These will I remember and my soul will cry over them. Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!

Yom HaShoah, a day in memorial of the millions who perished in the destruction of European Jewry, a Day of Remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust, is observed on the 27th of the Jewish calendar month of Nisan and coincides with the anniversary of the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. Yom HaShoah begins at sundown today.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope was launched on 24 April 1990. This extraordinary photograph, spanning three light-years in the Omega or Swan Nebula, located about 5,500 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius, was released to mark the anniversary.

Of old hast Thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of Thy hands.

I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull. He got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called -- nay we call ourselves and write our name -- Crusoe; and so my companions always called me.

I had two elder brothers, one of whom was lieutenant-colonel to an English regiment of foot in Flanders, formerly commanded by the famous Colonel Lockhart, and was killed at the battle near Dunkirk against the Spaniards. What became of my second brother I never knew, any more than my father or mother knew what became of me.

The Life And Adventures Of Robinson Crusoe was published on this date in 1619 and its author Daniel Defoe died a day earlier in 1631.

Some of the names to remember on this Feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist, a patron of captives.

With thanks to Matthew Hoy for an act of memory in the public service.

Reginald Heber, scholar of Brasenose College and fellow of All Souls, Anglican country rector and bishop of Calcutta, who died when only 42, was born on this date in 1783. Two lines from his Missionary hymn, "though every prospect pleases, And only man is vile" are seen as allusion even where his name is unfamiliar, but he deserves to be known to a wider public as the author of several hymns of the first rank.

Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning, originally written for the Feast of the Epiphany, speaks of the offerings of the Magi, wonders what best we might bring as gift, and ends in beauty and comfort.

Vainly we offer each ample oblation,
Vainly with gifts would His favor secure;
Richer by far is the heart’s adoration,
Dearer to God are the prayers of the poor.

The stirring anthem of spiritual battle, The Son of God Goes Forth To War, is also by Bishop Heber. It's sung less frequently today, but was well-chosen by the novelist Louis Auchincloss as the recessional hymn sung at the funeral of Rev. Frank Prescott, The Rector of Justin, evoking for the reader even now the headmaster's character and a particular approach to Christian living.

And one of Heber's compositions alone, his great hymn for Trinity Sunday set to the music Nicaea of John Bacchus Dykes, would be enough to make his name a blessing.

Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee,
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
Cherubim and seraphim falling down before Thee,
Which wert, and art, and evermore shall be.

Holy, holy, holy! though the darkness hide Thee,
Though the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see;
Only Thou art holy; there is none beside Thee,
Perfect in power, in love, and purity.

Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
All Thy works shall praise Thy Name, in earth, and sky, and sea;
Holy, holy, holy; merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessèd Trinity!

Good-Friday, 1613, Riding Westward.
by John Donne

LET man's soul be a sphere, and then, in this,
Th' intelligence that moves, devotion is ;
And as the other spheres, by being grown
Subject to foreign motion, lose their own,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a year their natural form obey ;
Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit
For their first mover, and are whirl'd by it.
Hence is't, that I am carried towards the west,
This day, when my soul's form bends to the East.
There I should see a Sun by rising set,
And by that setting endless day beget.
But that Christ on His cross did rise and fall,
Sin had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for me.
Who sees Gods face, that is self-life, must die ;
What a death were it then to see God die ?
It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink,
It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink.
Could I behold those hands, which span the poles
And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes ?
Could I behold that endless height, which is
Zenith to us and our antipodes,
Humbled below us ? or that blood, which is
The seat of all our soul's, if not of His,
Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn
By God for His apparel, ragg'd and torn ?
If on these things I durst not look, durst I
On His distressed Mother cast mine eye,
Who was God's partner here, and furnish'd thus
Half of that sacrifice which ransom'd us ?
Though these things as I ride be from mine eye,
They're present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them ; and Thou look'st towards me,
O Saviour, as Thou hang'st upon the tree.
I turn my back to thee but to receive
Corrections till Thy mercies bid Thee leave.
O think me worth Thine anger, punish me,
Burn off my rust, and my deformity ;
Restore Thine image, so much, by Thy grace,
That Thou mayst know me, and I'll turn my face.

Not only to serve God,
but to cleave to God.

Not only to believe in God,
to know, love, and fear God;
but to savor of God,
to understand, apprehend, and enjoy God.

This is a great thing,
it is an arduous thing.

William of St.-Thierry
The Golden Epistle

The Church constantly draws her life from the redeeming sacrifice; she approaches it not only through faith-filled remembrance, but also through a real contact, since this sacrifice is made present ever anew, sacramentally perpetuated, in every community which offers it at the hands of the consecrated minister. The Eucharist thus applies to men and women today the reconciliation won once for all by Christ for mankind in every age. “The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice”. Saint John Chrysostom put it well: “We always offer the same Lamb, not one today and another tomorrow, but always the same one. For this reason the sacrifice is always only one... Even now we offer that victim who was once offered and who will never be consumed”.

