From the Hermitage
By sister alies therese
Not long until we purple-up and turn our attention more intentionally to the Passion of Jesus. In our tradition, we fast, pray, and give alms and are convinced that we shall make progress, and our improvement will bring holiness. Really? An earlier tradition taught this:
Baal Shem Tov (Poland, d. 1760) (a Hasid or ‘pious one’) taught, “A person of piety complained to the Master, saying, ‘I have labored hard and long in the service of the Lord, and yet I have received no improvement. I am still an ordinary and ignorant person.’ And the Master answered, ‘Ah, yes, but you have gained the realization that you are ordinary and ignorant and that in itself is a worthy accomplishment, is it not?’”

Will I ever be ‘meeked?’ A horse is not meeked to take away its power … no, it is to harness it, moving the animal’s heart from independence to loyalty. In 2019 Maleah (internet) wrote, “Meekness is a superpower developing a focused deliberate center.” This center is our place of prayer and an attitude of meekness reminds us of who our center is.

“To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever one so concentrates attention … and completely forgets the ego, they are praying.” (W.H. Auden, Prayer the Nature of, A Certain World, 1970)

‘Meeking a horse’ comes from Old English and Old Norse. Injukr means gentle … and way back to the Greek praus meaning strength under control. Focused and deliberate. Strong under control.

Behavioral aspects give us a few clues as to how we are doing and though we may remain ignorant and ordinary we can check our tempers, hold back a bad word, or show an engaging smile rather than a wrinkly frown. Aristotle remarked a “praus person has the virtue of the mean between two extremes. The person submits or constrains power for greater effect on self and others.”

Prayer is essential, for to lower oneself before the magnificence of God is to allow ourselves to be meeked into wholesome submission, being transformed moment by moment into the gentleness of God. Another way we express this deliberate and controlled behavior is to let others speak … you listen, and as Carnegie remarked, “do what’s needed.” Sometimes we do not pay attention to what is needed, thinking we can be holy our way. A Sufi story teaches, “There are those in winter who, calling themselves religious say, ‘I shall not wear warm clothes. I shall trust in God’s kindness to protect me from the cold.’ But these people do not realize that the God who created cold has also given human beings the means to protect themselves from it.’”

What do the Scriptures say about being ‘meek?’ Consider both Psalm 37 and Matthew 5:5ff. In Psalm 37 we understand that the meek are the anawim, those overwhelmed by want thus their complete dependence upon God. “Quiet down before God and be prayerful before Him. Don’t bother with those who climb the ladder, who elbow their way to the top. Bridle your anger, trash your wrath, cool your pipes — it only makes things worse.” (Peterson, Psalm 37, The Message)

When Matthew picks these notions up and includes them in the beatitudes, we hear the call of ‘slow to anger,’ ‘gentle with others’ and not striving but accepting. “You are blessed when you are content with just who you are – no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.” (Peterson, MT 5:5, The Message). We are patiently learning to trust and to build up nourishing connections. As with that horse, we develop a partnership.

“Pray simply. Do not expect to find in your heart any remarkable gift of prayer. Consider yourself unworthy of it. Then you will find peace. Use the empty, dry coldness of your prayer as food for your humility.” (St. Makari of Optino) We have the opportunity each day to grow in meekness as we deepen, pray and do what is needed. That is our journey, and we need to make good friends with our horses.

“Grow up gentle and good and never learn bad ways; do your work with goodwill, lift your feet up when you trot, and never bite or kick even in play.” (Anna Sewell, Black Beauty).
BLESSINGS.

(Sister alies therese is a canonically vowed hermit with days formed around prayer and writing.)

It IS GOOD
By Elizabeth Scalia
Early on, my friend Ruby absorbed the message that a “strong, independent” woman never seeks out help; she does everything all by herself, for herself.

Thus, Ruby is fast to offer help to anyone else who might need it – she’ll watch the kids and the dog; she’ll drive you to the emergency room and hold your hand while you wait; she’ll take some of the work off your desk if you’re having a bad week and complete it for you. But she’ll never ask anyone to do the same for her.

