IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Everywhere in church circles today you hear a lament: Our churches are emptying. We’ve lost our youth. This generation no longer knows or understands the classical theological language. We need to announce Jesus again, as if for the first time, but how? The church is becoming evermore marginalized.

That’s the situation pretty much everywhere within the secularized world today. Why is this happening? Faith as a spent project? Secularity’s adolescent grandiosity before the parent who gave it birth, Judeo-Christianity? The “buffered self” that Charles Taylor describes? Affluence? Or is the problem mainly with the churches themselves? Sexual abuse? Cover-up? Poor liturgies? Poor preaching? Churches too liberal? Churches too conservative?

I suspect it’s some combination of all of these, but I’ll single out one issue here to highlight, affluence. Jesus told us that it’s difficult (impossible, he says) for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. No doubt, that’s a huge part of our present struggle. We’re good at being Christians when we’re poor, less educated and on the margins of mainstream society. We’ve had centuries of practice at this. What we haven’t had any practice at, and aren’t any good at, is how to be Christians when we’re affluent, sophisticated and constitute the cultural mainstream.

So, I’m suggesting that what we need today is not so much a new pastoral approach as a new kind of saint, an individual man or woman who can model for us practically what it means to live out the Gospel in a context of affluence and secularity. Why this?

One of the lessons of history is that often genuine religious renewal, the type that actually reshapes the religious imagination, does not come from think-tanks, conferences and church synods, but from graced individuals – saints, wild men and women who, like Saint Augustine, Saint Francis, Saint Clare, Saint Dominic, Saint Ignatius or other such religious figures can reshape our religious imagination. They show us that the new lies elsewhere, that what needs fixing in the church will not be mended simply by patching the old. What’s needed is a new religious and ecclesial imagination. Charles Taylor, in his highly-respected study of secularity, suggests that what we’re undergoing today is not so much a crisis of faith as a crisis of imagination. No Christians before us have ever lived within this kind of world.
What will this new kind of saint, this new St. Francis, look like? I honestly don’t know. Neither, it seems, does anyone else. We have no answer yet, at least not one that’s been able to bear much fruit in the mainstream culture. That’s not surprising. The type of imagination that reshapes history isn’t easily found. In the meantime we’ve come about as far as we can along the road that used to take us there, but which for many of our children no longer does.

Here’s our quandary: We’re better at knowing what to do once we get people into a church than we are at knowing how to get them there. Why? Our weakness, I believe, lies not in our theological imagination where we have rich theological and biblical insights aplenty. What we lack are saints on the ground, men and women who, in a passion and fidelity that’s at once radically faithful to God and fiercely empathic to our secular world, can incarnate their faith into a way of living that can show us, practically, how we can be poor and humble disciples of Jesus even as we walk in an affluent and highly secularized world.

And such new persons will appear. We’ve been at this spot before in history and have always found our way forward. Every time the world believes it has buried Christ, the stone rolls back from the tomb; every time the cultural ethos declares that the churches are on an irrevocable downward slide, the Spirit intervenes and there’s soon an about face; every time we despair, thinking that our age can now longer produce saints and prophets, some Augustine or Francis comes along and shows that our age, like times of old, can too produce its saints; and every time our imaginations run dry, as they have now, we find that our scriptures are still full of fresh insight. We may lack imagination, but we don’t lack hope.

Christ promised we will not be orphaned, and that promise is sure. God is still with us and our age will produce its own prophets and saints. What’s asked of us in the moment is biblical patience, to wait on God. Christianity may look tired, tried and spent to a culture within which affluence and sophistication are its current gods, but hope is already beginning to show its face. As secularization, with its affluence and sophistication, marches unswervingly forward we’re already beginning to see a number of men and women who have found ways to become post-affluent and post-sophisticated. These will be the new religious leaders who will teach us and our children, how to live as Christians in this new situation.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas.)

