On July 20, 1969, the human race accomplished its single greatest technological achievement of all time when a human first set foot on another celestial body.



Six hours after landing at 4:17 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (with less than 30 seconds of fuel remaining), Neil A. Armstrong took the “Small Step” into our greater future when he stepped off the Lunar Module, named “Eagle,” onto the surface of the Moon, from which he could look up and see Earth in the heavens as no one had done before him.

 

MAN ON THE MOON!

The Gospel reading for this Sunday, Luke 10: 25-37, is among the most familiar in all of Sacred Scripture and allusions to the Good Samaritan are common even among folk who are unaware of the source and unmindful of the Lord Jesus Himself.



The parable is not only familiar, but the central question haunting. Who is my neighbor? And the circumstances of the story add to its richness and make reflection on it more profitable. What, for example, would have been our obligation had we been on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho and come upon the traveler not after he'd been set upon by thieves and left for dead, but while the thugs were robbing and beating him? And has reflection on this question anything to tell us about the limits and implications of pacifism?



William B.O. Peabody, a graduate of Harvard College and a member of the faculty at Phillips Exeter Academy, who became a Unitarian minister and who was born on 9 July 1799, wrote a hymn on this text from Luke.



Who is thy neighbor? He whom thou

Hast power to aid or bless;

Whose aching heart or burning brow

Thy soothing hand may press.



Thy neighbor? ’Tis the fainting poor

Whose eye with want is dim;

O enter thou his humble door,

With aid and peace for him.



Thy neighbor? He who drinks the cup

When sorrow drowns the brim;

With words of high, sustaining hope,

Go thou and comfort him.



Thy neighbor? Pass no mourner by;

Perhaps thou canst redeem

A breaking heart from misery;

Go, share thy lot with him.

The Brood X periodical cicadas have made their presence clearly heard and felt to the south and west of my corner of southeast Pennsylvania these last weeks, but here there's been nothing on the scale of what's been true elsewhere. Paolo, whose Amy yesterday began posting some very fine photographs of the small-scale natural world, himself posted a picture of one of his buggy visitors a few weeks ago, and people have told me that the cicada's racket is a constant background of telephone conversations with folk in the affected areas.



They're not the locusts of the plague of Egypt, of course, and in fact do relatively little damage to the world on which they descend. But I've been thinking of them in that connection, and in connection with the great Malcolm Muggeridge who, though having enjoyed extravagant worldly success and acclaim as an author and a vendor of words -- Paul Johnson considers him, with Evelyn Waugh, one of the great masters of English prose in the twentieth century -- yet, in looking back over his life, called his autobiography Chronicles of Wasted Time. Like most of his work, it's informative and vastly entertaining but still the sense of having spent much of his time on trifles is strongly evoked.



We've all spent part of our time on trifles and on immediate and quotidian concerns and enthusiams. Some of us so much of our time in such trifles that conscience scalds at the memory. And such pursuits can lay waste to our time in the way that locusts ravage the land. But the Lord God remains faithful, and rich in blessing. And, of His abundant mercy and grace, has promised that He will, in the words from Joel 2, restore the years that the locust has eaten.



The hymn of Robert Bridges, later Poet Laureate, is based on that chapter of Joel.



Rejoice, O land, in God thy might,

His will obey, Him serve aright;

For Thee the saints uplift their voice:

Fear not, O land, in God rejoice.



Glad shalt thou be, with blessing crowned,

With joy and peace thou shalt abound;

Yea, Love with thee shall make His home

Until thou see God’s kingdom come.



He shall forgive thy sins untold:

Remember thou His love of old;

Walk in His way, His word adore,

And keep His truth for evermore.