As a single mother Ruby did it all, saw to it all and carried it all on her own wee shoulders, raising a sweet-natured boy into manhood in the process. Her buzzwords were “strength” and “self-sufficiency,” even when it meant wearing shoes long in need of replacement. Challenges were risen to; personal needs brushed aside. She could look back on each day knowing she’d done her best by her world, and that any debts she’d incurred – those financial, social or personal obligations that can make a resolutely self-contained sort feel uncomfortably vulnerable – had been kept to a minimum.

And that all worked for her. Until suddenly, it didn’t.

As for so many of us, a cancer diagnosis proved to be the line – the one obstacle her strong will could not bend, nor her stiff spine break through.

Ruby put a good face on things through biopsies and MRI’s, and as cancer in one breast became cancer in both and discussions of surgical options and treatments took her diabetes into consideration. She presented a strong face to her family – the determined, extreme calm at the crux of her own private maelstrom. Then a pre-surgical stress test flagged a new concern: “It might be broken-heart syndrome,” the cardiologist mused.

And that was when she cracked.

My friend has faced the challenges of aging with grace and humor, but the whole “cancer-diabetes-wait-my-heart-is-broken-now?” trifecta did her in. For the first time since childhood, Ruby felt utterly unmoored from her own strengths.
“You need to let yourself lean on your family and friends, a little,” I advised her. “It’s okay to say, ‘I need a hug, I need someone to fuss on me a little bit.’ Let people help!”

Uncomfortable with need and dubious about the whole endeavor, Ruby eventually hinted to her family that she was scared. “So much for your good advice,” she reported back, fuming. “They just said stuff like, ‘you have to take it a day at a time!’ I’m over here, terrified, and they’re no help at all!”

Sadly, people mostly don’t know what to say in such circumstances, particularly if they’ve never been asked for support. Ruby’s sudden need for the intimacy of consolation threw them off, a bit. Unsure about saying, “We’re scared too,” they fell back on “one day at a time,” which my friend – once she’d calmed down – recognized was sound advice. Cancer is scary. Sometimes you can only deal with it an hour (or even five minutes) at a time.

“You should forgive them for having no idea how to comfort you,” I told her, “because you’ve never needed them to before. This is new territory for everyone. Even if they’re not getting the words right, believe that they want the best for you and are praying for you.”

“And I hate myself for crying uncontrollably,” she wailed. “I really do.”

How often have we heard “strong” women say this – as if tears were a detestable fault or a sin against the perceived self? How many of us are walking around with broken hearts because we won’t permit ourselves the medicine of weeping and fully feeling the things we’ve determinedly repressed because we want that illusion of strength?

“That’s stupid,” I said, “You wouldn’t hate me, or one of your siblings, for crying; why should you hate yourself? Just stop that and let yourself feel all the things you have a right to feel. You’re allowed. I give you permission!”

At the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, we read, “But who will endure the day of his coming? And who can stand when he appears? For he is like the refiner’s fire … He will sit refining and purifying silver…” (Mal 3:2-3).

Set before all of us are weird, muddy amalgams of blessing and anxious terrors. God lives with us in the refining fires of our challenges, tempering and purifying us for something yet greater than all we know.
It is good to let ourselves acknowledge the fires, the better to endure them in trust until we are free.

(Elizabeth Scalia is editor at large for OSV. Follow her on X @theanchoress.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
For more than a thousand years, Christians have not experienced the joy of being one family in Christ. Although there were already tensions within the earliest Christian communities, it was not until the year 1054 that there was a formal split, in effect, to establish two formal Christian communities, the Orthodox Church in the East and the Catholic Church in the West. Then, with the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, there was another split within the Western Church and Christianity fragmented still further. Today there are hundreds of Christian denominations, many of whom, sadly, are not on friendly terms with each other.

Division and misunderstanding are understandable, inevitable, the price of being human. There are no communities without tension and so it is no great scandal that Christians sometimes cannot get along with each other. The scandal rather is that we have become comfortable, even smug, with the fact that we do not get along with each other, no longer hunger for wholeness, and no longer miss each other inside our separate churches.
In almost all our churches today there is little anxiety about those with whom we are not worshiping. For example, teaching Roman Catholic seminarians today, I sense a certain indifference to the issue of ecumenism. For many seminarians today this is not an issue of particular concern. Not to single out Catholic seminarians, this holds true for most of us in all denominations.

