JUNE202024

The Book of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus in the Latin Vulgate Bible) is a late addition to the Scripture, written about 150 years before Christ. A famous section in the book, seven chapters long, starts of “Now let us praise famous men.” Sirach goes on to talk about the patriarchs, prophets, kings and leaders who helped to form Israel. In the 1930s American journalist, James Agee, published a book with the same title: “Let us now praise famous men.” Instead of kings and prophets, Agee focuses on the sharecroppers who were trying to take of their families during the great depression. They were famous men not because anyone knew about them or because they achieved prominence. They were famous in Agee’s eyes because of their daily fidelity to the little corner of the world they were responsible for. They showed incredible courage even in the face of the daunting struggles that mother nature (it was the time of the dust bowl) and a racist and classist society threw at them. It is the fortitude of these ordinary people in the providence of their everyday life who deserve to be praised.