It is easier for us to get inside Augustine's unregenerate skin than perhaps it would be for any of the intervening generations. The similarity between his circumstances and ours is striking if not to say alarming. There is the same moral vacuity, leading to the same insensate passion for new sensations and experiences; the same fatuous credulity opening the way to every kind of charlatanry and quackery from fortune telling to psychoanalysis; the same sinister combination of great wealth and pointless ostentation with appalling poverty and unheeded affliction. As Augustine wrote, O greedy men, what will satisfy you if God Himself will not?



Malcolm Muggeridge, in A Third Testament, a series of studies and meditations on seven "wrestling prophets."

There's no season of the year when I'm not conscious of how greatly I've been blessed by sharing in the lives of sixteen nieces and nephews. Some fairly near, some at a distance, all treasures. And, as was true at this season last year, it's a time of advances in educational careers and I'm an especially proud and happy uncle. It's fitting that I'm posting this on the eve of the memorial of Aloysius Gonzaga, the patron of youth, and I ask his prayers for all of this year's graduates. He's also, since Confirmation, been my own patron and also that of two family Josephs, one my uncle and the other my nephew and godson.



Family graduations this year from Naperville North High School, Archmere Academy, and Pennsylvania State University. Warm congratulations to Deirdre, Maggie and Charles on their achievements and every good wish and blessing as another stage of the academic journey begins at the University of Illinois, Goucher College and Widener University Law School.

I AM YOUR FLAG





Traditionalists say I was born of a woman's hand -- fashioned from bits of colored cloth by a seamstress in a small house in Philadelphia, a year after the new country was born.



Historians are less certain of my origin. Yet, no one doubts my existence. I was

created out of necessity to serve as the emblem of a people whose experiment in

nationhood was as unique as the arrangement of my stars and stripes.



I have proved my adaptability to change. I've accommodated growth. I've stood up to

time and troubles. I fluttered in the Fall air with General Washington and his loyal

French allies at Yorktown. My fabric was shredded by cannonballs from British frigates

in the War of 1812 and I was carried in triumph by Andy Jackson at New Orleans. The

British could see me clearly in the mists of "dawn's early light," waving from the

standards at Fort McHenry.



I've witnessed turmoil and bitterness, even lost some of my glory in mid-century in a

war between brothers, but I was restored as a nation's emblem at Appomattox.



I traveled West with the new frontier. I flew from the headlamps of the Iron Horse in

Utah. I was with the prospectors at Sutter's Mill, with the cavalry against cattle rustlers, with the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill.



I crossed the Marne with the doughboys anxious to make the world safe for democracy.

I was with brave GIs storming the beaches at Normandy. I was raised over a shell-pocked hilltop at Iwo Jima and I stood by the grim-faced negotiators at Panmunjom. I was on that last helicopter from Saigon and with the men and women of Operation Desert Storm.



I have been around in victory and defeat. I've seen pleasure and pain. I was raised

over the rubble of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I've been folded smartly by

soldiers and handed to weeping widows. I've covered the coffins of those who've served

country and community.



I also decorate bandstands and concert halls. I am saluted in parades, in schools

and at ball parks. I am part of political campaigns, high holidays and ice cream socials. I fly from skyscrapers and bungalows. I've been to the moon and the ocean floor.



I am everywhere my people are. I am saluted and, occasionally, scorned. I have been

held with pride and I have been ridiculed, because I am everything my people are: proud, angry, happy, sad, vengeful, argumentative, ambitious, indifferent.



I was created to serve a people in struggle and a government in change. There are

now more stars in my blue field than there were in the beginning and, if need be,

there's room for more.



But, those red and white stripes remain as they've always remained, clearly visible

through the struggle -- the symbol of the "land of the free and the home of the brave."



I am your past. I am your future. I am your flag.





by Bob Nelson

KYW Newsradio 1060

Copyright 2002, Infinity Broadcasting Corp.

All Rights Reserved.



You can listen to a recording of Bob Nelson's meditative tribute here.

What these texts, taken together, demonstrate is that Nazism involved far more than a gang of thugs taking over state power. National Socialism was an entire Weltanschauung that penetrated every aspect of German life, including art, industry, technology, medicine, nutrition, health, and psychology. It was a culture of death par excellence ....



