Monday, August 20, 2018

“Picture an orchestra on stage with a celebrated conductor directing the beautiful symphony he himself composed.  Each member of the orchestra is free to follow the conductor and thus to produce harmony.  But each member is also free to disobey the conductor.  Suppose one of the musicians deliberately plays a false note and then induces a violinist alongside of him to do the same.  Having heard the discord, the conductor can do one of two things.  He could either strike his baton and order the measure replayed, or he could ignore the discord.  It would make no difference which he did, for the discord has already gone out into space at a certain temperature at the rate of about 1100 feet a second.  On and on it goes, affecting even the infinitesimally small radiations of the universe.  As the stone dropped in a pond causes a ripple which affects the most distant shore, so this discord affects even the stars.  As long as time endures, somewhere in God’s Universe there is disharmony, introduced by the free will of man.  Could the discord be stopped?  Not by man himself, for man could never reach it; time is irreversible, and man is localized in space.  It could, however, be stopped by the Eternal coming out of His agelessness into time, laying hold of the false note, arresting it in its flight.  But would it still be discord in God’s Hands?  No!  Not if God wrote a new symphony and made the false note its first note!  Then all would be harmony again.”  Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Peace of Soul)

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