Peace and Good! A Franciscan Friar today shared at mass about the conditions for Christians in the Holy Land. He talked about one young woman who, after obtaining a theology degree in the United States, returned to her native Bethlehem to teach the children the faith. It's a hard life there now, especially for the Christian population. One thing she mentioned as being particularly hard is seeing the wall go up, the wall the Israeli government is erecting around the town, making it feel like living in a prison.
It just made me wonder: how effective are walls? How well did the Great Wall of China work, or Hadrian's Wall? More importantly, how do they help make the world better?
I remember Francis, answering the bishop of Assisi, who wanted the friars to have possessions. "If we have possessions," he replied, "we would need walls to guard them and weapons to protect them."
Walls may work in one way, but do they help us to "love God with all our heart and our neighbors as ourselves"? Robert Frost quoted the proverb: "Good walls make good neighbors." But do they make loving neighbors?
I pray God will help us tear down the walls in our hearts so that one day, in His grace, we will live in a world where no walls are needed, except maybe to sit on while we eat an ice cream cone!
God bless and keep you!
1 comment:
It seems that all the physical walls that have been built throughtout history have ultimately failed, but the walls we build in our hearts, sadly, have a tendency to stay permanent unless we let go and let grace knock them down. Good post. Peace.
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