Gospel/Lepers Like Us

On this day:
539 BC
The army of Cyrus the Great of Persia takes Babylon.
1216
King John of England loses his crown jewels in The Wash, probably near Fosdyke, perhaps near Sutton Bridge
1279
Nichiren, a Japanese Buddhist monk founder of Nichiren Buddhism, inscribes the Dai-Gohonzon
1492
Christopher Columbus’s expedition makes landfall in the Caribbean, specifically in The Bahamas. The explorer believes he has reached India
1692
The Salem witch trials are ended by a letter from Massachusetts Governor William Phips.
1773
America‘s first insane asylum opens for 'Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds’in Virginia
1823
Charles Macintosh of Scotland sells the first raincoat.
1871
Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) enacted by British rule in India, which named over 160 local communities 'Criminal Tribes', i.e. hereditary criminals. Repealed in 1949, after Independence of India.
1960
Cold War: Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk at United Nations General Assembly meeting to protest a Philippine assertion of Soviet Union colonial policy being conducted in Eastern Europe
1960
Inejiro Asanuma, Chair of the Japanese Socialist Party, is assassinated in Japan by Otoya Yamaguchi, a 17-year-old. The cameras were rolling at the time, so the moment was caught on film.
1984
Brighton hotel bombing: The Provisional Irish Republican Army attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. Thatcher escapes but the bomb kills five people and wounds 31.
2000
The USS Cole is badly damaged in Aden, Yemen, by two suicide bombers, killing 17 crew members and wounding at least 39
2002
Terrorists detonate bombs in the Sari Club in Kuta, Bali, killing 202 and wounding over 300.
2005
The second Chinese human spaceflight Shenzhou 6 launched carrying Fèi Jùnlóng and Niè Hǎishèng for five days in orbit.

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MLB Pipeline ranks Pirate 2025 first-round pick Hernandez as the No. 3 prospect in the Pirates' farm system and the No. 26 prospect in all of baseball.

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The NYT has a major article on why some citizen didn't like Charlie Kirk.

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A Chinese coast guard ship used a powerful water cannon on Sunday then rammed and slightly damaged an anchored Philippine government vessel off an island inhabited by Filipinos in the disputed South China Sea, the Philippine coast guard said.

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Obama killed an American citizen who was speaking for Al Qaeda in the Middle East.. No trial. Does that power extend domestically?

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Gospel/Lepers Like Us

This weekend, the gospel is the curing of the ten lepers. Not a flattering assessment of mankind where only one returns to thank Christ for curing him; maybe just a lot of respect for certification.
But lepers are important in the Bible. True, they are outsiders and good targets for a non-establishment message. But there is something universal about the leper. Alone, hurt, and declining in his fatal skin, his is a hopeless life where his companions are linked only by disease. The leper is mankind at the edge of the precipice.
Interestingly, part of his disease is the loss of sensation in the affected part, resulting in an unknowing injury, usually accidentally self-inflicted. Touch, or pain, or heat, is lost, so the tissue is hurt without being aware of it. So the carpenter gradually damages his tissues with his instruments, the cook with her fire.
In this gospel, nine of the lepers had the defect of all men: unfeeling hearts. And, of course, ingratitude.