ASF in Dachau: "The Key to Holiness"

Tuesday, 2 November 2010

"The Key to Holiness"

In the foyer to the Church of the Assumption there were copies of a quotation of St Edith Stein, printed especially for the Feast of All Saints. As I have quite a few Carmelite readers (or at least I got the impression I did!) I thought it might appreciate it being quoted in full. The translation is a combination of Google Translate and my untangling its incomprehensible sentence structure:

"No one can say 'Holiness is out of my reach'.
It doesn't hang on some remarkable feat, belong to a specific age, require a certain relationship or a dead serious manner.
On the outside one notices very little, although with time it will begin to take shape.
God in heart and God in mind- there lies the key to Holiness"

3 comments:

Linn2 November 2010 at 11:07
Do you want to follow my new blog Roy? Its now possible :) And do you know if there are others from either EVS volunteers or the ASF volunteers that also have a blog? I want to link to them! Already linking to you! :) Have a nice day
My new blog:
http://european-voluntary-service-at-asf.blogspot.com/
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Roy Scivyer2 November 2010 at 11:10
Haha, you do not give up easily!! Of course I'll follow it :)
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Linn2 November 2010 at 12:10
hehe... :P
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In 1945, when the keepers cried
Josef Stein, poet, came out of Dachau
Like half a resurrection, his other half
eighty pounds still in their invisible grave.
Slowly then the mouth opened at first
a broth, and then a medication, and then
a diet, and all in time and the knitting mercies,
the showing bones were buried back in flesh,
and the miracle was finished. Josef Stein
man and poet, rose, walked, and could even
beget, and did, and later died of other causes
only partly traceable to his first death.
He noted - with some surprise at first -
that strangers could not tell he had died once.
He returned to his post in the library, drank his beer,
published three poems in a French magazine,

and was very kind to the son who at last was his. In the spent of one night he wrote three propositions:
That Hell is the denial of the ordinary. That nothing lasts.
That clean white paper waiting under a pen

is the gift beyond history and hurt and heaven.

- The Gift by John Ciardi