Murder in the Cathedral

The last temptation is the greatest treason
To do the right deed for the wrong reason

And I am not in danger: only near to death.

Unreal friendship may turn to real / But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended.

It is not we alone, it is not the house, it is not the city that is defiled,

But the world that is wholly foul.

Clear the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! take the stone from the stone, take the skin from the arm, take the muscle from the bone, and wash them. Wash the  stone, wash the bone, wash the brain, wash the soul, wash them wash them!

Every horror had its definition,

Every sorrow had a kind of end:

In life there is not time to grieve long.

But this, this is out of life, this is out of time,

An instant eternity of evil and wrong.

Can I look again at the day and its common things, and see them all smeared with blood, through a curtain of falling blood?

I submit my cause to the judgement of Rome.

But if you kill me, I shall rise from my tomb

To submit my cause before God’s throne.

What day is the day that we know that we hope for or fear for?

Every day is the day we should fear from or hope from. One moment

Weighs like another. Only in retrospection, selection,

We say, that was the day. The critical moment

That is always now, and here.

Beloved, we do not think of a martyr simply as a good Christian who has been killed because he is a Christian: for that would be solely to mourn. We do not think of him simply as a good Christian who has been elevated to the company of the Saints: for that would be simply to rejoice: and neither our mourning nor our rejoicing is as the world’s is. A Christian martyrdom is never an accident, for Saints are not made by accident.

Your thoughts have more power than kings to compel you.