Archbishop Leonard P. Blair
This edition of the Transcript comes to you during Advent. It is the Church season that signifies expectation, preparation and hope. Our Savior Jesus Christ came on the first Christmas, and now we wait in joyful expectation for him to come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. As he himself told us in many parables, we have to be vigilant, with our lamps alight in the darkness. We know not the day nor the hour, either for ourselves or the world.
Within this perspective, we live our lives anchored in joyful hope with our eyes fixed on Jesus in a proactive and dynamic way. I say “proactive and dynamic” because Jesus commands the apostles to go out into the world as his witnesses — what Pope Francis calls “missionary discipleship.” You and I are called to do the same by living as Catholics who believe and practice their faith, not as an imposition on others, but as a procla-mation and invitation to live for Jesus. He is “the way, the truth and the life” by whose Spirit humankind receives wisdom for life in this world and the world to come. How very much our world needs this wisdom and our witness!
As Pope Francis has reminded us in his most recent encyclical letter, we need to be models of friendship and harmony, and the primacy of kindness, even as we bear witness to challenging and often unpopular spiritual and moral truths. Ours is a time of pandemic; political and social polarization; contentious social media; lack of respect for the life, dignity and rights of every person; and disregard for the God-given life and meaning of the human person, created as male and female.
And we all have a tendency to blame others for our problems, or the problems of our society and world, or to take on an “entitlement” mentality for our wants and needs, even for our own happiness.In the midst of it all, especially at Christmas, the Gospel is “good news.” With God’s help, we should never shy away from personal responsibility, from active participation or from conscientious work for ourselves, our families, community and nation, nor from the challenge of overcoming barriers to participation for those who are excluded or hobbled by discrimination, injustice or poverty.
Given the printing deadline of the Transcript, I am writing this article before the November elections. Whatever the out-come, what is important is unity in the pursuit of the common good of our nation and the world, while remembering that ultimately, as Jesus said, “God alone is good.” Apart from the God-given meaning of life and of the world, we cannot be at peace, nor can our national “pursuit of happiness” be fulfilled. Whatever the political realities of the day, we cannot abdicate the responsibilities that each of us has to participate as posi-tively and charitably as we can in the life of our nation at every level of government, economic activity, social engagement and community life.
The heart of Christmas is to be found in the proclamation by angels of “peace on earth.” That peace can be ours only if we are willing to kneel in adoration before the God who made us — the God who made himself small, humble and vulnerable even to death on a cross — and so prepare a way for his saving presence among us.May God bless you and your loved ones with a Merry Christ-mas, and may he grant our nation physical, spiritual and moral good health in 2021.