But this kind of indifference is inherently unchristian. Oneness was close to the heart of Jesus. He wants all his followers at the same table, as we see in this parable.

A woman has ten coins and loses one. She becomes anxious and agitated and begins to search frantically and relentlessly for the lost coin, lighting lamps, looking under tables, sweeping all the floors in her house. Eventually she finds the coin, is delirious with joy, calls together her neighbors, and throws a party whose cost no doubt far exceeded the value of the coin she had lost. (Luke 15:8-10)

Why such anxiety and joy over losing and finding a coin whose value was probably that of a dime? Well, what’s at issue is not the value of the coin; it’s something else. In her culture, nine was not considered a whole number; ten was. Both the woman’s anxiety about losing the coin and her joy in finding it had to do with the importance of wholeness. A wholeness in her life that had been fractured, and a precious set of relationships was no longer complete.

Indeed, the parable might be recast this way: A woman has ten children. With nine of them, she has a good relationship, but one of her daughters is alienated. Her nine other children come home regularly to the family table, but her alienated daughter does not. The woman cannot rest in that situation, cannot be at peace. She needs her alienated daughter to rejoin them. She tries every means to reconcile with her daughter and then one day, miracle of miracles, it works. Her daughter comes back to the family. Her family is whole again, everyone is back at the table. The woman is overjoyed, withdraws her modest savings, and throws a lavish party to celebrate that reunion.

Christian faith demands that, like that woman, we need to be anxious, dis-eased, figuratively lighting lamps, and searching for ways to make the church whole again. Nine is not a whole number. Neither is the number of those who are normally inside our respective churches. Roman Catholicism isn’t a whole number. Protestantism isn’t a whole number. The Evangelical Churches aren’t a whole number. The Orthodox Churches aren’t a whole number. No one Christian denomination is a whole number. Together we make up a whole Christian number – and that is still not a whole faith number.

And so, we are meant to be anxious around these questions: Who no longer goes to church with us? Who is uncomfortable worshiping with us? How can we be comfortable when so many people are no longer at table with us?

Sadly, today, many of us are comfortable in churches that are far, far from whole. Sometimes, in our less reflective moments, we even rejoice in it: “Those others aren’t real Christians in any case! We’re better off without them, a purer, more faithful church in their absence! We’re the one true remnant!”

But this lack of solicitude for wholeness compromises our following of Jesus as well as our basic human maturity. We are mature, loving people and true followers of Jesus, only when, like Jesus, we are in tears over those “other sheep that are not of this fold.” When, like the woman who lost one of her coins, we cannot sleep until every corner of the house has been turned upside down in a frantic search for what’s been lost.

We too need to solicitously search for a lost wholeness – and may not be at peace until it is found.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

Reflections on Life
By Melvin Arrington
Pope Francis has recognized 2025 as a Holy Year, a Jubilee Year of Hope. In 2025 we, as “pilgrims of hope,” are called to renew ourselves, to transform ourselves into all that God wants us to be.

As Christians we have reasons to be hopeful. First and foremost, we are made in the image of God, and He has chosen us to be His adopted children. He has given us meaning and purpose for our lives. And He has promised that we will spend all eternity in heaven if we remain faithful to Him.

According to the Catechism, hope, like faith and charity, the other two theological virtues, is “infused by God into the souls of the faithful to make them capable of acting as His children and of meriting eternal life.” (CCC 1813) “Infused,” as my handy little Catholic Dictionary states, means that God, through His grace, imparts hope to the soul; it’s not something we can acquire through our own efforts other than our willingness to receive it.

Because this connection between grace and hope in the life of Christians has interesting parallels with the growth process in plants, I’m going to examine some of these correspondences. Joseph Campbell, considered the leading authority on mythology, argues that a type of consciousness operates not just in humans but in all forms of life, including plants. For him, the vine that wraps itself around a tree and the leaf that opens and turns toward the sun, an activity we call heliotropism, illustrate the existence of a plant consciousness.

