Fr. Frank Majka, SJ – The Bridge

Firm Foundations

This past week, newspapers reported that Radovan Karadzic had been turned over to the war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands, where he will be tried for, among other things, masterminding the slaughter of 8,000 men and boys in Srberenica in l995, and helping to spearhead a three-year siege of Sarajevo, which resulted in 10,000 deaths.

Fifteen thousand people, though, demonstrated in Belgrade in support of him for helping to create the Bosnia Serb mini-state. In their eyes, Karadzic is no mass murderer, but a founding father.

But nations will never endure if they don’t have a willingness to admit and make reparation for the dark deeds that can come along with making a nation and living as one. And this is just as true for America as for any other society.

Two Things Can Help

Two gifts from God can help us as we try to influence people and situations. I Kings
chapter 3

Starlight, Stars Not-So-Bright

The wonder of the star-filled night sky has inspired mystics, saints, and artists for centuries. The Hebrew psalmist declared that God calls each star by name and they shine out at his bidding, saints like Ignatius Loyola looked at the night sky for hours, and some of Van Gogh’s greatest paintings are full of stars.

But we no longer see the same sky our ancestors did. According to scientists, the millions of lights from our cities, towns, and villages combine to produce “light pollution,” and astronomers find it difficult to find places on Earth unaffected by it. Though satellite telescopes like the Hubble show us the far reaches of space, the fact remains that we here on Earth don’t see the night sky as clearly as people did in the past.

Some of us can get to places where the night sky’s more visible than in cities, like the desert or the North woods or the mountains, but most of us need reminding that that the universe shines with lights that owe nothing to our invention or technology but which exist because God made them for his pleasure, our amazement, and to keep us humble in the face of their beauty. Still, even what most of us can see as we look the heavens at night is enough to astound and humble us, and for that we can be grateful.

(NASA photo below shows the earth’s brightness at night.)

Missouri Moonrise

The Sowing, the Growing, and the Sower

The parable of the sower has a lot to unpack in it. Matthew chapter 13