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the strident cry, "Why, O God, have you cast us off forever?", the song prays for re-
demption, "Lord, forget not the souls of your poor ones." The final two lines extend that
prayer from what God can do for us to what we can do for ourselves, "May the humble
not retire in confusion; may the afflicted and the poor praise your name." Nothing here
about rebuilding grand temples, the same about mighty kingdoms. If one views God as
always a loving parent, then God must have viewed the way his children used the temple
and the kingdom as a deadly distraction. Good parents remove dangerous toys.
P
RAYER
Today's Gospel contains one of the greatest prayers of confidence in scripture, "Only
say the word..." It is uttered by a foreign cop--a hated occupier. Driven by his com-
passion for his servant, linked with an unwavering faith in the power of goodness to do
good, he bypasses all the baggage that his career may have saddled him with. He gets
it! Jesus is astonished. He prophesies the banquet of heaven open much wider, ac-
cepting hoards of souls that were thought previously inadmissible (and excluding a few
who might have thought they were welcome based strictly on religious and national af-
filiation). This encounter unleashes a surge of healing power in Jesus. I like to think that
Jesus and the Centurion thanked each other as they parted.
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D
ON
M
ULICCI
Parishioner