The distinguished and perceptive scholar Jean Bethke Elshtain on several recent historical and analytical studies in her review article The Nazi Seduction, writing in the current issue of Books & Culture, a publication of Christianity Today.

It's been two years since I entered the first posts here. Other interests and demands have often asserted their priority during those months, but the venture has given me opportunity for reflection and exchange that wouldn't otherwise have come my way.



The first post here, on the feast of Saint Rita, was the motto of the Venerable John Henry Newman: Cor ad cor loquitur. And so it's been, heart speaking to heart. I'm grateful to those, many of them listed among the blogs on the right, whose words have inspired and comforted, and whose witness to the Way, the Truth and the Life that is our Lord Jesus has been an edification.



How comfortable is the doctrine of the Communion of Saints. How good it is to remember the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us. And speaks to us of Him who saves.



More about Jesus would I know

More of His grace to others show;

More of His saving fullness see,

More of His love Who died for me.



More about Jesus let me learn,

More of His holy will discern;

Spirit of God, my teacher be,

Showing the things of Christ to me.

Ulysses was written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in 1842. A fair number of the lines passed into common allusion, and it wasn't so many years ago that it was one of those poems that, because of its quality and its theme, was frequently memorized and declaimed. There aren't as many Tennysonians around as once there were, of course, but Kelsey Grammer is one of them and it was deeply pleasing to the others in his audience that the television series Frasier ended with his reciting some of this very fine and evocative poem.





It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.



I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd

Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when

Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vest the dim sea: I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers;

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!

As tho' to breath were life. Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.



This is my son, mine own Telemachus,

To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle-

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil

This labour, by slow prudence to make mild

A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees

Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere

Of common duties, decent not to fail

In offices of tenderness, and pay

Meet adoration to my household gods,

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.



There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:

There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me-

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads- you and I are old;

Old age had yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.



Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in the old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal-temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

She'd be a strong contender in a contest for most annoying television personality, and her standard of integrity would be at home on a used car lot. Miss Couric adds to her irritating qualities an apparent belief that her publicity flaks are correct and that everyone likes her. She's been a large part of the orgy of self-celebration that NBC has made of the end of the television series Friends and Frasier and I saw a bit of her show last night. I expected that she'd be both obvious and cheap. But there was no excuse for her snide allusion to John 1. Some things should be safe from the pawing of her grubby little hands.

There's almost certainly an element of laziness in the coverage which, considering the importance of the question, is itself deplorable. But there also seems something more than misleading shorthand at work. Many of the country's newspapers and pundit talking heads appear to be using their coverage of questions of Church membership and discipline as an opportunity to encourage religious strife. The Roman Catholic Church is said to oppose stem-cell research. Office holders and politicians are said to be counseled by their bishops to oppose stem-cell research.



Research on stem cells is not, has not been claimed to be, morally objectionable. It is the deliberate killing of the donor that is morally wrong. That is not a distinction without a difference.

Review in First Things (March 1999) of a book by Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., the newly-elected president of the University of Notre Dame. The news and the link come courtesy of The Shrine of the Holy Whapping.



Knowledge and Faith in Thomas Aquinas. By John I. Jenkins, CSC. Cambridge University Press. 267 pp. $59.95.



