awakenings

pleas and entries

obliterations and destruction

have turned light into dark.

vengeful monsters

torch our waters.

why our national posturing?

why our twisted and disputed truths?

why these pages put of time?

does blindness squelch insight

when our eyes are packed

with wax and lies?

our distorted and deviant life

growls like a bully-child

threatening strife.

stop now and smell the roses

lest our make-believe becomes real

and we lay weeping in our tombs

our fears flowing warmly

our bones bleaching on slabs

our friends passing by

without prayer or trust

with smirks and disgust

we stinking from our lusts.

look! see the signals of hope

awakening the crippled.

hear the dead captives tinkering

in the dungeons of the damned.

*Pain

it is winter

all is green

I turn

attention

to

the pain

slip

into night

into

knowing

how

the door

opens

                                                  -Jerry Schroeder,Cap.

*Reflections of Jean Sulivan:

  -In the last analysis it is the Gospel that inspires and guides the Church.  Popes, bishops and priests are servants of the Word and our servants.  They exist only to make sure it remains alive, and to point out the way to go.

  -If to read is to set out, to be transplanted, to create anew, we can see why the men of the Church find it(the Gospel) so painful to read.  After all, the way things are done now, it's as if they were the authors of the text.  How can Christian communities be freed by the Word when they transform it into a form of knowledge to which they hold the key?  The Church continually represses the prophetic voice until an event takes place that shakes it to its roots and unleashes the tide of the Spirit.