LIGHT ONE CANDLE
By Tony Rossi
Kids are used to getting presents for Christmas, and likely giving a few themselves. But Meadow Rue Merrill wants to expand their horizons by making it a fun family tradition to also give gifts to Jesus in a special way. That’s what inspired her children’s book The Christmas Cradle.
Merrill won a Christopher Award last year for her memoir Redeeming Ruth, about her adoption of a disabled orphan from Uganda. The mother of five joined me on “Christopher Closeup” recently to discuss The Christmas Cradle, which tells the story of a girl named Molly and her family who visit her Aunt Jenny to celebrate the holiday. Molly comes across a Christmas cradle in a box and asks her aunt its purpose. Aunt Jenny explains, “Growing up, we played a game to share God’s love with others. Each December, we sang carols, delivered meals, and visited people who were lonely. Then we wrote each act of love on a card and put it in the cradle as a gift for Jesus. On Christmas morning, we read the cards and prayed for each person we’d served.”
In writing the book, Merrill said she contemplated the questions, “How do we give a gift to Jesus, who has everything? I feel like we can do that best by giving gifts to other people in His name.”
Merrill doesn’t just approach that idea from the standpoint of a giver, but also a recipient of kindness. She recalls, “One of my favorite Christmas memories was when we truly had very little to give our kids, and a neighbor encouraged them to write letters to Santa. I was thinking, ‘Why? We don’t even have the ability to [afford anything].’ But on Christmas Eve, [this neighbor] invited our family over to her home, and there in the middle of her living room was a pile of Christmas gifts [for my family], including for the baby that I was pregnant with. As my husband and I brought those home that Christmas Eve, it really was the kind of magic that we all hope for – but somehow spending it on ourselves doesn’t make it happen. It’s when we find someone with a greater need than ourselves to give it away.”
Part of Merrill’s awareness of poverty stems from her experience adopting Ruth. She says, “Ruth won our hearts with her bright smile and the laughter in her eyes. It took a great amount of sacrifice to meet her physical needs, and yet the joy she brought us was so incredible.”
Unfortunately, Ruth passed away due to health complications, but her legacy lives on. Merrill says, “Getting to know Ruth and meeting her needs opened our eyes to the needs of children around the world, and in our own communities, who don’t have what they need. I realized how far our gifts, donations, and even time, can go when we invest those in the lives of someone else. Ruth changed our hearts forever in the way we look at things, and we want to reach out and share what we have with others.”
Merrill hopes that people don’t just read The Christmas Cradle, but act on it. She concludes, “When [families] have the opportunity to do a good deed for someone else, they can write it on a little piece of paper and put it in the cradle. Then on Christmas morning, we can remember those people who we served by taking out their names on the cards and praying for them.”

(Tony Rossi is the Communications Director for The Christophers, a Catholic media company. The mission of The Christophers is to encourage people of all ages, and from all walks of life, to use their God-given talents to make a positive difference in the world. Learn more at www.christophers.org.)

