In fourth year English in the minor seminary we were doing the poetry of Edgar Allen Poe. Joe Coughlin, who was from Brooklyn, was reading aloud the poem The Raven. When he came to the famous lines, he did them in Brooklynese: "And the silken, sad, unsoitin rustling of the poiple coitans thrilled me," —the class broke into laughter and Fr. Kraus said, "That will be enough of you, Mr. Coughlin."

We used to have a Lenten poiple coitan floor to ceiling that marked off the sanctuary for that season. It was not a total block-out, but was a rather thin material. It was opened for the consecration in the Mass.

The tradition was still around in the veiling of crucifixes and statues in purple during Lent. A last vestige remains in the veiled cross of Good Friday. And even that is optional.

The idea was, of course, sin. Sin darkens vision, the vision of God, of faith. It erects a barrier between us and Heaven: God and the angels and the saints. Penitence helps remove that.

Besides, it is to cultivate reverence and awe for holy things. The cult of the secret. Eastern churches often use an icon screen back of which the liturgical action takes place. In great cathedrals of the past, the high altar was not necessarily visible to all. The choir stalls in front of it, sometimes a rood screen or other piece blocked the view. Lesson and Gospel were chanted and could be heard. The canon was silent. A bell rung at offertory, sanctus, consecration and communion made known where the action was at any moment.

Matters are quite otherwise today. All is open, visible, vocal and intelligible. And like Jesus on the cross, the priest faces us and prays in our tongue.

Perhaps we need no purple curtain to remind us that sin interrupts converse with God. The world around us is a message clear enough. Nor must we once again make a litany of the woes of our dreadful time. We see sin and the fruits of it. And since we came from that same world and carry it with us in our heart, we cope with all against evil and live love.

I wrote the Courier Journal yesterday, not a letter for publication, but with a suggestion: that they reprint a page they did a couple of years ago: photos and brief data on Kentucky's 39 prisoners on Death Row in Eddyville. I suggested they print it on Good Friday. Without any comment.

I don't think comment called for. Putting people to death for a punishment or as a lesson to society is a travesty of justice and an outrage too gross to stomach. That mistakes are made proves it.

Governor Bush in his years as Texas governor signed death warrants for 122, and is proud of it. Even in the case of a paranoid schizophrenic, with personal pleas from John Paul II and the signed petition for mercy from heads of state in Europe, he went ahead.

This is a nation with one of the highest murder rates in the world, of the highest prison population, is a nation of violence and ugly greed, starving children and hordes of homeless. Who needs a Lenten curtain?

So Christ continues to be put to death in His people. The Passion goes on. "What you do to the least, you do to Me." I presume this is not poetic fancy. "For in the wreckage of your April Christ lies slain, and Christ weeps in the ruins of my spring" (Merton).

And we know that the Mass is not a mere ceremonial recall of a 2000-year old event, but a living sacrifice of death in every sense of the word. Christ continues to be put to death and He makes of that death a cry of mercy to His Father and of forgiveness to those who so sinned.

The last Mass will be offered when the last crime is committed. When no hand is raised against brothers, no violence done in thought or word or deed. No love betrayed. Then will the End come.

Our response to all this is not condemnation, accusation. We each have a heart and the human heart is a mysterious amalgam of good and evil which only God and grace can heal.

And that is the business we are about: to heal the human heart, starting with this one — our own.

There is no greater, more noble, more necessary work. And every Christian is called to it. If there is a poet, an artist, a dancer, a singer, a dreamer, a mystic in everyone — and there must be, otherwise poets and priests and mystics and artists would starve — then our response in grace as monks is merely making articulate what everyone who is Christ's is engaged in; indeed, everyone who is God's, since so many others share these concerns.

Purple is blue with a lot of red. Today [Laetare Sunday], traditionally, priests can wear rose vestments. Rose is purple carried far into red, more blood in a sense, more warmth, more love. And that should characterize the heart that looks out on this world with Jesus on the cross: He who said, "If I be lifted up, I will draw all to Myself" — in mercy and pardon, obviously, in grace and peace.  Amen. .