Tribulation is a gift. It doesn’t feel like it at the time. Nevertheless, tribulation is a gift. It is a gift because it prepares us for the Gospel.
The journey of the Magi (“wise men”) to the Christ shows this to us. The Magi don’t find Jesus where they are looking (Jerusalem). Instead they meet a fiendish and duplicitous Herod. Led by the Holy Spirit, the path to Christ went through anxiety and need….
Read More“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” And He made man in His own image.
He fell. The image is marred.
Our beginnings are thus already headed toward endings. Some children don’t even make it out of the womb. Others are cut down too soon….
Read More“When all was still, and it was midnight, Your almighty Word, O Lord, descended from the royal throne.” That’s the antiphon for Christmas Midnight. By itself, it’s serene, much like this service. There’s something joyously peaceful about assembling here when all through the town not many creatures are stirring, and celebrating the first liturgy of Christmas while everyone else is nestled all snug in their beds.
“When all was still, and it was midnight, Your almighty Word, O Lord, descended from the royal throne.” The context, however, is not so serene. It comes from the Wisdom of Solomon, and it describes the beginning of the tenth plague, bringing death to all the firstborn in the land of Egypt….
Read MoreThere is a spiritual realm. There are demonic powers. And if our eyes were opened, we would see it at work in our world, with terrifying intensity.
Demons harm people. In today’s Gospel, Jesus warns about the danger of people being freed from the demonic returning to its servitude, because—the image goes—the house was not furnished. There was no change….
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