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.