What is happening?
Today there is a great silence over the earth,
a great silence, and stillness,
a great silence because the King sleeps;
the earth was in terror and was still,
because God slept in the flesh and raised up those
who were sleeping from the ages.
How precious is the gift of the cross!
See, how beautiful it is to behold!
It shows no sign of evil mixed with good, like the tree of old in Eden;
it is all beautiful and comely to see and to taste.
To Him that loveth us. What is the limitation of this us? How are we to know who have been, who are included in it? St. John was the beloved disciple, the disciple who leaned on Christ’s breast at the Last Supper.
Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise,
Weaved in my lone devout melancholy,
Thou which of good hast, yea, art treasury,
All changing unchanged Ancient of days.
I was dreaming that I was treading the streets of the Holy City, pottering about like a tourist. In my wandering I came upon the museum of that city of our dream. I went in, and a courteous attendant conducted me around. There was some old armour there, much bruised with battle. Many things were conspicuous by their absence. I saw nothing of Alexander’s, nor of Napoleon’s.
“Father to me Thou art, and Mother dear,
And Brother too, kind Husband of my heart!”
So speaks Andromache in boding fear,
Ere from her last embrace her hero part—
So evermore, by Faith’s undying glow,
We own the Crucified in weal or woe.
To look at the Crucifix—“the supreme symbol of our august religion”—and then to look at our own hearts; to test by the Cross the quality of our love—if we do that honestly and unflinchingly we don’t need any other self-examination than that, any other judgement or purgation. The lash, the crown of thorns, the mockery, the stripping, the nails—life has equivalents of all these for us and God asks a love for Himself and His children which can accept and survive all that in the particular way in which it is offered to us.
“Whosoever would become great among you, shall be your servant: and whosoever would be first among you, shall be bondservant of all.” (Mk. 10: 43, 44) What difference does it make if there are those who do not wish your service? They cannot help it if contrary to their wishes you watch for and seize opportunities to serve. Let your heart beat with theirs. They cannot prevent that. We must act as if there was unity and unity will come in the doing.
Born a slave in the household of a prominent Philadelphian, Richard Allen was sold to a Delaware farmer who allowed him and his brother to work as day laborers to purchase their freedom. In Delaware, Allen also encountered exhorters of the Methodist Society, then still affiliated with the Church of England. The antislavery position of the Methodists attracted him, while their inspiration led him to teach himself to read and write and to feel a spiritual awakening.
When the visitor told her
there would be a child
and that she would be
overshadowed by holiness