Father Jenkins of Notre Dame’s philosophy and theology departments has written a truly revolutionary book. Most who encounter the Summa Theologiae see a maze of questions, articles, objections, responses, and replies; hence the temptation to turn Aquinas into a textbook on philosophy, theology, morals, and even science. He is accused of creating a "system" of philosophy, which can be opposed to other systems of philosophy and found superior (or, by his critics, quite deficient). Jenkins shows that the Summa is not a system that provides categories of thought, but an attempt to ground all our thoughts about God and his creation in our participation in God’s mind. According to Aristotle, for mere knowledge to be called episteme (roughly, "understanding") requires that we understand the causes of things better than we understand their effects. Jenkins argues persuasively from substantial textual evidence that Aquinas was after episteme: he wanted to understand God, the Cause of all things, better than he understood creation. What’s more, he wanted to view creation through his understanding of God. Along the way to proving his thesis, Jenkins rewrites the book on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics (his reading, and his devastating criticisms of Oxford’s influential Jonathan Barnes, set the standard for such scholarship) and he shows how even the most decorated of contemporary "philosophers of religion" (Plantinga, Stump, Penelhaum, et al.) grossly misread Aquinas. Through careful scholarship and tightly argued readings, Jenkins does that rarest of things—he says something truly new about what we thought we long ago understood.



On Sunday, May 2, two days after the election of Father Jenkins, Father Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., who served as executive vice president of the University of Notre Dame during the 35 years of the presidency of Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, died at Holy Cross House on campus. Father Hesburgh administered the last rites of the Church on Saturday evening. Father Ned Joyce was 87.

It's usually more by good luck than good management, but I almost always have good seats for the plays and concerts that I want to see. But ordering tickets the other night was even more successful than usual. Michael W. Smith will be coming to the Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Fairmount Park in August, in concert with Mercy Me. Many of the folk who attend will be lounging on blankets on the grassy hillside that still commands a good view of the stage and performers, and those tickets will be distributed without charge, as is true of all concerts held at the Mann each summer. That's where I was most of the time, when I was in school and college, but now I pay the freight and get to sit indoors. And most of the seats are quite good. But this. I had a choice between aisle seats in the fifth row of the orchestra and the best seats in the premier balcony box.



The Mann Center is a couple of miles from Memorial Hall, site of the great exhibition celebrating the Centennial of American Independence, and is named for Fredric R. Mann, one of Philadelphia's eminent philanthropists and civic figures during the second half of the last century. And an important figure not only in the cultural life of Philadelphia. Mann Auditorium, the home of The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in Tel Aviv, is also named for him.



I last saw Michael W. Smith in concert when he was touring after the release of his great CD Worship. The CD was released on September 11, 2001 and the concert in Philadelphia was only a couple of weeks later. It was a wonderful night of praise and fellowship, made even richer in the shadow of the terrible events of that month, and I'd be looking forward to the concert at the Mann even were the seats not as good as they are.

Plep makes a habit of finding treasures. Here's one from Georgetown University.



The American Mission: Maryland Jesuits From Andrew White to John Carroll



In the fall of 1976, the Special Collections Division produced this major exhibition as a feature of the University's celebration of the bicentenary of the American Revolution. The emergence of the internet now permits us to share again the riches of our origins.



The story of the Jesuits of English-speaking America is largely forgotten. They came to Maryland only shortly after their better-known brothers reached Canada and more than fifty years before Eusebio Kino travelled north to California. But they had no romance. The dreams of a new Christian empire, of a European system translated whole onto the American wilderness, were not theirs, nor did they find the heroic martyrdoms of an Isaac Jogues or a Jean de Brébeuf. In their day they published no annual letters, and no historian since has imparted to their story the epic vigor with which Francis Parkman chronicled the Canadian Jesuits.



Yet this small group of men laid stronger foundations for Catholicism in America than did the Spanish in California or the French in Canada. This exhibit, by recapturing some of that forgotten history, offers a glimpse of the world of those gentlemen of Maryland who, but for a few Franciscans, were the whole of the Catholic Church in British North America. British in culture themselves, they made it possible for the Irish and later Catholic immigrants to adopt the Anglo-American culture without leaving their faith. John Carroll, the first national leader of the Church in America, emerged from this group and helped shape its evolution in the early national period.

The Mystery of the Eucharist is too great for anyone to permit himself to treat it according to his own whim, so that its sacredness and its universal ordering would be obscured.



