Day Seven : 8th December

…click photo (of young Aloyisius) to enlarge

Isaiah 30:19-26 Hope for the afflicted

19 Truly, O people in Zion, inhabitants of Jerusalem, you shall weep no more.
He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when he hears it, he will answer you.

20 Though the Lord may give you the bread of adversity and the waters of affliction,
yet your Teacher will not hide himself any more, but your eyes shall see your Teacher.

21 And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left,
your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying,
"This is the way; walk in it."

22 Then you will defile your silver covered idols and your gold-plated images.
You will scatter them like filthy rags; you will say to them, "Away with you!"

23 He will give rain for the seed with which you sow the ground,
and grain, the produce of the ground, which will be rich and plenteous.
On that day your cattle will graze in broad pastures;

24 and the oxen and donkeys that till the ground will eat silage,
which has been winnowed with shovel and fork.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has warned that:

"…the world is headed towards climate change 'adaptation apartheid', where 'the citizens of the rich world are protected from harm [and] the poor, the vulnerable and the hungry are exposed to the harsh reality of climate change in their everyday lives.'

'Put bluntly, the world's poor are being harmed through a problem not of their making. The footprint of a Malawian farmer or the Haitian slum dweller barely registers in the Earth's atmosphere', he wrote in a report to the UN Development Program." Canberra Times, December 1st 2007, pageB7