Shalom my friend

Our soul longs for Shalom.

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata

2nd Sunday of Easter
Gist fr Mass at St Thomas Aquinas

Today's reading John 20:19-31, is the only one that is repeated every year because of the importance of the universal themes Faith, Forgiveness and Peace, expounded in the passage.

Faith, Forgiveness and Peace... These words slip flippantly from human lips. cliched and empty.

It is perhaps for this reason, that in the poem The Waste Land, T.S Eliot's chose to end his poem with three words borrowed from Sanskrit - Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata - Give, sympathize, Control. These are acts which we can do to achieve Faith, Forgiveness and Peace.

Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms

Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus

Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands

Give - to give of ourselves to God. In a marriage, it is the offering of ourselves to another, and sacrifices along the way.

Sympathise - it is only we are able to think not of ourselves, but to imagine and feel another's pain, that we can truly forgive.

Control - to act unselfishly, in disciplined obedience to achieve balance. Not to whip to obedience, but to allow an "expert hand" to maneuver. tandem. harmony. Peace.