All things are sold: the very light of heaven is venal; earth's unsparing gifts of love, the smallest and most despicable things that lurk in the abysses of the deep, all objects of our life, even life itself, and the poor pittance which the laws allow of liberty, the fellowship of man, those duties which his heart of human love should urge him to perform instinctively, are bought and sold as in a public mart of not disguising selfishness, that sets on each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign.
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YER OF THE VIGILE DEL FUOCO Lord who light the skyes and fill up the abysses, burn in our breast the flame of sacrifice. Strenghten the spirit of service that burn in us, make safe our eye, steady our foot, to make effective the rescue that in your name we bringto brothers in danger. When the siren shrieks in the streets of the town, listen the throb of our earths devoted to renounce. When in competition with eagles we climb to You, support us Your sored hand. When the fire irresistible flares up, burns the evil nestled in the houses of men, not the life and affections of Your sons. Lord, we are the bearer of Your Cross, and risk is our daily bread. A day without risk is not lived, because for we believers death is life, is light: in the dread of collapses, in the fury of waters, in the hell of fires. Our life is the fire, our faith is God. For Saint Barbara martyr. AMEN
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Men's private self-worlds are rather like our geographical world's seasons, storm, and sun, deserts, oases, mountains and abysses, the endless-seeming plateaus, darkness and light, and always the sowing and the reaping.
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