ARCHBISHOP ÓSCAR ROMERO - A SAINT FOR TODAY AND ANY DAY

A wonderful icon of Archbishop Óscar Romero of San Salvador, written by Tobias Haller, along with San Romero's wise words:

A Future Not Our Own

It helps now and then to step back and take a long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of
saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession
brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives include everything.

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one
day will grow. We water the seeds already planted
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects
far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of
liberation in realizing this.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,
a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the
difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not
messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

From Journey with Jesus.

HAPPY ST BENEDICT'S DAY

Saint Benedict Detail from a fresco by Fra Angelico - Museo di San Marco - Florence

"Live this life and do what ever is done in a spirit of thanksgiving. Abandon attempts to achieve security, they are futile. Give up the search for wealth, it is demeaning. Quit the search for salvation, it is selfish. And come to comfortable rest in the certainty that those who participate in this life with an attitude of thanksgiving will receive its full promise."

-- St. Benedict of Nursia (480-543 C.E)

What a lovely way to live, and how often I forget to give thanks, which is the sure defense against falling into a state of cynicism and despair.  Reading the quote this morning brought me up short, because I was in a funk. The words were just what I needed to take me out of myself and mon tristesses.

Image from Wikipedia.

Update from my friend Doug:

"Apparently that lovely quote from St, Benedict that I published earlier today isn't Benedict at all, but from an author of spirituality books primarily for Episcopalians named John McQuiston II."

The words are still wonderful, even if they are not from St Benedict.

  

'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas'

The events at Penn State, the indifference of our politicians to the plight of many citizens of our country, including children, and the 1% who have it all and want still more call to mind Ursula Le Guin's science fiction/horror story titled 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas'.

My mind is a jumble about the connection, and my association is not even original, because I read John Scalzi's post on Omelas University on Facebook and immediately connected with it.

I think of the concept of the scapegoat, which is also not original, but comes from it's margaret.

I think that many of us here in the US and the West are culpable, because our comfortable lives depend upon the labor of a good many people, including children, who live desperate and sometimes violent lives in very poor countries.

See? My thoughts are far from coherent. They're scattered all over the place, and perhaps I'd have done better to leave them unwritten and hidden in my mind in their jumbled state. But LeGuin's story haunts me, so perhaps the post serves as a kind of exorcism.

If you haven't read the story and would like to, the link above will take you to the text.

Apropos of perhaps not much, I came across the following quote from Honoré de Balzac's novel Le Père Goriot. From Google Answers, here is the quote in its original French:

Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu'il a été proprement fait.

An English translation:

The secret of a great fortune without an apparent source is a forgotten crime that has never been found out, because it was neatly done.

Picture of William Holman Hunt's The Scapegoat from Wikipedia.

WEIRDEST LOL OF THE DAY

Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin notes the following quote from presidential candidate Rick Santorum:

“When you look at someone to determine whether they’d be the right person for public office, look at who they lay down with at night and what they believe,” Santorum said.

Rick's is a mind that blows mine. Rick's body may leave the bed and the bedroom, but seemingly his mind stays behind.

Picture from Wikipedia.

QUOTE OF THE DAY - ROWAN WILLIAMS

'Hooker has this at least in common with Luther, that he is profoundly suspicious of conditions other than baptism as a test of belonging to the Church; and he is in effect saying to his opponents [the Puritans] that they are not Protestant enough, if the touchstone of Protestantism is witness to the liberty and the priority of God's act.'

Rowan Williams, Why Study the Past, p. 78.

Drawing of Rowan Williams by Lesley Fellows.

H/T to Lesley Fellows at Lesley's Blog for the quote.

I'd have no post here without the awesome Lesley Fellows.