MONDAY, November 23 (Clement of Rome)

Francis Bacon said knowledge is power. Some replace knowledge with information or money. My telephone company has embraced both concepts.

I come home to discover six telephone books on our front porch, three copies each of the white and yellow pages. They weigh slightly under ten pounds. I carry them to the recycle pile with the twelve other copies of the same books we've received in the last two months. They arrive despite the mail-in card sent to the phone company requesting "zero" copies be sent. With the Internet, we haven't cracked open a phone book in years. Fortunately the Boy Scouts will come next week and collect them for recycling. Perhaps some good does come out of the error.

We live amid perishable, defiled, and fading things in this world--including time-dated phone books. Yet that inheritance we claim as Christians, coming as Peter tells us from the merits of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, gives us a living hope of the truly imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. The only real power we are capable of possessing? Faith, hope, and love.

PRAY for the Diocese of Wellington (New Zealand)

Ps 106:1-18 * 106:19-48; Joel 3:1-2, 9-17; Matthew 19:1-12