Needed and welcome, it was good to hear Francis Cardinal Arinze present Redemptionis Sacramentum, the Vatican instruction on the Eucharist. And there was a fitting chronological coincidence when, in addition to the presentation of the norms and instruction, Cardinal Arinze, no novice in speaking truth to power, also defended the right of the Church to define the discipline of those who claim membership and communion with her.



Not infrequently, abuses are rooted in a false understanding of liberty. Yet God has not granted us in Christ an illusory liberty by which we may do what we wish, but a liberty by which we may do that which is fitting and right.



On the same date in 1073, Hildebrand of Tuscany became Pope as Gregory VII. His reign was marked by extraordinary efforts of reform and strong defense of the rights of the Church against the power of the Emperor. Dilexi justitiam, et odi iniquitatem, propterea morior in exilio, he murmured as he lay dying in Salerno. I have loved justice, and have hated iniquity. Therefore I die in exile. Exile, though, only to the limits that Caesar was able to enforce and, even in exile, still pilgrim, still faithful. And welcome in the house of his Father.

The last week has brought a succession of warm days to Philadelphia and I took advantage of the bright sunshine and warmth of Monday to travel by train the sixty miles to Atlantic City. The train clings to the side of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge hundreds of feet above the Delaware River as the trip starts and it makes good time passing through historic towns like Camden and Haddonfield and moving at speed across the level fields of New Jersey, through acres of scrub pine in soil getting sandier by the mile. The day was so warm that it was a surprise at last to see the marsh grasses still in winter browns and greys.

There was a chill in the sea air despite the sun, but walking on the shore was a treat, picking up pebbles and watching the swells and breakers. There's been a lot of beach restoration over the winter and protective dune-building on such a scale that the ocean isn't visible from some sections of the boardwalk that runs the length of the city. Well-designed boardwalks are good and easy underfoot, and the boardwalk in Atlantic City is certainly that. But it's best to look only eastward, sandward, oceanward. On the other hand is the culture of the casinos, and the trinket shops and palm readers that cluster near them. Donald Trump's name is on three of the casinos, including Trump Taj Mahal, an almost inconceivably vulgar building, at the same time garish and tawdry.

I don't know whether gambling on chance is intrinsically vicious or can be pursued without guilt, but it's certainly true that the Enemy has throughout history made destructive use of the activity and its environment. It's not one of my particular temptations, so it's best that I avoid any inclination to see it as especially blameworthy. And on aesthetic grounds alone it's objectionable. I walked through another of the Trump buildings, seeing the dazed and almost slack-jawed heavily represented among those sitting round-shouldered before their slot machines. The machines are of many different kinds, recalling Dryden's line about all the sad variety of hell.

Returning to fresh air came as a relief, and I spent a few minutes in the stone colonnade of the memorial to John F. Kennedy, dedicated forty years ago when the Democratic Party held its convention in the city the summer after the assassination of the president. Ask not what your country can do for you ... is there, with a bronze head and shoulders in relief. EvAngelos Frudakis hadn't yet reached his full powers as a sculptor, but there's something here that hints of the nobility and power of his later work, The Minuteman in Arlington, e.g., symbol of the National Guard, and The Signer at Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

A good and fruitful afternoon, warm and pleasant, worth the trip. And, after more walking and ocean-gazing, a highlight. I'd never seen New Jersey's Korean War Memorial and I came upon it almost without warning, a few steps down from the boardwalk at Park Place. The memorial is oriented away from the boardwalk and toward Brighton Park, a wise decision on siting, giving a sense of quiet and repose, an opportunity for thought and gratitude. There are panels dedicated to each of New Jersey's four Medal of Honor recipients from that war and there are sculptures of soldiers with the signature of pain and loss, of duty and weariness, on their faces. The sculptures of Thomas Jay Warren are bronze, traditional, heroic, moving. The epigraph is from Robert Pinsky:

less eager than willing, more dutiful than brave,
brave when required, Democracy's children, they gave
their service far from home, and saw they came
as victors, not conquerors, in freedom's name.

