A Journey of ConversionThere can be no greater mismatch of characters than that of Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited and the Priest of Ambricourt in The Diary of a Country Priest. These two characters come to us from radically different lifestyles, but at the end of their respective literary journeys, they both receive divine grace from God in life-changing ways. We first meet Charles Ryder, a captain in the British army during the war. He realized that he was completely repulsed by his current state of life. He was once in love with the military and now it has become the bane of his existence. Here died my last love. There was nothing remarkable about the manner in which he died. One day, shortly before that last day at camp... I was dismayed to realize that something in me, long stinking, had quietly died, and I felt what a husband might feel who, during the fourth year of his marriage, suddenly knew that he no longer had any desire, nor tenderness, nor esteem for a once beloved wife… I knew everything, all the sad extent of marital disillusionment; we had experienced it together; the army and me, from the first unwelcome court to today, when we had nothing left but the cold bonds of law, duty and custom. This glimpse into the heart of Charles Ryder sets the stage for what we will learn about this man throughout his life. the Brideshead course revisited. As we will learn, Charles comes from a fairly wealthy family, extremely emotionally reserved. He was raised primarily by his father, Edward Ryder, and the dialogues between Charles and his father prove most revealing of Charles' heart. His father's emotional distance seemed to make Charles a man who sought to flourish among papers or before the beaten brass doors of a tabernacle; the flame that the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw extinguished; this flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, further, in the heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit without the builders and tragedians, and I found it there this morning, burning again among the old stones. (Discuss how this sets the stage for what happens to the priest after he is diagnosed with stomach cancer at the end of the book; his persistence in following God's will. He knows that God is working through it all even though he can't see anything.) (Then conclude with a summary of how, in the end, Charles and the anonymous priest of Ambricourt, both experienced God's love and mercy in the end of their respective lives. God's mercy knows no bounds "'Is grace everywhere. ?….’”