From the hermitage
By sister alies
Advent prepares us and heightens our longing. Our longing finds its place alongside our ancestors and God’s expressions of longing in the Hebrew Bible. Consider what our Catechism says: “The coming of God’s Son to earth is an event of such immensity that God willed to prepare for it over centuries. God makes everything converge on Christ: all the rituals and sacrifices, figures and symbols of the ‘First Covenant.’ God announces Christ through the mouths of prophets who succeeded one another in Israel. Moreover, God awakens in the hearts of pagans a dim expectation of this coming.” (522) Further, “When the Church celebrates the liturgy of Advent each year, she makes present the ancient expectancy of the Messiah, for by sharing in the long preparation for the Savior’s first coming, the faithful renew their ardent desire for Jesus’ second coming. By celebrating John the Baptist’s birth and martyrdom, the Church unites herself to his desire: ‘Jesus must increase, but I must decrease.’” (524)
Depending on how I live and celebrate Advent, I am at least either a pagan with a ‘dim expectation’ or part of the faithful with an ‘ardent desire’ to fully meet Jesus. I should like to be the latter, but alas I find within myself blocks and winding paths that seem to veer right away from an ardent desire. Lazy? Fearful? Hopeless? Whatever the blocks in me might be, or in you, they will eventually be removed by Jesus. I suspect that’s the point of Advent so that when we do come to reflect more deeply upon the story of Christmas our hearts might be ready to entertain some of its cost.
I was reflecting that Christmas is both joy and conflict when I came across a book I’d read some years ago, The First Christmas, What The Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’ Birth, by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. It made me continue to consider longing and conflict. Simply put, Jesus was a refugee Child forced from His country of birth, crossing the borders into a foreign land, Egypt. Other children were being killed and it would be some two years before the Christ Child returned home with Mary and Joseph to Nazareth.
This past year we have been plagued for many and various reasons with raids, separation of children from parents, immigrants and refugees being expelled, deported or jailed. In both cases we see the conflict and battle of speaking truth to power. There is nothing wrong with a just immigration policy. But for thousands of tiny children scared and made mute by the trauma we have to wonder how Jesus and His parents faired in Egypt.
Christmas, its story, facts and symbols, points to the conflict within and the conflict to come. Most of us have a pretty complete understanding of the Christmas story so our reflection upon it might be too swift. Let’s consider some of Matthew’s story you might have skipped over. Borg and Crossan share: “Mathew’s story sounds the theme of fulfillment but its emotional tone is ominous. Driven and dominated by Herod’s plot to kill Jesus, it is dark and foreboding. It speaks of the murderous resistance of the rulers of this world to the coming of the kingdom of God.”
I like the Catechism’s explanation of the ‘Christmas Mystery:’ “Jesus was born in a humble stable, into a poor family. Simple shepherds were the first witnesses to this event. In this poverty heaven’s glory was made manifest. The Church never tires of singing the glory of the night: The Virgin today brings into the world the Eternal and the earth offers a cave to the Inaccessible. The angels and shepherds praise Him and the magi advance with the star, for You are born for us, Little Child, God Eternal. To become a child in relation to God is the condition for entering the kingdom. For this we humble ourselves and become little … Christmas is the mystery of marvelous exchange.”
Equally the text in the Catechism tells us of the conflict midst the beauty: “the flight into Egypt and the massacre of the innocents make manifest the opposition of darkness to the light: ‘He came to His own home, and His people received Him not. (John 1:11) Christ’s whole life was lived under the sign of persecution. His own share it with Him. Jesus’ departure from Egypt recalls the Exodus and presents Him as the definitive liberator of God’s people.”
Venture deeper into Advent and begin the Christmas season, alert to both the joy and conflict and see how it plays out in our world and in our own hearts.
Blessings.

(Sister alies therese is a vowed Catholic solitary who lives an eremitical life. Her days are formed around prayer, art and writing. She is author of six books of spiritual fiction and is a weekly columnist. She lives and writes in Mississippi.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
We tend to nurse a certain naiveté about what faith means in the face of death. The common notion among us as Christians is that if someone has a genuine faith she should be able to face death without fear or doubt. The implication then of course is that having fear and doubt when one is dying is an indication of a weak faith. While it’s true that many people with a strong faith do face death calmly and without fear, that’s not always the case, nor necessarily the norm.

We can begin with Jesus. Surely he had real faith and yet, in the moments just before his death, he called out in both fear and doubt. His cry of anguish, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” came from a genuine anguish that was not, as we sometimes piously postulate, uttered for divine effect, not really meant, but something for us to hear. Moments before he died, Jesus suffered real fear and real doubt. Where was his faith? Well, that depends upon how we understand faith and the specific modality it can take on in our dying.

In her famous study of the stages of dying, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, suggests there are five stages we undergo in the dying process: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Our first response to receiving a terminal diagnosis is denial – This is not happening! Then when we have to accept that it is happening our reaction is anger – Why me! Eventually, anger gives way to bargaining – How much time can I still draw out of this? This is followed by depression and finally, when nothing serves us any longer, there’s acceptance – I’m going to die. This is all very true.

But in a deeply insightful book, The Grace in Dying, Kathleen Dowling Singh, basing her insights upon the experience of sitting at the bedside of many dying people, suggests there are additional stages: doubt, resignation and ecstasy. Those stages help shed light on how Jesus faced his death.