[D]ying as he did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated, taken off without warning, not because of personal hate . . . but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever.



--- Frederick Douglass, in the oration delivered at the unveiling of the Lincoln monument, Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C., April 14, 1876. The dedication of the monument took place on the eleventh anniversary of the shooting of President Lincoln at Ford's Theatre on Good Friday in 1865.

That religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and, therefore, all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other.



Today is the anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and alumni of his "academical village" at the University of Virginia honor the memory of the Founder by volunteering their time and service in some charitable endeavor. Many thousands of those alumni Cavaliers all over the world are engaged in such commemoration of Mr. Jefferson during this week.

We are an Easter people and our song is alleluia. --- Saint Augustine





May this day of His triumph, and of our liberation, be one of richness and deep fulfillment for all who read here and may it begin a year of peace and comfort in the love of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now we will play something we have never played before. I didn't mean that. Mahler wrote it as the 3rd Movement of his 4th Symphony. I mean the 4th Movement of his 1st Symphony -- we play it third. The trumpet solo will be played by our solo trumpet player. It's named "Blumine" -- which has something to do with flowers.



Paulo linked to a more extensive collection of some fractured comments from the tongue of Eugene Ormandy. I've a lot of happy memories of the Philadelphia Orchestra under his artistic direction, but this collection suggests that a conversation between Ormandy and Samuel Goldwyn would also have been worth the price of admission.



William? You're going to call him William? What kind of a name is that? Every Tom, Dick and Harry is called William.

Today is the memorial of Charles Wesley, who died, full of years as of faith and works, in London on this date in 1788. Wesley is rightly considered the most gifted writer of hymns that England has ever produced, and he was fully alive to the importance of hymnody in devotion and in the spread of the Christian faith. He was so prolific a hymnist, and his work is so rich, that there is no season of the Christian year when his words don't speak to us. We give thanks for his life and work.



Among the many riches of Gerard's site is a section devoted to Charles Wesley and his brother John and to the Methodist movement.



Here is the text, and a link to the music, of one of Charles Wesley's 6000 hymns.



O For A Heart To Praise My God



O for a heart to praise my God,

A heart from sin set free,

A heart that always feels Thy blood

So freely shed for me.



A heart resigned, submissive, meek,

My great Redeemer's throne,

Where only Christ is heard to speak,

Where Jesus reigns alone.



A humble, lowly, contrite, heart,

Believing, true and clean,

Which neither life nor death can part

From Christ who dwells within.



A heart in every thought renewed

And full of love divine,

Perfect and right and pure and good,

A copy, Lord, of Thine.



Thy tender heart is still the same,

And melts at human woe:

Jesus, for thee distressed I am,

I want Thy love to know.



My heart, Thou know'st, can never rest

Till Thou create my peace;

Till of mine Eden repossest,

From self, and sin, I cease.



Fruit of Thy gracious lips, on me

Bestow that peace unknown,

The hidden manna, and the tree

Of life, and the white stone.



Thy nature, gracious Lord, impart;

Come quickly from above;

Write Thy new name upon my heart,

Thy new, best name of Love.

Philadelphia is a great walking city, with fine examples of more than three centuries of architectural styles and the green expanse of Fairmount Park, the largest city park in the world. William Penn laid out the city's core in a grid pattern, so it's not easy to lose oneself on its streets, except in the imagination, with grand museums and sometimes quirky collections thick on the ground. There's a further richness in the faces and gaits of those who share the streets and sidewalks with you, and I've been able sometimes to sit on a wooden bench or concrete slab and watch the light and shadow of smile or grimace pass through a parade of people, in matching response it seemed to the expression on the face of someone passing by. A small or momentary thing, it might be thought, but a universe within it. I've never seen the movie "Pay It Forward" but that was part of its theme, I think. And catastrophe theory, too, wonders about the ultimate effect of the brush of a butterfly's wing. Older injunctions crowd in: As you sow, so shall you reap. The Lord Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy.

