light. Satan fell by force of gravity.GKC
His own, that is: Satan fell by force of his own gravity. By taking himself too seriously-by taking himself with ultimate seriousness-Satan fell. His weight became too much for him to bear, and so he fell. Crashed. Cratered. Isn't that rather like the modern gnostic mind-set? Because nothing in the world counts, only I count: only my imperial autonomous self-generating self counts. Now that's heavy; far too heavy. A sacramental outlook on the world teaches us that, yes, we count(and infinitely). But so does everyone else. (Weigel,95)
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