You see how he’s always hedging his comparison with the great Abraham Lincoln, because, yes, on the one hand Lincoln did a lot for African Americans, but on the other hand—you can see his mind working here—maybe that came at the expense of our very fine Confederate patriots.

French novelist and Nobel laureate François Mauriac, who died 9/ 1970, was haunted by the moral failure that allowed his fellow citizens to collaborate in the deportation of the Jews and the capacity of Christians to look away.

“Our hidden life with Christ ought to have some bearing on our lives as citizens. We cannot approve ... in the name of Caesar what the Lord condemns... or curses, whether it be failure to honor our word, exploitation of the poor, police torture, or regimes of terror.”

His last work was a meditation on the life of Jesus, noting that God chose to be incarnate in a poor man, a worker, and a Jew. What would our world look like,he asked, if Christians gave proper credit to these facts?

The king said to the girl, “Ask of me whatever you wish and I will grant it to you. . . Even to half of my kingdom.” She went out and asked her mother, “What shall I ask for?” She replied, “The head of John the Baptist.”

The “flame of love” burned brighter as their talk took them higher. Oblivious of time they continued their ascent. “At length we came to our own souls and passed beyond them.” Still their conversation went on, rising ever higher.

“And while we spoke of the eternal Wisdom, longing for it and straining for it with all the strength of our hearts, for one fleeting instant we reached out and touched it.” Then with a sigh, “leaving our spiritual harvest bound to it, we returned to the sound of our own speech.”