Beloved Julia Greeley
It’s been nearly a century since you passed away
So much has changed since your
day, but all is not okay.
Knowledge of the cosmos,
human condition and rocks
Albeit, doesn’t translate to
our neighborhood blocks.
A frigid air has jet streamed
across the tundra of our hearts.
Your little white angel and
my mother Marjorie Anne
Born eleven days past
September, unfathomable to man
The horrid destruction
precipitated on 9/11
We have seen years of grief,
human horrors, loss and get-even.
A frigid air has jet streamed
across the tundra of our hearts.
Your steadfast devotion and
cheerful bravery
You proudly wore as a heroine
of slavery.
A smile and kind gestures you
did impart.
You graced the Earth until
God’s call to depart.
A frigid air has jet streamed
across the tundra of our hearts.
You stood with the fireman,
the poor and forgotten
Your weeping blinded eye did
not effect,
Your focus on the
woe-begotten
Be kind to one another was all
He said.
A frigid air has jet streamed
across the tundra of our hearts.
Your life was a lesson of selfless humility
Grandma Ag and Mom cherished your humanity,
Harboring resentments is a
crown of thorns you would say,
An eye for an eye blinds and
cripples sight for us all:
Let us pray for a warming of hearts this day.
Read about Julia Greeley Guild
June 7, 2017 Julia Greeley's remains on display after being exhumed. This is the first step in the process of investigating her eventual beatification and sainthood.
Photo Credit: Associated Press
By Colleen Slevin, Associated Press
In a step toward possible
sainthood, the remains of a former slave have been moved to a Catholic
cathedral in Denver, where people lined up Wednesday to honor her and pray for her help.
Many
touched the glass covering of a wooden chest holding the exhumed skull
and other bones of Julia Greeley, a domestic worker known for her
charity work and evangelism until her death in June 7, 1918.
Others placed rosary beads on top of the chest, snapped photos and held up their children so they could view the sacred remains.
After
the viewing, the chest was screwed shut, sealed with gold wax and moved
to a prominent spot next to the altar at the Cathedral Basilica of the
Immaculate Conception.
The remains were exhumed last month from a
grave in a suburban Denver cemetery and moved to the cathedral — a
typical step at the beginning of the sainthood process, archdiocesan
spokeswoman Karna Swanson said.
Greeley is one of four people that
U.S. bishops voted to allow to be investigated for possible sainthood at
their fall meeting. She joins four other African Americans placed into
consideration in recent years.
She is also the first person to be
interred in the Denver cathedral since it opened in 1912
“Not a bishop, not a priest, but a lay woman,” Auxiliary Bishop Jorge H. Rodriguez-Novelo noted during the ceremony Wednesday that came 99 years to the day after Greeley died on her way to Mass.
The
archdiocese is gathering testimony and documentation about Greeley’s
life as part of the first stage of the sainthood process. It will send a
report to the Vatican, which will then decide whether to investigate
Greeley’s virtues.