Although Campbell makes a compelling argument, I prefer a different approach to this subject. Weeks ago, a winter storm brought a record snowfall and near single-digit temperatures to our part of the state. As I was out walking, I noticed near the sidewalk a row of tiny green shoots powerfully pushing upward, just beginning to break through the rock-hard surface of the ground. How could this be, given the frozen ground? But there they were! Although revealing less than a centimeter of their tips, they were bursting forth with determination and confidence.

God has put in place all the elements plant life requires to flourish. Nurtured by these graces – sunshine, rain and nutrients in the ground – the little shoots will continue their journey upward and will fulfill their purpose by turning into full-grown plants. And before long the color green, which stands for life, growth and, ultimately, hope, will be all around us again!

Interestingly, the way vegetation emerges has a direct application to Christian life and serves as a metaphor for the Catholic view of hope. Like the green shoots, we are on an upward journey. We, too, are confident of renewal and advancement in the faith, nourished by God’s grace. We, too, have the goal of blossoming and becoming what we were intended to be: mature, Christ-like servants. And because green also signifies Ordinary Time, the long period of maturation in the spiritual life, we’ll see it more than any other color during the liturgical year as a constant reminder of what we’re striving for.

The Catechism defines hope as “the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.” (CCC 1817) In other words, it’s much more than just the desire or wish for something; for example, that there will be something good to watch on TV, or that my team will make the playoffs, or that my utility bills will be lower, etc. These wishes may or may not come to pass. The Catholic understanding of this virtue, however, deals with eternal things; it goes well beyond mere desire to include “the confident expectation of divine blessing.” (CCC 2090)

Hope encompasses a firm belief that God will keep His promises to us, so we have to make sure that we honor our commitment to Him and not presume on His mercy: “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful.” (Hebrews 10:23)

What kinds of things should we as pilgrims of hope do during this Jubilee Year? I heartily recommend consulting the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) website, which contains a wealth of information for the Holy Year. But if a pilgrimage is not feasible, several other opportunities for personal renewal are readily available. Maybe this is the year for taking a deep dive into God’s Word, or for making more frequent visits to the Blessed Sacrament, or for committing to praying a nightly rosary. Whatever we pledge to do, let’s not forget to give thanks for the amazing gift of hope, which “does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5)

(Melvin Arrington is a Professor Emeritus of Modern Languages for the University of Mississippi and a member of St. John Oxford.)

CALL TO HOLINESS
By Jaymie Stuart Wolfe
Black History Month is officially observed every February, but there’s something unfortunate about that. Don’t get me wrong: it’s great to recognize the contributions of Black Americans. But dedicating a specific month to doing so seems to have had the unintended side effect of limiting the recognition they’ve earned to a paltry 28 days of the year.

In New Orleans, the gifts of Black Americans are more visible than in other places. Flavorful food, soulful music, deep community and lively joy: nearly everything both locals and visitors love about our city has roots in Black culture beautifully expressed.

Louisiana’s story of colonialism, race and culture is unique and complex. And as it turns out, African American history is not merely synonymous with the history of slavery. New Orleans bears the tragic distinction of having had the largest slave market in North America. But at the same time, the city was also home to the largest community of free Black people.

Most free people of color were French-speaking Catholics; some arrived in New Orleans already free, others purchased their freedom or acquired it through government or military service or manumission.

A middle class of merchants and artisans, free people of color attended school, owned property, and were able to build generational wealth. By 1810, 29% of the city’s population was free people of color. They lost many of the freedoms they had enjoyed under French and Spanish rule when the United States purchased Louisiana in 1803. Nevertheless, this thriving community had a lasting impact on New Orleans and well beyond it.

As restrictions increased and the imposition of Americanized racial policies took hold in the 1830s and ‘40s, free people of color created their own religious, cultural, mutual aid and educational institutions. Their examples are inspiring.

When Henriette Delille (1812–1862) had a religious experience at the age of 24, she believed that God was calling her to religious life. Although she was well educated and had been born free, women of color were disqualified from joining the established orders. Instead, Henriette and seven other young women founded a community that later became known as the Sisters of the Holy Family. Permitted to take only private vows and prohibited from wearing a habit, the sisters cared for the sick, helped the poor, taught both free and enslaved children. Taking elderly women into their home, they established the first Catholic nursing home in the United States. Mother Henriette’s influence is still felt here. She was declared venerable in 2010.

