You are God
Wholly Other,
Yet Your humanity
Embraces me
By sacrament.
You are the Head,
The Church, Your Mystical Body,
And in it
I wash my robes,
To take on
The Infant Life of Christ,
Wholly dependent,
Yet gifted
With abundant blessing.
You are God,
Wholly Other,
My Father receives me,
Clothed in the living Flesh
Of the beloved Son.
Copyright 2012 Joann Nelander
All rights reserved
What can I say; it’s just wonderful!
It crept up on me, this wistfulness. A feeling that these days are slipping away like pearls through my fingers. The way he looks at me and the wiggles settle into stillness. The way his whole face lights up when he smiles, just because I looked at him and said hello. Moments that make my heart hiccup.
It was the end of a long, very busy and chaotic day. Both sets of grandparents in the house, and Next Littlest Brother bouncing off the walls from birthday cake (in the middle of Lent) and presents. By 7:30, Michael vibrated like a coiled spring, his little muscles taut, his head batting from side to side.
My mother, with the slow gentleness she only exhibits toward grandbabies, settled him against her chest and took him upstairs. I followed, a moth drawn to a flame. She laid him down on the carpet in
the…
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A man clothed in sin
Walked the long aisle
To stand before the Crucifix.
Long years,
No tears,
He came to say,
“You died for me,
And I don’t give a damn!”
The hardened before the Hallowed,
The clock running down,
Time spent and unreflected,
Deeds done and unrepentant.
Challenged to say the words,
He began,
“You died for me,
And I don’t give…”
Undaunted, he repeated,
“You died for me
And I don’t…..”
Gaze focused
On that bloodied Corpse,
Resolute, again, he began.
“You died for me…”
…….
“You died for me…”
“You died for me!”
Tears, tears,
Rivers of tears,
Years unspent,
And now in flood.
Miracles at the Red Sea,
Yet, none greater
Than the Passover,
One innocent Lamb,
Slain, and yet standing,
Lifted up,
Drawing thee.
© 2012 Joann Nelander
All rights reserved
MONDAY, 6 AUGUST 2007
Cardinal Lustiger RIP 1926-2007
I didn’t always agree with the former Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, who died yesterday, but his tenure of that see brought a great deal more good than harm, I think. On his watch, the Catholic life of the city gained a huge boost; the new movements revitalized many parishes, and vocations to the priesthood soared. I remember that he habitually celebrated Mass in Notre Dame almost every Sunday evening for the young people who came to that Mass; a great example to the other bishops of France, many of whom are facing the priestly extinction of their dioceses.
I heard a story attributed to him—maybe it is one he told rather than a story about himself (since he himself was a Jewish convert). I was given to understand that the story is a true one.
Two boys were, out of mischief, determined to tease their parish priest, so they went to confession and made up outrageous sins, just to see what the priest would say. The priest, listening to the second boy, realizing that he was being ‘had’, and hurt by the mockery of the sacrament, asked the second lad as a ‘penance’ to go to the crucifix over the tabernacle and shout out loud, three times ‘you died for me, and I don’t give a damn’. The lad did as he was asked; by the third time he was in tears. Some years later, he was ordained a priest.
May Jean-Marie Lustiger rest in peace.
Be Holy! 