RIP: Daniel Berrigan, SJ (May 9, 1921 – April 30, 2016)

    

     “Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order,

      the burning of paper instead of children . . . We could not, so

      help us God, do otherwise . . . thinking of the Land of Burning

      Children.”                                                               

                                                    Daniel Berrigan S.J.

How far they fall—even Jesuits--into labyrinthine little hells.

You were one of the glorious exceptions, a glorious atavism—

unsuppressed, cast in steel, like the Jesuits of the Reductions.

You fought to the end & no holds barred--for peace of all things.

Wherever you may or may not be, surely there abides there

no Cardinal Spellman, who, wristing aspergil like a hammer, 

sprinkled U.S bombers with the holy water of some other Christ's

War Against Vietnam.

That alone may be a kind of paradise.

R. I. P. & an easy, blest and breathless rest.

E. A. Costa

E. A. Costa           May 6, 2016       Granada, Nicaragua