Eugène Warburg (1825–1859) was born into slavery but was freed as a young child by his Jewish father. He apprenticed as a marble cutter under a French artist, then established his own sculpture studio in the French Quarter. Warburg earned commissions for religious statuary, portraits and gravestones. The checkered marble floor he designed and created for the expansion and beautification of St. Louis Cathedral in 1850 still testifies to the quality and precision of his work.

A fourth-generation free man of color, Edmond Déde (1827–1901) began playing the clarinet as a child, then quickly moved to violin. He was considered a musical prodigy. Working as a cigar-maker to earn his passage to Europe, Dédé enjoyed a successful music career in France. He composed many pieces of classical music and is the first African American to compose a full-scale opera. “Music from Morgiane” debuted in 2025 at St. Louis Cathedral, where Dédé was baptized.

Homère Plessy (1862–1925), a French-speaking free man of color, grew up during Reconstruction, when Louisiana schools were racially integrated, Black men were able to vote, interracial marriage was legal, and more than 200 Black men held elected office. A lifelong member of St. Augustine Catholic Church, Plessy became politically active when Louisiana began passing Jim Crow legislation. Plessy challenged segregation laws with an act of civil disobedience. He is best known as the unsuccessful plaintiff in the famous Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson which established the “separate but equal” legal doctrine that was ultimately overturned in 1954.

The lives of these four free, Black, French-speaking Catholics from 19th-century New Orleans are worthy of our attention. The nobility of their enduring contributions to American society, despite the difficulties they faced as people of color, is nothing less than miraculous.

(Jaymie Stuart Wolfe is a sinner, Catholic convert, freelance writer and editor, musician, speaker, pet-aholic, wife and mom of eight grown children, loving life in New Orleans.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
There is nothing as psychologically and morally dangerous as lying, as denying the truth. Jesus warns us that we can commit a sin that is unforgivable which (in his words) is a blaspheme against the Holy Spirit.
What is this sin? Why is it unforgivable? And how is it linked to not telling the truth?

This is the context where Jesus gives us this warning. He had just cast out a demon and some of the people who had witnessed this believed, as a hard religious doctrine, that only someone who came from God could cast out a demon. But they hated Jesus, so seeing him cast out a demon was a very inconvenient truth, so inconvenient in fact that they chose to deny what they had just seen with their own eyes. And so, against everything they knew to be true, they affirmed instead that Jesus had cast out the demon by Beelzebub, the prince of demons. They knew better. They knew that they were denying the truth.

Jesus’ first response was to try to make them see their lie. He appeals to logic, arguing that if Beelzebub, the prince of demons, is casting out demons, then Satan’s house is divided against itself and will eventually fall. But they persist in their lie. It’s then, in that specific context, that Jesus utters his warning about the danger of committing a sin that cannot be forgiven because it blasphemes the Holy Spirit.
In essence, what’s in this warning?

The people whom Jesus addressed had denied a reality that they had just seen with their own eyes because it was too difficult for them to accept its truth. So, they denied its truth, fully aware that they were lying.

Well, the first lie we tell is not so dangerous because we still know we are lying. The danger is that if we persist in that lie and continue to deny (and lie) we can reach a point where we believe the lie, see it as truth, and see truth as falsehood. Perversion is then seen as virtue, and the sin becomes unforgivable, not because forgiveness is withheld, but because we no longer believe we need forgiveness, nor in fact do we want it or remain open to receive it.

Whenever we lie or in any way deny the truth, we begin to warp our conscience and if we persist in this, eventually we will (and this is not too strong a phrase) pervert our soul so that for us falsehood looks like truth, darkness looks like light, and hell looks like heaven.

Hell is never a nasty surprise waiting for a basically honest, happy person. Hell can only be the full flowering of a long, sustained dishonesty where we have denied reality for so long that we now see dishonesty as truth. There isn’t anyone in hell who is repentant and wishing he or she had another chance to live and die in grace. If there is anyone in hell, that person, no matter his or her private misery, is feeling smug and looking with a certain disdain on the naivete of those who are honest, those in heaven.
And how is that a “blaspheme against the Holy Spirit”?

