Sunday/The Divide

                               Sunday/The Divide

Today's gospel has Christ turn on Peter for suggesting he turn back from his mission. He calls him a satan, a word meaning "adversary."

As in Gethsemane, there is always this terrible tension within Christ, as if there is a poor, human argument to be considered, an argument supporting the value of the simple, human life without the wearying heavenly demands of Virtue. And lurking in the background is the limits of the human mind, the narrowness of the vision of human standards. Nothing can be seen clearly through the material prism.

"My way is not your way, my thoughts are not your thoughts."

At A Calvary Near The Ancre

One ever hangs where shelled roads part.
In this war He too lost a limb,
But His disciples hide apart;
And now the Soldiers bear with Him.

Near Golgotha strolls many a priest,
And in their faces there is pride
That they were flesh-marked by the Beast
By whom the gentle Christ's denied

The scribes on all the people shove
And bawl allegiance to the state,
But they who love the greater love
Lay down their life; they do not hate

(Wilfred Owen, killed one week before the armistice, 1918)