I GET accused of always starting this column with a joke. A lot of the time maybe, maybe even most weeks.
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But not every week, and here’s my evidence. A baby mouse called Natalia looked through a crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package; a new mousetrap, which they placed by the side of the house.
The mouse proclaimed to all the animals on the farm “There is a mousetrap by the side of the house!
Matthew, a chicken, who vaguely knew the mouse said, "Is your name Natalia? Natalia, this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me and I won’t be bothered by it."
The mouse went to the pig he considered a friend and squealed, "There’s a mousetrap by the side of the house Mark! You could break it! You’re so strong mate!
The pig sympathised, but said, “Little mouse, there is nothing I can really do for you or am prepared to do for you anyway”.
The mouse turned then to the cow he’d been friends with all his life and had many good times with.
"Luke! There’s a mousetrap by the side of the house buddy!”
The cow said, “I'm sorry for you little mouse, I don’t even know what side of the house it is and mate, I wouldn’t know how to break it anyway."
Finally the baby mouse approaches the all seeing and wise farmer’s champion retired bull, John.
“John! Thank heavens I saw you! There is a mousetrap by the side of the house! Please stomp on it! The farmer loves you and he won’t get upset with you!”
The bull briefly muses on Natalia’s predicament, then cautiously replies “Yes, I saw that mousetrap. I don’t want to get involved, because Natalia my friend, the meaning of life is that you have to save your own hide.”
At 3am a sound was heard by the side of the house like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey.
The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught.
The snake bit the farmer's wife and she went to bed with a fever.
Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his axe to the farmyard to kill chicken soup's main ingredient.
But the wife's sickness continued, so friends and neighbours came to sit with her around the clock.
To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig. The farmer's wife did not get well and tragically she died.
So many people came for her funeral, the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them.
So many people got drunk at the wake that they ruined varnished floorboards at the house entrance, that the farmer had the old bull killed to cover the floorboards with a thick cowhide rug.
Natalia looked upon it all from her crack in the wall with great sadness.
There would never be another mousetrap at that farm, but had her problems ended, or had they just begun?
I’m not joking when I say I believe God put the strong in this world to serve the weak and the weak are entering the world to be served by the strong.
The strong not serving the weak was the prelude to every atrocity in history. But when the strong serve the weak everyone is strong, and this is the prelude to freedom and some of the most beautiful love stories.
Father Brendan Lee