The Mass makes present the sacrifice of the Cross; it does not add to that sacrifice nor does it multiply it. What is repeated is its memorial celebration, its “commemorative representation” (memorialis demonstratio), which makes Christ's one, definitive redemptive sacrifice always present in time. The sacrificial nature of the Eucharistic mystery cannot therefore be understood as something separate, independent of the Cross or only indirectly referring to the sacrifice of Calvary.

Pope John Paul II, in the encyclical letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia, delivered on this Holy Thursday.

Miserere

by Paulo

A remarkable composition, and moving. Already recommended by James and Valerie. And by Gideon, who called it astounding. Here's Paulo's description of his work.

This was a nonlinear interpretation of Psalm 51 in Latin and English, based on the verses of Gregorio Allegri's Miserere Mei, presented as a typographic study juxtaposed alongside the David/Bathsheba story. Rolling over the Latin verse should play a digitally altered segment of the original Miserere choral setting (sped up to 400% for artsy compression effects). I've tried to be as careful as possible in my juxtapository expositions of the verses, and the audio lyrics should match the corresponding rollover text -- except for a few pages where I botched up syncing with the Latin, because of time constraints.

Fellow-citizens, the fourteenth day of April, 1865, of which this is the eleventh anniversary, is now and will ever remain a memorable day in the annals of this Republic. It was on the evening of this day, while a fierce and sanguinary rebellion was in the last stages of its desolating power; while its armies were broken and scattered before the invincible armies of Grant and Sherman; while a great nation, torn and rent by war, was already beginning to raise to the skies loud anthems of joy at the dawn of peace, it was startled, amazed, and overwhelmed by the crowning crime of slavery--the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It was a new crime, a pure act of malice. No purpose of the rebellion was to be served by it. It was the simple gratification of a hell-black spirit of revenge. But it has done good after all. It has filled the country with a deeper abhorrence of slavery and a deeper love for the great liberator.

Had Abraham Lincoln died from any of the numerous ills to which flesh is heir; had he reached that good old age of which his vigorous constitution and his temperate habits gave promise; had he been permitted to see the end of his great work; had the solemn curtain of death come down but gradually--we should still have been smitten with a heavy grief, and treasured his name lovingly. But dying as he did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated, taken off without warning, not because of personal hate--for no man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him--but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever.

From the extraordinary and powerful oration in memory of Abraham Lincoln, given by Frederick Douglass at the unveiling of the Freedmen's Monument in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C. on 14 April 1876. President Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theatre on Good Friday, 14 April, and died 15 April, 1865.

It is not the fear of possible infection. That seems a little thing when compared with the pain, the pity, and the disgust of the visitor’s surroundings, and the atmosphere of affliction, disease, and physical disgrace in which he breathes. I do not think I am a man more than usually timid; but I never recall the days and nights I spent upon that island promontory (eight days and seven nights), without heartfelt thankfulness that I am somewhere else.

.....

The man who did what Damien did is my father ... and the father of all who love goodness: and he was your father too, if God had given you the grace to see it.

Robert Louis Stevenson, writing on the character, life and ministry of Blessed Damien of Molokai, who died on this date in 1889.

We should have no other university than Jerusalem, no other school but Mount Calvary, no other pulpit but the Cross, no other reader but the Crucifix, no other letters but His sacred wounds, no other commas but His lashes, no other periods but His nails, no other book but His open Side, and finally no other lessons but "to know Jesus Christ and Him Crucified."

Saint Robert Southwell

The Christian Catacombs of Rome

While the catacombs depict the eloquent features of Christian life in the first centuries, they are also a perennial school of faith, hope and charity. Walking through their tunnels, we breathe an evocative and moving atmosphere. Our gaze pauses on the innumerable series of tombs and on the simplicity they have in common. On the tombs we read the baptismal names of the deceased. As we run through those names, we seem to hear as many voices answering an eschatological call, and we remember the words of Lactantius: "There are neither servants nor masters among us; there is no reason for us to call ourselves brothers, except that we consider ourselves all equals" (Divinae Instit., 5: 15).

Pope John Paul II

There's a peculiar sense of the fitting that in mid-April we're in a period between the anniversary dates of the birth and the death of William Wordsworth, whose long life -- he was the first of England's great Romantic poets to be born, and the last to die -- began at Cockermouth near the Lake District in Cumbria on 7 April 1770, in a Georgian home now called Wordsworth House. The eminent man died of pleurisy at a great age on the Feast of St. George, 23 April, in 1850 and is buried in the churchyard of the Church of St. Oswald at Grasmere.

I've posted the words of a great many hymns here, and, among the immense output of his mind and pen, Wordsworth wrote a hymn that's widely known, The Laborer's Noon-Day Hymn, which includes the following fine lines:

Blest are the moments, doubly blest,
That, drawn from this one hour of rest,
Are with a ready heart bestowed
Upon the service of our God!

But here is one of the sonnets of the great poet, on a theme with which we're still wrestling.

UPON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH

IN SERIES, 1839

VII

BEFORE the world had past her time of youth
While polity and discipline were weak,
The precept eye for eye, and tooth for tooth,
Came forth--a light, though but as of daybreak,
Strong as could then be borne. A Master meek
Proscribed the spirit fostered by that rule,
Patience 'his' law, long-suffering 'his' school,
And love the end, which all through peace must seek.
But lamentably do they err who strain
His mandates, given rash impulse to control
And keep vindictive thirstings from the soul,
So far that, if consistent in their scheme,
They must forbid the State to inflict a pain,
Making of social order a mere dream.

