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Tuesday, March 17, 2026

Hammarskjöld: light shows our darkness

Feast of Patrick, Bishop of Armagh, Missionary, Patron of Ireland, c.460
Meditation:
Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” “I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
—Genesis 4:9 (NIV)

Quotation:
We can reach the point where it becomes possible for us to recognize and understand Original Sin, that dark counter-center of evil in our nature—that is to say, though it is not our nature, it is of it—that something within us which rejoices when disaster befalls the very cause we are trying to serve, or misfortune overtakes even those we love.
Life in God is not an escape from this, but the way to gain full insight concerning it. It is not our depravity which forces a fictitious religious explanation upon us, but the experience of religious reality which forces the “Night Side” out into the light.
It is when we stand in the righteous all-seeing light of love that we can dare to look at, admit, and consciously suffer under this something in us which wills disaster, misfortune, defeat to everything outside the sphere of our narrowest self interest.
... Dag Hammarskjöld (1905-1961), Markings, tr. Leif Sjöberg & W. H. Auden, (q.v.), New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964 (post.), p. 149 (see the book)
See also Gen. 4:9; 37:32; Ps. 10:13-14; Pr. 28:13; John 8:44; Rom. 3:23

Quiet time reflection:
Too easily, Lord, I excuse my own sin.
 
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  by Robert McAnally Adams,
  Curator, Christian Quotation of the Day
with Robert Douglas, principal contributor
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