His Own Received Him Not

When our Lord came to this earth, the gospel says of him, 'He came unto his own and his own received him not.' He had to be born under the floor of the earth, in a cave. One has to stoop to enter a cave. And the stoop is the stoop of humility. At the end of his life he was rejected by the earth again. The trees turned against him, the trees that he made, for they gave him a cross. The bowels of the earth turned against him, for they produced a hammer and nails.  The roses blushed a deeper red, for from their branches came a crown of thorns. And the earth itself would not have his feet, so they raised him above it. As earth rejected him, so did the heavens. There was darkness over the earth for three hours. And the sun which he had made as a symbol of himself and as death and resurrection in daily life now hid its light, almost as if ashamed to shed itself upon the crime of deicide.