Thursday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
Come now, you rich, weep and wail over your impending miseries. Behold, the wages you withheld from the workers who harvested your fields are crying aloud, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. James 5:1,4
"Everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if salt becomes insipid, with what will you restore its flavor? Keep salt in yourselves and you will have peace with one another. Mark 9:49-50
PietyLord, help us not to forget those who are crying aloud for justice in this world…especially the poor in places like
http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/052208.shtml
Salt is the subject of many phrases in our language. Pour salt on the wound. Salt of the earth. Worth his salt. Take it with a grain of salt. When it rains, it pours (Sorry that was the advertising devil typing that last sentence, Morton.). That is not surprising because salt has been around civilization for thousands of years. Salt was and is the magic preservative. It helps to maintain the original flavor and character of whatever it was added to. It adds a level of flavor to foods that might taste bland.
Fire also has a way of creeping into our metaphors and expressions. Put out the fire. Fired up! Fired. Friendly fire. Trial by fire. Fire in the belly. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Set your hearts on fire. Biblically, fire is the great purifier. If salt could not preserve something, then fire would purify it like the refiner’s fire heating up molten silver.
Continuing with the theme of the transitory character of life on earth, the author of the letter to James points out the impending ruin of the godless, according to the notes to the New American Bible. Christ founded his ministry on a central concerned -- an agenda to bring glad tidings to the poor detailed in Luke 4. The first reading from this letter today denounces the unjust rich, whose victims cry to heaven for judgment on their exploiters. The decay and corrosion of the costly garments and metals, which symbolize wealth, prove them worthless and portend the destruction of their possessors. Such external possessions are not the key to the path to eternal happiness. Set opposing the unjust rich are the righteous poor who are the subject for our service and charity.
Such outreach to others is reinforced in the reading today from the Good News according to Mark. “Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ, amen, I say to you, will surely not lose his reward.” Mark 9:41
But the path to heaven does not end with just sharing with others. We must embrace the most power-less among us. The homeless, the stranger, the enemy, the children.
It is easy to hug your own children and grandchildren. It is even easy to love the children of your neighbors and friends. And were there any adults among your crowd who were not admonished by their parents to eat all their dinner (even the peas) and be thankful because the starving children in (fill in the blank poor country) did not have any food?
The study guide to this chapter explains that the purifying and preservative use of salt in food (Lev 2:13) and the refinement effected through fire refer here to comparable effects in the spiritual life of the disciples of Jesus.
However, every cereal offering that you present to the LORD shall be seasoned with salt. Do not let the salt of the covenant of your God be lacking from your cereal offering. On every offering you shall offer salt. "If you present a cereal offering of first fruits to the LORD, you shall offer it in the form of fresh grits of new ears of grain, roasted by fire. Leviticus 2:13-14
ActionHere is a message opposing an upcoming execution in
To: The Honorable Tim Kaine
Governor of
I urge you to stop the execution of Percy Levar Walton, who is scheduled to be executed on June 10, 2008 for the 1996 murders of Elizabeth and Jesse Hendrick, and Archie Moore.
I am deeply concerned that judicial rulings have declared Percy Walton competent for execution, despite the fact that he has been diagnosed by at least three mental health experts as suffering from severe schizophrenia and that he had displayed signs of emerging mental illness for over a year before the crimes took place. Prison records show that Mr. Walton’s condition has significantly worsened on death row, going so far as to describe him as “floridly psychotic.” There is also evidence that he has at least borderline mental retardation, and by many accounts, possesses the mental capacity of a young child.
Execution of “the insane” violates the US Constitution under the 1986 Supreme Court ruling, Ford v. Wainwright, but courts and judges continue to disagree on precisely who qualifies for this protection. The 2006 Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Mr. Walton’s case, where a slim 7-6 majority decided he was competent to be executed, perfectly illustrates this confusion. The six dissenting judges argued that Mr. Walton did not understand his execution would end his life and that “there is no dispute that since his sentencing, Mr. Walton has fallen deeper and deeper into mental illness.”
The power of clemency exists to prevent injustices the judiciary cannot remedy due to the lack of clarity in the law. In this case executive clemency is needed to prevent the injustice of putting a seriously mentally ill man to death. In 1999, Virginia Governor James Gilmore commuted the death sentence of Calvin Swann on the grounds of his schizophrenia, from which he had suffered since his late teens.
I commend your wisdom in temporarily halting Mr. Walton’s execution in December 2006. Governor Kaine, noting the shortcomings of the judicial system in this case, I strongly urge you to grant permanent clemency to this seriously mentally ill individual. Commuting Percy Levar Walton’s sentence would be a true testament to your visionary leadership and respect for human life.
Thank you for your time and attention to this important matter.
Sincerely
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