The county towns that ring Philadelphia at distances of eight to twenty miles, still seats of courts and county government and historic market and commerce centers, are also great places for walking. Interesting, compassable, rich. I headed to one of them a couple of weeks ago, West Chester, seat of Chester County, to walk some sidewalks and meet some family at their home for Sunday dinner. I use public transportation a lot, and that Sunday took a bus for the twenty mile trip, snagging a seat on the uncrowded back row, able to stretch my legs in the aisle. Settling in, I opened to Ephesians 6 and was reading there only very briefly when someone loomed in from my right with his Bible open and instructed me to turn back the pages and read Ephesians 4 and 5 again. He startled me a bit, this stranger, bigger and more imposing than I, but his proved a good injunction, and especially fruitful in Ephesians 4: 31-32: Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

It's something that we all struggle with, even though we know how great is the debt that has been forgiven us through Jesus Christ. The scalding and necessary wound to our pride in forgiving and seeking forgiveness. That stranger on the bus did me a service, pointing me back to that passage in Paul's letter, pointing me further to read again the words of the prayer that the Lord has taught us: Forgive us ...

There've been other reminders on the subject in recent months. Tom Wilson, best known from his role in the Back to the Future movies, recorded some of his songs a couple of years ago on a CD called In the Name of the Father. Tom's been playing his guitar in church for many years, beginning as a boy attending Mass at Daylesford Abbey outside Philadelphia. I had the happiness of working with his brother Brian years ago and knew Tom slightly. I hadn't known of this CD, though, until just a few months ago and it was a truly happy discovery. His music on it has been a blessing to me and the theme of a couple of the songs is forgiveness, given and received. The necessity of our surrender, we who are broken and worn. The price paid for our sins, the cost of our redemption, the reality of our forgiveness in Jesus Christ. Going home at last, and welcome. To our Father who waits with open arms to receive us.

Prayer is a special exercise of faith, and faith makes the prayer so acceptable that either it will surely be granted, or something better than we ask will be given in its stead.



Martin Luther, in the Treatise on Good Works



Martin Luther died in his birthplace Eisleben on 18 February 1546 and was buried in the Castle Church at Wittenberg.



A Mighty Fortress Is Our God



A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing;

Our helper He, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing:

For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe;

His craft and power are great, and, armed with cruel hate,

On earth is not his equal.



Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing;

Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing:

Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;

Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same,

And He must win the battle.



And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,

We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us:

The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;

His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure,

One little word shall fell him.



That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth;

The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him Who with us sideth:

Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;

The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still,

His kingdom is forever.

She was a living demonstration of 2 Corinthians 5:7 : We walk by faith and not by sight. Blinded in infancy, Fanny Crosby was the author of more than 8000 hymns during her long and fruitful life and has been an influence in Christian song and hearts for more than a century. She died in Bridgeport, Connecticut on this date in 1915.



Near The Cross



Jesus, keep me near the cross,

There a precious fountain

Free to all, a healing stream

Flows from Calvary’s mountain.



Refrain



In the cross, in the cross,

Be my glory ever;

Till my raptured soul shall find

Rest beyond the river.



Near the cross, a trembling soul,

Love and mercy found me;

There the bright and morning star

Sheds its beams around me.



Near the cross! O Lamb of God,

Bring its scenes before me;

Help me walk from day to day,

With its shadows o’er me.



Near the cross I’ll watch and wait

Hoping, trusting ever,

Till I reach the golden strand,

Just beyond the river.

Thomas Campion was born in London on this date in 1567. An accomplished and rewarding poet most of whose work is intended to be sung, he still finds an appreciative audience. The following is from his A Booke of Ayres (1601 version).





