Sunday 8/21/16

The Gospel today is on the "narrow gate" through which salvation is reached. It is the idea behind the "straight and narrow," where "straight" is from "strait," or "confine" (as in "straitjacket" or "the Straits of Magellan.") The spiritual life is a limiting, refined life; it is humanity pared down. Our spiritual nature is our essence and the material has been accumulated, to be thrown off.

One of the sorrows of the times is our disinterest--if not active disdain--for the thoughts and writings of great men of the past. We act as if the observations and concerns of those passed are beneath us now, as if something has been solved.

This is John Donne's Holy Sonnet 7:

At the round earth’s imagined corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go,
All whom the flood did, and fire shall, o’erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance, hath slain, and you whose eyes,
Shall behold God, and never taste death’s woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space;
For, if above all these, my sins abound,
‘Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace,
When we are there. Here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent; for that’s as good
As if thou’ hadst seal’d my pardon with thy blood.