Holy Thursday: Is This a Holy Thing to See

Is this a holy thing to see, 
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reducd to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?

Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!

And their sun does never shine. 
And their fields are bleak & bare. 
And their ways are fill’d with thorns. 
It is eternal winter there.

For where-e’er the sun does shine, 
And where-e’er the rain does fall: 
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall. – William Blake

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On this night when Jesus Christ instituted the Most Holy Sacrament of his Body and Blood, let us remember the words of St. John Chrysostom, who said, “If you do not see Christ in the beggar at the Church door, you shall not find him in the Chalice.”