Donne: all in one choir

Monday, November 1, 2010
    Feast of All Saints
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it.
    —John 5:21 (NIV)
Quotation:
    He was but a heathen that said, If God love a man, He takes him young out of this world; and they were but heathens, that observed that custom, to put on mourning when their sons were born, and to feast and triumph when they died. But thus much may we learn from these heathens, that if the dead, and we, be not upon one floor, nor under one story, yet we are under one roof. We think not a friend lost, because he has gone into another room, nor because he has gone into another land: and into another world, no man has gone; for that Heaven, which God created, and this world, is all one world... I spend none of my faith, I exercise none of my hope, in this, that I shall have my dead raised to life again.
    This is the faith that sustains me, when I lose by the death of others, or when I suffer by living in misery myself: that the dead and we are now all in one Church, and at the resurrection, shall be all in one choir.
    ... John Donne (1573-1631), Works of John Donne, vol. I, London: John W. Parker, 1839, Sermon XX, p. 401 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your church is indivisible and eternal. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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