We are pleased to present below all posts archived in 'December 2004'. If you still can't find what you are looking for, try using the search box.
If Christ was born into the world to redeem it, why doesn't our world look more redeemed? Why is our world still full of loneliness, anxiety, betrayals, sickness, poverty, violence, war and death? What did Christ's birth into our world really change?
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The full story of how Jesus Christ came to be born includes elements that we do not easily imagine when we sing our Christmas hymns. Jesus' family tree and blood-line were far from perfect and this, according to the great biblical scholar, Raymond Brown, needs to be kept in mind whenever we are tempted to believe in Jesus but want to reject the Church because of its imperfections, scandals and bad history.
"A symptom suffers most when it doesn't know were it belongs."
James Hillman wrote that and I learned what it means when I was 17 years old. At that tender age, I entered a religious order, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Like everyone that age, I was pretty restless, overfull with desire, and that was soon compounded by the isolation I experienced during the early years of seminary formation.
Henri Nouwen was once asked: "Are you an optimist?" His reply: "No, not naturally, but that isn't important. I live in hope, not optimism." Teilhard de Chardin once said the same thing in different words when he was accused of being overly-idealistic and unrealistic in the face of all the negative things one sees in the world. A critic had challenged him: "Suppose we blow up the world with a nuclear bomb, what then happens to your vision of a world coming together in peace?"