Memorial of Saint Cecilia, virgin and martyr

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/112211.cfm

Seashore at Kalaloch, Washington.
A few rocks still defy the waves.

The iron, tile, bronze, silver, and gold all crumbled at once,
fine as the chaff on the threshing floor in summer,
and the wind blew them away without leaving a trace.
But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain
and filled the whole earth.

As Jesus and his disciples stood before the temple of Jerusalem they found it impossible that such a mighty building with its massive stones might be destroyed very soon. More ancient buildings than Herod’s temple, like the Egyptian pyramids, remain to this day. But men had built the temple and men could destroy it, as the Romans did a few years later, in 70 AD.

In the Book of Daniel, King Nebuchadnezzar had a nightmare; he saw his own kingdom disintegrate to a pile of dust which the wind blew away, leaving no trace. In fact, Daniel was written when the Seleucid Empire ruled Israel; the Babylonian empire of Nebuchadnezzar was already ancient history.

The poet Shelley would write of such catastrophes in his poem, Ozymandias. 

I met a traveller from an antique landWho said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. Near them on the sand,Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frownAnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold commandTell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.And on the pedestal these words appear:"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"Nothing beside remains: round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,The lone and level sands stretch far away.

As Father Barnabas, my Latin teacher, might have said, “Sic transit gloria mundi.” (Thus passes the glory of the world.)

Who would imagine that words might outlast our buildings of steel, stone and glass? Are not words no more than sounds emanating from the mouth of mortals? Don't they echo off walls of stone and disappear without a trace?

The Jewish faith teaches us that “The Word of the Lord endures forever.” They remembered the promise made to Abraham, renewed to Moses, and established in Jerusalem by David. They saw David’s holy city captured, pillaged and leveled; but still they recited, sang and danced the word of God. Their faith and hope and love persist. 

The stone rejected has become the cornerstone;It has become a great mountain and filled the whole earth