In his letter to the Galatians, St. Paul lays out two fundamental ways we can live our lives. We can live outside of God’s spirit. We do that whenever we are living in infidelity, idolatry, hatred, factionalism and dishonesty. And lying is what takes us there. Conversely, we live inside God’s spirit, the Holy Spirit, whenever we are living in charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, longsuffering, fidelity, gentleness and chastity. And we live inside these whenever we are honest. Thus, whenever we lie, whenever we deny reality, whenever we deny truth, we are (in effect and in reality) stepping outside of God’s spirit, blaspheming that spirit by disdaining it.

Satan is the prince of lies. That’s why the biggest danger in our world is the amount of lies, disinformation, misinformation and flat-out denial of reality that’s present most everywhere today – whenever, it seems, we don’t find the truth to our liking. There is nothing more destructive and dangerous to the health of our souls, the possibility of creating community among ourselves, the future of our planet, and our own sanity, than the flat-out denial of the truth of something that has happened.

When reality is denied: when a fact of history is rewritten to expunge a painful truth; when you are told that something you witnessed with your own eyes didn’t happen; when someone says, the holocaust didn’t happen; when someone says there never was slavery in this country; or when someone says no kids died at Sandy Hook, that doesn’t just dishonor millions of people, it plays on the sanity of a whole culture.
When something has happened and is subsequently denied, that doesn’t just make a mockery of truth, it plays havoc with our sanity, not least with the one who is telling the lie.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

KNEADING FAITH
By Fran Lavelle
I spent nearly every day of my Christmas holiday taking walks with our dog Pickles. She enthusiastically enters the woods and searches for things unseen. Her curiosity has inspired me to look at things from a different perspective. In a recent walk, as the sun was setting, I was reminded of a St. John of the Cross quote, “In the evening of our lives we will be judged on love alone.” That quote has haunted and comforted me for decades. As I approach the ”evening” of my life I am questioning how well do I love?

We are taught that there are three types of love: eros (romantic love), philia (friendship love) and agape (selfless, unconditional love). Agape is considered the highest form of love as it is associated with God’s love for humanity. When we hear a call to love in the Gospels, Jesus is referring to agape. The question is how do we practice this kind of radical love for all people at all times? Eros and philia are much easier. It is easy to love the people who love you, look like you, pray like you or vote like you. The rubber really meets the road when we are asked to love others just because they too are God’s beloved.

I do an exercise in my retreat ministry using 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 exchanging the word love with our name.

4 __________is patient, is kind. He/she is not jealous, he/she is not pompous, he/she is not inflated, 5 __________is not rude, he/she does not seek his/her own interests, he/she is not quick-tempered, __________ does not brood over injury, 6 __________ does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. 7 __________ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 __________ never fails …

This exercise is not meant to shame or blame but to open our hearts in asking the questions. Am I patient and kind? Am I not jealous, pompous? Inflated? Rude or seeking my own interest? Quick tempered or brooding over injury? Rejoicing in wrongdoing? Do I bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things? It is a tall order. And it is not one and done. It is a daily practice, a way to be aware of how we are growing in our love of God. I am reminded of an old Confucious saying, “We cannot eat the elephant in one bite, but we can eat the elephant.” We can grow in agape love, one day at a time.

St. Paul tells us that these three remain after all else is gone, faith, hope and love, and that the greatest of these is love. The love that St. Paul is pointing to is agape love. It is a deepening of our love for God and in doing so our love of others.

My husband reminds me that love is a verb. For it to bear fruit love must be lived out in our actions. Our actions, big and little, seen and unseen, are leaven that deepens our capacity to love. The attempts of social media and other mass communication outlets to deepen the divide between “us and them” only serves diminish agape love.

Dorothy Day said, “I can only love God to the extent I love my enemy,” meaning that the depth of one’s love for God can be measured by how much they love the person they find most difficult to love. Thanks to my daily walks with Pickles, I have been making a list of the things and, yes, even the people I find difficult to love. I am reflecting on 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. I am trying to see more and judge less. I am working not just to be found favorable in the evening of my life, but to change the narrative of popular culture. Hatred comes at a heavy cost.

