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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

"His whole way of life was revolutionary."

I'll be away for a few days. Enjoy until next time.


"All this morning the words have been in my mind, "What you have done to the least of these, my brethren, you have done to me." How hard and terrible a thing is the Christian religion, which teaches us that those who take the sword will die by the sword, that we must forgive our enemies, who are to be found in "our own household," Jesus Christ said.

We call ourselves Christian, we citizens of the United States, the majority of us, but no one would ever know us as Christians. Reflect on the life of Jesus who came to call sinners, who was born in poverty, who lived as a worker for thirty years. He was an itinerant teacher, walking the roads of Palestine, who hungered and thirsted and was fatigued to the point of exhaustion, who was tempted in all things like us but He did not sin, because He was also God. As the apostles said, we are called to be other-Christs, we are called to put off the old man and put on Christ, we are told to see Christ in our brother. Hard sayings and who can understand it. Only the Spirit can teach us. It is some comfort to remember those further words, when Christ himself died because His whole way of life was revolutionary. —He spoke them from the torture in which He hung, nailed as He was to a cross—"Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." And He also said to the thief dying by His side, "This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise."

"Attica"
By Dorothy Day
The Catholic Worker, September 1971, 1.

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