The night before he died, in Gethsemane, Jesus accepted his death, clearly. But that acceptance was not yet full resignation. That only took place the next day on the cross in a final surrender when, as the Gospels put it, “he bowed his head and gave over his spirit.” And, just before that, he experienced an awful fear that what he had always believed in and taught about God was perhaps not so. Maybe the heavens were empty and maybe what we deem as God’s promises amount only to wishful thinking.
But, as we know, he didn’t give into that doubt but rather, inside of its darkness, gave himself over in trust. Jesus died in faith – though not in what we often naively believe faith to be. To die in faith does not always mean that we die calmly, without fear and doubt.

For instance, the renowned biblical scholar, Raymond E. Brown, commenting on the fear of death inside the community of the Beloved disciple, writes: “The finality of death and the uncertainties it creates causes trembling among those who have spent their lives professing Christ. Indeed, among the small community of Johannine disciples, it was not unusual for people to confess that doubts had come into their minds as they encountered death. … The Lazarus story is placed at the end of Jesus’ public ministry in John to teach us that when confronted with the visible reality of the grave, all need to hear and embrace the bold message that Jesus proclaimed: ‘I am the life.’ … For John, no matter how often we renew our faith, there is the supreme testing by death. Whether the death of a loved one or one’s own death, it is the moment when one realizes that it all depends on God. During our lives we have been able to shield ourselves from having to face this in a raw way. Confronted by death, mortality, all defenses fall away.”

Sometimes people with a deep faith face death in calm and peace. But sometimes they don’t and the fear and doubt that threatens them then is not necessarily a sign of a weak or faltering faith. It can be the opposite, as we see in Jesus. Inside a person of faith, fear and doubt in the face of death is what the mystics call ‘the dark night of the spirit” … and this is what’s going on inside that experience: The raw fear and doubt we are experiencing at that time make it impossible for us to mistake our own selves and our own life-force for God. When we have to accept to die in trust, inside of what seems like absolute negation and can only cry out in anguish to an apparent emptiness, then it is no longer possible to confuse God with our own feelings and ego. In that, we experience the ultimate purification of soul.
We can have a deep faith and still find ourselves with doubt and fear in the face of death. Just look at Jesus.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com. Now on Facebook www.facebook.com/ronrolheiser)

Reflections on Life
By Melvin Arrington
As the year begins to wind down, it’s only natural to look back and reflect on all the memorable moments, both the highs and lows of the last twelve months: births, new friendships, personal achievements, health matters, family gatherings, financial windfalls/setbacks, deaths, community events, natural disasters, etc. But above all, it’s a time for giving thanks.
How quickly our modern world races from Halloween to Christmas! As a result, Thanksgiving has become little more than a brief respite from the mad dash to the big end-of-year holidays. Perhaps it’s because the merchandisers haven’t yet figured out how to market it for more than a day or two. Or maybe the fact that it’s usually considered a low-key, family affair has something to do with it. Now, think about how long we make merry for Halloween. When I was a child it was one day, really just one night, and that was it, but these days it’s practically a whole month of parties and hype, and then on Nov. 1 the big advertising push for Christmas begins.
Even though our culture downplays Thanksgiving, we shouldn’t let that derail our celebration of this important holiday. So, what are we truly grateful for? First and foremost, we should give thanks to God, the One who, according to St. Paul, knew us and loved us and chose us to be His adopted sons and daughters from before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4-5). That means we are adopted members of the family of God! That awe-inspiring statement should cause jaws to drop. I experience a sense of wonder every time I read those verses.
But let’s not forget all the “gifts” we receive every day of our lives, those daily endowments we often take for granted, such as each new day, the sunshine, the rain, water to drink, food to eat. Every breath we take is worth more than silver and gold. Also the treasure of family, friends and health, as well as the freedoms we enjoy in this country, especially our freedom to worship as we please. The list goes on and on. Life itself is a gift.
Did you ever try to recall all your blessings beginning as far back as you can remember? Did you ever attempt to count them? If you’ve ever tried this, you know it’s an impossible task because, since God is infinite, so are His favors; they just keep on coming. I’m reminded of that marvelous story called The Book of Sand, by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. No matter how many pages the main character flipped over, he never got any nearer to the end of the book. Such is God’s love for us – infinite and unending.
So one of the ways we can respond to these heavenly favors is with prayer, specifically ones of thanksgiving. In the spirit of “Pray without ceasing” (I Thessalonians 5:17) we pray at mealtimes, whether at home or elsewhere. Consider the Norman Rockwell painting “Saying Grace,” which appeared on the cover of the Nov. 24, 1951 issue of the Saturday Evening Post. It shows a young boy and an older woman, perhaps his grandmother, seated at a table in a restaurant. As they bow their heads to ask God to bless the food, the other diners look on, as if they were witnessing something odd or out of the ordinary. If prayer is viewed as an oddity, what does that say about our culture? Is gratitude becoming a lost virtue? Maybe it has already disappeared from sight in some areas of the country.
The act of expressing gratitude, implies the person doing the thanking, the thing he is grateful for and the one he acknowledges for this favor (“Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts”). Giving thanks fulfills a psychological, as well as spiritual need, and completes the circle by joining gift, giver and recipient. All humans have an innate desire to participate in this circle of giving and receiving and expressing appreciation for the gift as well as the giver. It’s part of what it means to be human. No one is sufficient unto himself.
Fr. Romano Guardini calls gratitude a basis for community. We thank our parents for raising us and our teachers for educating us. Also, we give recognition to those who help us when we need assistance and those who give us presents. Theoretically, it’s a concept that encompasses the whole world because everyone has someone to appreciate for something.
This season let’s all give thanks to the ultimate source from whom all good things come and also to those who in some way have enriched our lives.
Gracious God, may we be truly grateful not just this time of year but all year long.