“What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has the eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.” (St. Augustine)

Love is the subject of novels, the title of great songs and the desire of every heart. Love is heroic and virtuous. Love is always reaching in, to pour out. Love is a verb. Love is the choice we make when confronted with the people and things we are in opposition to. Tina Turner once questioned, “What’s love got to do with it?” As the evening approaches, I can say for certain – everything, dear sister, everything.

(Fran Lavelle is the Director of Faith Formation for the Diocese of Jackson.)

IT IS GOOD
By Elizabeth Scalia
How could there not be enough water available to fire hydrants?

Why are controlled fires and routine brush clearing not part of normal maintenance in such a fire-prone area?

Who will be held accountable for lapses in fire preparedness and crisis readiness?

The questions came fast, and they were furious, as we all watched one of the most beautiful, desirable living spaces in the United States burn down to rubble over a matter of hours, and then days, and then through an entire week.

Multiple fires sprang up; the Santa Ana winds (and additional wind force created by the fire-heated air) moved the blazes along in a most terrifying fashion, and one could not watch the traumatized families, or view images of an area bigger than the island of Manhattan reduced to utter rubble so completely without feeling true heartache for those whose lives have been so completely upended.

Fred Rogers, of “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood” famously advised his young viewers to “look for the helpers” when chaotic things begin to happen, and it was heartening to log on to social media and find the incredible people moving quickly to offer assistance, however they could. Within a day of the fire Chef Andrew Gruel (@ChefGruel) and his wife Lauren (@LaurenGruel) posted to the “X” platform that their restaurant’s huge parking lot would be open to the dislocated: “You can stay as long as you need and camp out. We will provide free meals for all of those affected.”

After that, they quickly began coordinating with others. Almost overnight, people began to arrive with relief supplies – food, clothing, baby formula, diapers, pet food, hygiene products and more.

Then the Amazon delivery trucks appeared as people throughout the country, eager to do what they could to help, used the shopping service to send what they could. The daily postings of the Gruels, (and other small local businesses) showing the donations, the foods, the vans and the helping hands of friends, family and associates as they continually deliver all of it where needed, have been a source of real inspiration. There is a sense of not just purpose but real joy evident in their posts; it’s the sort of joy that comes when people are selflessly helping others, joining with strangers to build up what has been torn down.

Rebuilding homes and infrastructure will be on the shoulders of others – and that for years to come – but the locals who have taken it upon themselves to coordinate relief to the afflicted have been sustaining the human spirit, so easily wounded and brought low. They’ve been helping people by rebuilding hope, one meal, one package of supplies, one crate of baby formula and binkies at a time.

We have only just begun the Year of Hope proclaimed by Pope Francis in this time of Jubilee, and these scenes have helped me to define the whole concept of “hope” away from any vague platitudes I might have been tempted to in my prayers or my work.

One of the most perfect descriptions of hope ever written comes to us from Emily Dickinson:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all

The act of sustaining hope in our sisters and brothers when they are in need is no easy thing. It is heroic, but even more, it is noble in the way that great and honorable acts are so often predicated upon the tiniest things and the littlest ways – small acts of humanity and love-of-neighbor that arise organically and instinctively, that come without press releases and last more than 15 minutes.

Sustaining hope is something remarkable within humanity, and the Holy Father is right to encourage people of faith to think about hope, learn to recognize hope and be givers of hope.

The devastation of the fires of Los Angeles is teaching us many things about preparedness, management and even about leadership and the value of a two-party system. It is also teaching us about how easy it is to look outside of our own comforts and be generous, especially where we see real need.

Experienced firefighters tell us that the best way to fight a fire is by using an intentionally created and directed blaze to snuff out an advancing conflagration. Perhaps we need to kindle small fires of hope throughout 2025 – this already challenging year – in the small places where we live, in our families and our communities and beyond – and let the flames of constructive hopefulness meet and defeat the infernos of suspicion, malice, distrust and hate that are, undeniably, raging all around us.

(Elizabeth Scalia is editor at large for OSV. Follow her on X (formerly known as Twitter) @theanchoress.sity of America’s Columbus School of Law.)