Angels are in the spotlight during Advent and Christmas. There is Gabriel’s appearance to Mary, the angels who came to Joseph in three separate dreams, the multitude of angels who appear to the shepherds and the angel’s warning for the wise men to avoid Herod. Then there is the plethora of angels who decorate our Christmas festivities, both secular and religious.

In a recent meeting in Rome with the International Theological Commission, Pope Francis spoke in an impromptu fashion, stating that “one of the great sins we have witnessed is ‘masculinizing’ of the Church... The Church is woman, and if we cannot understand what a woman is… we will never understand the Church... This is the job I ask of you, please: demasculinize the Church.”

When Pope Francis in 2019 declared the late Hungarian Cardinal József Mindszenty venerable, a step on the path to recognized sainthood, it marked long overdue recognition of the near-forgotten 20th-century shepherd’s Christian virtue. Earlier this year, Ignatius Press republished the Cardinal’s out-of-print Memoirs. This would be a worthy addition to reading lists over the holidays or in the coming new year.

It’s Advent — that special time of year when sleighbells ring, chestnuts roast and Christians of different persuasions argue about when to begin celebrating Christmas. Many Catholics adhere to the idea that one ought not decorate or sing Christmas carols before the Christmas liturgical season begins on Dec. 24. There’s only one problem with this: it presumes we ever stopped.

I have been sitting in my living room in the dark evenings lit up by the Christmas tree. I am fumbling with a fiddle, coaxing my fingers to play the notes of folk tunes and Christmas carols. This fall, the world seems particularly weary, beauty weighted with a complicated mix of war and worries. And I sing quietly along in my head one of my favourite lines: “A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.”

Learn to do good; seek justice.

Isaiah: 1: 17

I am not a social justice scholar. Nor am I an expert in the field of health care. I was invited recently, however, to be part of a forum on Catholic health care to define the concept of social justice, especially as it emerges within the Catholic intellectual tradition and Catholic social teaching. This tradition, not surprisingly, heavily informs the values and practices that we see manifested in the health care system.

Recently, I have been thinking about indifference, which seems to me to be the defining attitude of our times. At least, I thought of indifference as an attitude. Then I was asked to reflect on a statement by St. Teresa of Kolkata which included these words: “The greatest evil in the world is the lack of love, the terrible indifference towards one’s neighbour.”

You might be a Modernist and not even know it. I was. Well, a quasi-Modernist at least. I’m talking here about the official heresy of Modernism, not the cultural and artistic movement. There is also the “Modern Era” (lasting roughly from 1500 to 1945). We are in the Postmodern or Post-Postmodern Era now, philosophically speaking.

Advent is the time of waiting and preparation for the coming of Jesus. This Avent I await the Prince of Peace. I roll the words over my tongue and in my mind daily — the Prince of Peace. How we long for you in these days! 

Is our freedom absolute? If God is perfectly free, and we bear His image and likeness, are we not then perfectly free?