The Man of Life Upright



The man of life vpright,

Whose guiltlesse hart is free

From all dishonest deedes,

Or thought of vanitie,



The man whose silent dayes,

In harmeles ioys are spent,

Whom hopes cannot delude,

Nor sorrow discontent ;



That man needs neither towers

Nor armour for defence,

Nor secret vautes to flie

From thunders violence.



Hee onely can behold

With vnafrighted eyes

The horrours of the deepe

And terrours of the Skies.



Thus, scorning all the cares

That fate, or fortune brings,

He makes the heau'n his booke,

His wisedome heeu'nly things,



Good thoughts his onely friendes,

His wealth a well-spent age,

The earth his sober Inne

And quiet Pilgrimage.

It may be that you'll want to spread the word about the film The Passion of the Christ, which opens nationally on Ash Wednesday. Posters and other promotional materials are available here for the price of shipping and handling.

There can be no democracy without virtue, and there can be no human activity divorced from the moral law.



And in matters of the moral law, we have no right to be silent.



Fr. Frank Pavone, Priests for Life

The Philadelphia Orchestra tonight presents its annual concert to honor the memory of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. The program includes selections from Beethoven, Dvorak, Copland and Barber, as well as favorite spirituals.



One of the world's premier ensembles, a very fine hall, a rich program. A rewarding evening in memory of a great man.



They cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage. Exodus 2:23



LIFT EVERY VOICE AND SING



Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring,

Ring with the harmonies of liberty;

Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,

Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,

Let us march on till victory is won.



Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,

Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;

Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet,

Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,

We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered;

Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.



God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,

Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way;

Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,

Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.

Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.

Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,

True to our God, true to our native land.

It is a hymn so fine and noble that it's familiar across all Christian denominations, and so well-known and loved that it's easy to forget that it was introduced to the United States only some 50 years ago in the translation by Stuart K. Hine. Some of the words of that translation were early altered by George Beverly Shea, still active in the ministry of Rev. Billy Graham.



The author of the hymn in the original Swedish, set to a Swedish folk tune, was Carl Gustaf Boberg, who died in Kalmar, full of years, on this date in 1940.



How Great Thou Art



O Lord my God,

When I in awesome wonder

Consider all

The works Thy Hand hath made,

I see the stars,

I hear the mighty thunder,

Thy pow'r throughout

The universe displayed;



Refrain:

Then sings my soul,

My Saviour God, to Thee,

How great Thou art!

How great Thou art!



When through the woods

And forest glades I wander

I hear the birds

Sing sweetly in the trees;

When I look down

From lofty mountain grandeur

And hear the brook

And feel the gentle breeze;





But when I think

That God, his Son not sparing,

Sent Him to die,

I scarce can take it in,

That on the cross

My burden gladly bearing

He bled and died

To take away my sin.



When Christ shall come,

With shouts of acclamation,

And take me home,

What joy shall fill my heart!

Then I shall bow

In humble adoration

And there proclaim,

"My God, how great Thou art!"

It's been a fair number of years since I've been in a movie theater. A quiet night in Rehoboth, not much to do, and a group of us went to see the first of the James Bond films with Timothy Dalton as 007. Good stuff. But, left to my own devices, I'd probably not have seen it, and in the years since no movie review or teaser has prompted much more in me than a velleity, that lowest level of volition.



The screen is big, the room is dark and the sound is inescapable. And the characters and presentation: action so violent, motives so fierce, emotions and nerves so raw. Perhaps I've not wanted to know how deep is their resonance in my own self and life.



Comes now what is, from the almost unanimous testimony of those who've seen and experienced it, the not-to-be-missed film by Mel Gibson: the searing narrative and depiction of The Passion of the Christ.



A mighty work of testimony and evangelization almost certainly, and welcome for that, but I feel also a kind of dread. And rightly so, knowing my guilt. The deep resonance in my own life and works of the violence of His story can't be avoided or denied. Complicit in His torture and death. A self spattered and smeared with the blood of the Lord Jesus.



But, praise God, that's not the end. By His mercy, washed in it as well.