Originally published at The Catholic Thing
Given all the toil and trouble of the human race in a fallen world, it’s only right that we look to some peace on earth and goodwill to men in this season. There’s certainly no excess of brotherhood and fellow feeling during the rest of the year. And let’s stipulate: It’s not just our happening to be alive at this moment that makes us believe that – anno Domini 2024 and perhaps even more 2025 – things look particularly troubled: Wars and rumors of wars, widespread unrest at home, deep division in the Church. You don’t need to look far for why, to slightly adapt a famous modern philosopher, only the coming of God can save us now.
Or at least that’s the lesson that bad times should teach us.
But there’s another lesson about His Coming. As Bishop James Edward Walsh, one of the first Maryknoll missionaries in China, said after years of experience, even before spending nearly two decades in captivity: “Christianity is not a private way of salvation and a guide to a pious life; it is a way of world salvation and a philosophy of total life. This makes it a sort of dynamite. So when
