Langston Hughes

We need to be celebrating Black History Month.  Here's a quote I came across this week from Langston Hughes who died in the 1960's:
"Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed.
  Let it be that great strong land of love
 Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme."

Let your light shine

"You (plural) are light for the world," says Jesus (Matthew 5:14-16.)  A lamp would be useless under something like a bed.  Our goodness as followers of Jesus must shine for all the world to see.  I found myself in meditation remembering the Paschal candle being carried up the aisle during the Easter Vigil, everyone sharing its light with their neighbor until the whole church was glowing.

Salt

There's still snow in the air, but not too much accumulation today.

"You are the salt of the earth," says Jesus to us (Matthew 5:13.)  Salt was very important in ancient times, not only for flavor, but for preserving food, to purify, and as part of sacrifices.  If we stop witnessing to the world by our good deeds, we are as useless as the salt from the Dead Sea, which, because of chemical impurities, could decompose and lose its taste.

The "you" is plural.  Jesus wants to use all of us together to save the world and give zest to life.  It is as a community of witnesses that we are to show our country and our world the goodness and love of Jesus.  We Catholics make up a large percentage of our country's population.  If we took the teachings of Jesus more to heart, our nation would be salt for the world.

The Opposite Way

Jesus tells us that happiness lies in the other direction.  Each of Brian Doyle's rewording of them deserves a meditation of its own: 
"Blessed are those who do not think that they are cool.
 Blessed are those who abjure power.
 Blessed are those who deflate their own arrogance
  and puncture their own pomposity.
 Blessed are those who quietly try to shrive their sins
  without calling attention to their overweening piety.
 Blessed are those who know that they are dunderheads
  but forge on cheerfully anyway."
(quoted in Give Us This Day from Liturgical Press)

Helpless

Another look at that beautiful sunset.  Beauty takes me out of myself, makes me want to surrender to Beauty whom we sometimes call God.

I got to thinking during the night how being poor in spirit is like the first three steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.  We recognize that we are powerless on our own, we acknowledge that a Power greater than ourselves can help us, and we surrender to that Power.  Jesus says that such people are happy, fortunate, blessed because they are caught up in the Reign of God.  They are able to let God bring their will in line with God's will.

Fortunate

The most magnificent and long lasting sunset I have ever seen from an airplane.

In Matthew's Gospel Jesus begins his first sermon (5:1-12) by telling us how fortunate are:

poor in spirit who realize that without God they are powerless

those who mourn over wickedness

meek don't use anger or force against those who wrong them

those who hunger and thirst for a right relationship with God 

merciful are kind and generous toward those who need them
clean of heart love God single-heartedly, without mixed motives
peacemakers - work for harmony with God and with others
those persecuted for clinging to a right relationship with God

St. Paul

Today is the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, my patron saint.  This is the Areopagus where St. Paul spoke to the Athenians (Acts of the Apostles 17:23-31.)  Speaking of God here St. Paul said,

"In him we live and move and have our being."

Some other verses from his letters that have had a strong influence on my life:

"By the grace of God I am what I am and his grace in me has not been in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:10.)

"I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me." (Galatians 2:20)