As our journey heads into Holy Week, a powerful meditation:

"It is you, my God, my Creator and Redeemer, the scapegoat that for centuries Jerusalem has been laboring to uproot and expel from her bowels! At last she has succeeded in driving it out in a storm of blows and curses! She has gotten rid of Him. Like Judas she has voided herself with a single effort, and she delivers Him to the world with a final scream of childbirth.

Now it is as if the dike of a dam has burst, and the unleashed flood sweeps everything along with it: present, past, and future, the people and prophecies of the Old Testament, pell-mell, the seeds of posterity and the scattered members of the future church, the uprooted obstacle caught in the whirlpool, the vomitings of hate and despair, the invasion of that vast sunken land around us that demands to be filled.

Jesus Christ advances, formidable, amid this tidal wave, and the Virgin follows Him with dry feet. He has brought with Him a torrent, and it rests with Him whether we may moisten our lips or not." - Paul Claudel

(Paul Claudel was a poet, a playwright, a diplomat, and a member of the French Academy - Magnificat, March 31, 2012 Meditation of the Day)