An anniversary.

"On April 9, 1865 after four years of Civil War, approximately 630,000 deaths and over 1 million casualties, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, at the home of Wilmer and Virginia McLean in the town of Appomattox Court House, Virginia."


General R. E. LEE:

GENERAL: In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th instant, I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia on the following terms, to wit: Rolls of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate, one copy to be given to an officer to be designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged; and each company or regimental commander sign a like parole for the men of their commands. The arms, artillery, and public property to be parked and stacked, and turned over to the officers appointed by me to receive them. This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to his home, not to be disturbed by U. S. authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.

U.S. GRANT,
Lieutenant-General

***** ***** *****

I've been to some of its battlefields and camp-grounds, seen the cenotaphs and monuments to the Union dead in towns and cities, walked almost daily for several years through the Confederate and University Cemetery at the University of Virginia. How near it seems still, that war of North and South, and the scars.

Once upon a lifetime ago, Shelly Pennefather was the sweetest of shooting stars, an All-American at Villanova and the 1987 national player of the year. Since 1991, she has lived here, in the Poor Clare Monastery, at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in a very modest middle-class neighborhood.

The opening paragraph of an article by Jack Wilkinson of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Former Villanova Star Trades Hoops For Monastery

Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics

This thorough and hugely interesting site has pictures on its home page of James Joseph Sylvester, who introduced the words matrix, discriminant, invariant, totient, and Jacobian; Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who introduced the words variable, constant, function, abscissa, parameter, coordinate and perhaps derivative; René Descartes, who introduced the terms real number and imaginary number; Sir William Rowan Hamilton, who introduced the terms vector, scalar, tensor, associative, and quaternion; and John Wallis, who introduced the terms induction, interpolation, continued fraction, mantissa, and hypergeometric series.

And the riches don't end there. Googol, for instance, the name for that number that is 10 to the hundredth power; and googolplex, the number that is 10 to the googol power. I met both of those in one of Isaac Asimov's books on the history of number theory that I read while taking a great course in astronomy. More than good to meet them again, and in the company of a host of other interesting entries.

Via Iconomy, via Plep

The Girard Academic Music Program, whose home is in the Edgar Allan Poe building in South Philadelphia, is one of the brightest lights of the Philadelphia School District and the school's Spring musical is an electric event. Their production of Mame opened last night, and there's not another high school in Pennsylvania that could have presented the show as engagingly or to so high a musical standard.

A great evening of musical theater, and, after the multiple curtain calls and ovations for cast and orchestra, ending with a graceful tribute by these very talented students assembled in a full company call: words of thanks from them as a flag unfurled and then their grand performance of "God Bless the USA"

The students of GAMP are, year after year, an advertisement for the city of Philadelphia, and a model of the high achievement possible when the talents of the young are recognized and encouraged, nurtured and developed in a disciplined program whose standard is excellence.

In one of the features on Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, the supply clerk taken prisoner in an ambush on March 23 and rescued by United States forces, there was a shot of a large group of students at her high school in Palestine, West Virginia. They were gathered together for thanksgiving prayer, singing a Rich Mullins song.

Awesome God

When He rolls up His sleeves
He ain't just putting on the ritz
There's thunder in His footsteps
And lightning in His fists.

Our God is an awesome God
He reigns from heaven above
With wisdom, power, and love
Our God is an awesome God

The Lord wasn't joking
When He kicked 'em out of Eden
It wasn't for no reason
That He shed His blood
His return is very close
And so you better be believing that
Our God is an awesome God

And when the sky was starless
In the void of the night
(God is an awesome God)
He spoke into the darkness
And created the light
(God is an awesome God)
Judgement and wrath He poured out on Sodom
Mercy and grace He gave us at the cross
I hope that we have not
Too quickly forgotten that
Our God is an awesome God

Our God is an awesome God
He reigns from heaven above
With wisdom, power, and love
Our God is an awesome God

William Reed Newell, pastor and evangelist, author of a hymn that's become a standard of Southern Gospel music, died in DeLand, Florida on this date in 1956.

At Calvary

Years I spent in vanity and pride,
Caring not my Lord was crucified,
Knowing not it was for me He died on Calvary.

Mercy there was great, and grace was free;
pardon there was multiplied to me;
There my burdened soul found liberty, At Calvary.

By God's Word at last my sin I learned,
Then I trembled at the law I'd spurned,
Till my guilty soul imploring turned to Calvary.

Refrain

Now I've giv'n to Jesus everything;
Now I gladly own Him as my King;
Now my raptured soul can only sing of Calvary.

Refrain

O, the love that drew salvation's plan!
O, the grace that brought it down to man!
O, the mighty gulf that God did span at Calvary!

It's almost certainly the case that a majority of those who use the phrase West Bank -- as if it's been a geographical name since time out of mind -- would be unable to say what river flows there.