To let the seed die so as to provide beauty and food, to obey my trustworthy and loving Master even though it costs me my life, to refuse to embrace, i.e. to hate, values other than God’s–  we do all this so as to have a thoroughly joyful and completely happy life eternal. Such is the wisdom of Jesus which calls us to life.  Jesus preached this wisdom, and lived it out of conviction.  St. Lawrence joyfully grasped the opportunity to do likewise. “To be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause…to finally reach the unreachable star”.

-John Kilgallen, SJ, a Chicago-Detroit province Jesuit, is emeritus professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome.