William Frederick Cody – Rest In Peace!

January 10, 2017 presented us with an interesting anniversary – William Frederick Cody died on that date in Denver, Colorado one hundred years ago. Oh, by the way William Frederick Cody was better known as Buffalo Bill.

During his active life, Buffalo Bill had been the Chief of Scouts of the Seventh Kansas Cavalry, served as a guide for both the army and the Pacific Railroad and was legendary for his buffalo hunting in the prairies of the American West. It is easy to understand how he eventually came to be known as Buffalo Bill. More people probably know him for his Wild West Show which traveled all over the world.

Today, we can visit both his tomb and a museum named after him and said to be one of the most viewed museums in the United States. When we say he traveled the world, he ventured far from his country’s shores to Europe on many occasions. Buffalo and his group would travel by train to reach their destinations and set up his shows in huge, open places where he could reenact famous battles like the Battle of Little Big Horn. The Wild West Show camped in some open fields in Rome in March 3, 1890 situated in close proximity to the Vatican. Wild Bill was not a Catholic but did send a request to Pope Leo XIII for an audience which was rejected as his group was just too large Later, however, accommodations were made and Buffalo Bill and some of his companions were permitted to be there from the Pope’s entrance into the Sistine Chapel. To this day, you can see some of the memorabilia in the Denver Museum given to Buffalo Bill by the Pope.

Many years later, on January 9, 19l7, Buffalo Bill was near death and even though he had been a Mason all his life, he asked to be baptized a Catholic. His request was honored and he died the very next day.

Now that leads one to wonder if his brief meeting with Pope Leo XIII was a turning point for Buffalo Bill spiritually or did God, as usual, work in mysterious ways.

Eyes Are the Windows of the Soul

A young couple moves into a new neighborhood.

The next morning while they are eating breakfast, the young woman sees her neighbor hanging the wash outside. ‘That laundry is not very clean’, she said. ‘She doesn’t know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap’

Her husband looked on, but remained silent.

Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry, the young woman would make the same comments.

About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband: ‘Look, she has learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this?’

The husband said, ‘I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows.’

And so it is with life. What we see when watching others depends on the purity of the window through which

we look.