The Sermon for Today
A Franciscan friar’s sermon is extensively quoted with the notation that this guest speaker was awarded the kind of reception in the recent past for the biggest rock stars in the world. Just as enormous crowds filled up stadiums to hear popular songs, so did the congregation fill the church when it was learned that the subject of the friar’s sermon would be gaming rather than the traditional instruction ritualistic Lenten abstinence:
“The world is like a chessboard, which checkered white and black. The colors show the two conditions of life and death, or praise or blame. The chessmen are men of this world who occupy difference stations and hold different titles in this life, although every one of us finally has a common fate which levels all ranks.”
The Plague as Metaphor
The Church struggled to situate the Black Death within the proper metaphorical perspective, agreeing only on the broader implication that “God was inflicting pestilence as a response to the sinfulness of mankind” but with many ecclesiastics wary of portraying it as a specific “act of revenge or even a just punishment inflicted by an angry God.”
It Begins
The onset of the symptoms is characterized using vivid metaphorical imagery:
“a tingling sensation, as if they were being pricked by points of arrows…some people lay as if in a drunk stupor and could not be roused”
The Deadliest Sin and How to Overcome It
When everything else fails, true believers have nothing left to turn to but ritual. And so the arrival and long stay of the Black Death meant long hours for the men in clerical robes:
“Confession to a priest, who had the power of the keys and was in a state of grace, was the only way of slaying the most deadly sin.”
Warnings from a Wandering Preacher
A wandering preacher shows up one day to meet crowds begging for the right to pay him for pardons of their sins, but he just threw the money back at them. He had a message that money could buy:
“In Hell a man shall weep more than all the water in the earth—alms, Masses and prayers shall not avail him. Heaven is for those who serve God.”
His legion of apostles showing up alongside him in the next city was ever so slightly larger than it had been when he had moved on from the previous city.
