We should not lament that we do not see the Lord in the flesh,
because we see him in the least of those around us.
Cardinal George Pell
From his book Prison Journal, Volume 2
(a lovely gull / Julie Cook / 20210
Conscience:
ˈkän(t)SHəns/
noun
–an inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or
wrongness of one’s behavior.
A life long friend of mine and I, a person who has been one of my dearest friends
since we where all of 12 years old, would over the years,
speak of our conscience—that still small inner
voice that we knew spoke of truth.
The issue of truth would always come up when we were faced with one of those
issues of the typical trials of growing up…
those sorts of issues that spoke of right from wrong.
Things we knew to be right yet dared, due to age, to challenge…
to test and to often defy…often with dreaded consequence.
Ode to growing up.
We would often vocally proclaim one to another “conscience”,
much like Quasimodo proclaiming Sanctuary when the other was toying with
an issue that was of great question and trepidation.
Always cognizent that we each knew right from wrong…none the less…
as teens and young college coeds, we would test the waters like a moth
drawn to a flame.
Thankfully and blessedly, we each acted for one another as that tiny piece
of conscience deeply rooted within those often poor choices and
actions we took upon ourselves.
Reminding one another that perhaps we weren’t on the right path
we needed to be heading…hoping to redirect one another to the
path of right from wrong.
And thus that notion of conscience has always been rooted in my psyche.
So when I read the following quote by St. John Bosco,
I was reminded of that still small voice deep within our
beings…the voice that today commands us to pick up our
cross and go forth proclaiming victory.
“Many people [in authority] oppose us, persecute us,
and would like even to destroy us, but we must be patient.
As long as their commands are not against our conscience,
let us obey them, but when the case is otherwise,
let us uphold the rights of God and of the Church,
for those are superior to all earthly authority.”
St. John Bosco
cookiecrumbstoliveby 