“Come Israel, thou jade of blue and gold,
Now laud the common calf of reason’s fire.
The mind transcends, so scorns the caster’s mold,
Enlightenment supplants cold Sinai’s sire.
“Behold thy priest, betrayer of the rood:
Inverts he Calvary with a turgid jest,
And Pilate in the bowels of Dante’s wood
Doth flap expansive wings to say ‘Quid est’?
“When priest and Pilate bind thy hands and feet,
When smiles and words and laws call evil good,
Then shalt thou bleat, and bleat, and bleat, and bleat,
And cackle I while thou art drowned of blood.”
So saith the snake; but goes he fore the fall
Our Lady’s heart will triumph over all.
Did you write the sonnet? It is excellent.
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ReplyDeleteThe weather has been so beautiful and I have been enjoying sitting outside. While there I became very aware of my new neighbors who moved in a few months ago from lower 48. Sunday two groups of people stopped. One offered to take the neighbors children so the parents could enjoy a little quiet time. The other was “just checking how you’re doing.” Another day someone came to take the mother shopping as her husband has the car during the week. These are all people from her church.
Last Sunday in our church bulletin we asked for people to help with young mothers, who are followed our churches’ commands on birth control, with their little ones. No help was offered. Why? Why do people from other churches offer to help their community when we Catholics don’t? Don’t we have the same ticket to heaven given to us in Matthew 25:35 as they do? “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was…”
This verse also continues, “I was in prison and you visited me.” There are about twenty volunteers who go into the prison for Bible Study. Not counting the Priests and Sisters, only 3 of them are Catholic. Why do so few of us have time to follow Jesus?
Are we as Catholics so interested in how and what we do in the church building – do we bow, genuflect, say the exact words, know our religion – that we forget how to live as Christ told us? Are we become like the Pharisee in Luke 18:11-12?
Why must we find fault with each other? Have we forgotten the two greatest commandments given to us by Jesus in Matthew 22:37-40? “You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” When we criticize each other does that mean we also criticize ourselves? Are we finding the sliver in our community’s eye and missing what is in our own eye?
Each week I spend time reading the Gospels with the women and men prisoners. I have not found anywhere in the Gospel where Jesus uses any other name but His own when he speaks. Therefore, following his example, I shall write my own name to this comment.
Margaret Menting
Dear Margaret, What an excellent description of a lovely Christian community. I so agree. The only part I can comprehend is how this relates to the issue of Obama at Notre Dame? The issue with him being there had to do with his radical stance against Catholic Teaching regarding the sanctity of life. How does this relate to what you are saying? Kris
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