Third Sunday of Lent 2015
Fidelity, fidelity, fidelity,
within this noble house of prayer,
how can a place prove prayerful,
conducive for whispering to God,
if men intensely haggle
over cattle, sheep and doves.
Fidelity alone
will keep a temple functioning
within its sacred mandate
instead of being degraded to stable
or treasured as museum
when culture, the best of human effort,
supplants the deity’s role.
Instead of pleas for guidance,
one hears the admiration
for wonders achieved
by more primitive countrymen.
Fidelity to oneself
is that applied to every person,
for dishonesty destroys
one’s own integrity and honor,
as lust degrades
an individual’s own ideals
to unenlightened self-indulgence,
while pride and loathsome superiority
create a world
where only one can abide,
with misuse of power the worst of all,
the horrid crushing of the weak,
and turning other’s pain to profit,
or in gaining advantage
by hurling another to disadvantage,
as barbarians are wont to do.
Fidelity seeks nobility, not deciding
as though another deserved kind treatment,
but mindful one owes it to self
to act nobly, Christ-like,
while being true to one’s own nature.
March 2015
Bonaventure Stefun, OFM Cap.
See more reflections here.
Advent-Christmas
Â