Run, don’t walk, to today’s Crisis Magazine offering by Regis Martin.
Just DO IT.
A taste…
[…]
In thinking about [Heywood] Broun’s conversion [by then Fr. Fulton Sheen], it is important that we not lose sight of the fact that Sheen himself felt a great urgency to reach out—to try and win this man’s soul for God. His mission, of course, came directly from Christ, to whom he had given his whole life and priestly service. “If Jesus Christ thirsted for souls,” he asked, “must not a Christian also thirst? If he came to cast fire on the earth, must not a Christian be enkindled?”
It would seem almost a no-brainer, right? Isn’t this pretty much the job description for every Christian? Certainly for priests and bishops it is. Who among them would not wish to leave this world having first dispatched great numbers to the heavenly kingdom? Indeed, to be eulogized in words very much like those spoken by Saint John Chrysostom on the feast of the martyrdom of Saint Ignatius of Antioch [yesterday, 1Feb] —that here was “a soul seething with the divine eros”? Is there another, more credible way to give witness to the grace of priestly ordination? What else is there to light fire to the imagination and work of a priest and bishop, if not to save souls? “Unless souls are saved,” said Sheen, “nothing is saved.”They were certainly not chosen for administrative or managerial duties.
Or to exchange empty pleasantries over drinks with powerful politicians.
Is it too much to ask, therefore, that maybe one or two of them might begin with Joe Biden? Besides being their president, he happens also to be their brother in Christ, who stands in peril of losing his soul for his refusal—both obdurate and longstanding—to protect innocent, unborn human life. Does Joe Biden not have a phone number that they might use to call him up? Who knows, perhaps catch him on the fly next time he shows up for Mass?
[…]
From a reader…
Was there a 
From a reader…
Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and
The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;
The stubborn season has made stand.
My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.
Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.
Grant us thy peace.
I have walked many years in this city,
Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor,
Have taken and given honour and ease.
There went never any rejected from my door.
Who shall remember my house, where shall live my children’s children
When the time of sorrow is come?
They will take to the goat’s path, and the fox’s home,
Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords.
Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
Grant us thy peace.
Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
Now at this birth season of decease,
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel’s consolation
To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow.
According to thy word,
They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation
With glory and derision,
Light upon light, mounting the saints’ stair.
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer,
Not for me the ultimate vision.
Grant me thy peace.
(And a sword shall pierce thy heart,
Thine also).
I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.
Let thy servant depart,
Having seen thy salvation