Blessed are the politicians...

I read this from the website dedicated to the late Cardinal Francis Van Thuan.  It is worth sharing - as a prayer for our politicians, as well as a hope for renewed politics and social life.  Hopeful reading.

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8 "beatitudes for politicians"

Cardinal Francois-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, who is president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, proposed the moral guidelines on May 3, 2002 at a conference in the northern Italian city of Padua.
Echoing the eight beatitudes preached by Christ in his Sermon on the Mount, Cardinal Thuan said politicians needed a similar set of rules that leave room for the faith in their profession.

• Blessed the politician who well understands his role in the world.
• Blessed the politician who personally exemplifies credibility.
• Blessed the politician who works for the common good and not for his own interests.
• Blessed the politician who is true to himself, his faith and his electoral promises.
• Blessed the politician who works for unity and makes Jesus the fulcrum of its defence.
• Blessed the politician who works for radical change, refusing to call good that which is evil and using the Gospel as a guide.
• Blessed the politician who listens to the people before, during and after the elections, and who listens to God in prayers.
• Blessed the politician who has no fear of the truth or the mass media, because at the time of judgment he will answer only to God, not the media.

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(Res)Po(n)ssibility

I was typing a quotation for a section in my paper when I mistyped what I read. The coordination of my eyes, my mind and my fingers was not too well, I thought. I typed "possibilities" instead of "responsibilities". In almost a split second, I thought of just deleting the word and retyping the correct one. I looked at the word "possibilities", and I saw I just had to type "res" before "p" and change the first "s" into an "n" and that does it!

Then it came to me - every possibility is a responsibility.

Res (genitive, rei) in Latin is "a substantive thing", "a concrete thing". To make possibilities a reality, concrete and substantive, I take responsibility.