March 7, 2006

Feast of Perpetua, Felicity & their Companions, Martyrs at
Carthage, 203

Meditation:
[Jesus:] But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's
faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who
would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a
single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make
him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
-- Matthew 23:13-15 (ESV)

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Quotation:
We may look into a church, almost any church, and discover
someone who, though he is offered a gospel of love, must
subtly convert it into a gospel of hate before he can receive
it. The gospel of love--with its emphasis upon brotherhood,
equality before God, the dignity of every human being, and
man's social responsibility toward man--does not satisfy the
lack that he urgently feels. That calls for something
altogether different, for an assurance that he is superior,
that he is right where others are wrong--a kind of cosmic
teacher's pet.
... Bonaro W. Overstreet (1902-1985)