Muselet

MLz Quotary: Apples : “All badness is spoiled goodness. A bad apple is a good apple that became rotten. Because evil has no capital of its own, it is a parasite ... All badness has no real estate of its own.  That's why evil likes to invade, trespass, bully, seduce, deceive; it's trying to get something that doesn't belong to it: evil is greed, jealousy, lust, hauteur, gluttony, vengeance  even laziness is a form of false-lordship, the sloth is one who demands entitlement without contribution. I think that most of the time evil comes tempting us in the subtle guise of moderately good things.  Again, it has no substance of its own; it has to pervert something else in order to act. Evil is evil, no doubt about that.  And yet, thanks be to God, evil cannot prevail; furthermore, God can use ALL things together for good for those who love the Lord. As powerful and destructive as evil is, it is yet a grace that it is not a god, it is a grace that evil is only...

At the Saturday night Mass, while playing for the offertory, I saw a young family taking up the gifts.  I hadn't seen this particular family before.  They were a large family and it took a while for them all to process down the aisle.  However, what first caught my heightened attention was that the father was returning much slower than the rest and seemed to be lagging behind.  Then I noticed a sound that seemed to be proceeding him.  There was a rhythm to it that reminded me of when my elderly mother recently started using a walker.  Every now and then the father bent over.  As he turned the corner from the central aisle to the aisle in front of the piano, I saw that it was his youngest child, wearing leg braces, and walking with the tiniest walker I had ever seen that was slowly preceding him.  Then he bent over again, and this time I saw why.  When his daughter lifted and placed her walker, it sometimes shifted her a bit off course. ...