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

MAKING A DIFFERENCE
By Tony Magliano
When we pray Christianity’s most important single prayer – The Our Father – do we really attempt to understand and meditate upon the challenge of its words – especially “thy kingdom come?”
What is this kingdom of God that we are asking the Father to bring forth upon the earth? And what part do we play?
To put it in Jesus’ words, “What is the kingdom of God like? To what can I compare it? It is like a mustard seed that a person took and planted in the garden. When it was fully grown, it became a large bush and ‘the birds of the sky dwelt in its branches.’ ”
Giving us another example, Jesus added, “It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed [in] with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch of dough was leavened.”
The kingdom of God continues to grow large from tiny beginnings like a little mustard seed which becomes a shrub that may reach nine feet high. And a small bit of yeast which stimulates the dough to expand several times its original size.
Therefore, we don’t need to be rich and powerful people to build up God’s kingdom.
But entering in, living in, and laboring to advance the unfolding kingdom of God takes much prayer and great effort on our part. However, we should not be discouraged facing such a huge and difficult task.
A complimentary Chinese proverb encouragingly puts it this way: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” A great accomplishment, an ambitious goal does not come about easily. It requires much effort. But over the course of time the goal can be reached.
But it will never happen if there is no effort to get started. It will never be accomplished if the first step is not taken. But it is encouraging to know that the great accomplishment, the ambitious goal – the journey of a thousand miles – only takes one step to begin.
The greatest accomplishment, the most ambitious goal that we can pursue, is doing our best to enter evermore deeply into the kingdom of God and advance its wonderful presence in our wounded world.
From abortion to war – and the arms industry which feeds it – from poverty to sickness, from human trafficking to child labor, from homeless people on our streets to fleeing refugees at our borders, from pollution to climate change, from corporate greed to militaristic nationalism countless fellow human beings are enduring tremendous suffering in a world that is largely indifferent to their cries.
But contrary to this indifference, those of us desiring to live in the kingdom of God need to be growing in the fruits of his Holy Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control – and to actively use these fruits to end the suffering of our heavy burdened brothers and sisters. And we need to tirelessly work to transform the structures of sin – as St. Pope John Paul II called them – which exist in our culture, government and corporations into structures aiding the building up of God’s kingdom.
Our self-centered kingdoms must go, so that God’s kingdom may grow.
At Sunday Mass and every other time we say the Our Father, may we pray with an ever-fresh compelling desire: “thy kingdom come!”

(Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings. Tony can be reached at tmag@zoominternet.net.)