Walking recently through the University of Toronto campus, I noticed a young fellow on the other side of the street jogging energetically past.

The grip of a long, cold winter had finally been broken when I walked downtown on a warm St. Patrick’s night in Toronto. It was not long until I came across my first party. Some men were standing outside a shelter drinking and joking. I stopped and wished them a happy St. Patrick’s Day and asked if they lived in the shelter. Ray, standing next to me, said he used to live there but had moved up a step and now had his own apartment.

Tyrants commit many sins. They strip away individual freedom, unleash fear and terror, displace people from their homes and they murder indiscriminately. If you don’t believe me, turn on your television or find news reports from Kyiv and Mariupol, places that are looking more and more like Berlin at the end of the Second World War.

On March 1, I was mesmerized by an explosion. Verified footage of a Russian missile striking Freedom Square in Kharkiv, Ukraine, transformed a normal city scene into a giant fireball. The speed of its violence arrested me. “Where was the missile?” I thought. It only became visible to me as I looked for it in the replay. The long and deadly cylinder streaks downwards out of the sky and into the image a millisecond before transforming itself into death and destruction.

How would aliens reconstruct skulls that they discovered here on Earth?

Friday, March 25 marks the 35th anniversary of the publication of Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Mother of the Redeemer in 1987. One might ask, “Why should I care about such an anniversary?” However, the Church does care about it, asking herself how the anniversary of a teaching document might speak to us in the light of changed circumstances. The anniversary, if we attend to it, renews the grace of the original event.

There’s a saying in the Media Literacy Education community: “Media Literacy isn’t just teaching with media, it’s teaching about media.” I believe this could also apply to prayer and the media: “Let’s not just pray with media (e.g., praying with a prayer app), let’s pray about the entire world of media itself.”

As the world feels like it might give way into dust, I’m clinging to a promise of hope. I can still feel the faint dry spot on my forehead where it was marked with ashes. We haven’t been promised permanence, and that annoys me. And still. The eternal Word promised to be with us always. Hope is falling, even here.

A close friend of mine had a friend who was dying of cancer. When this man got his diagnosis his wife left him. She had never envisioned a life in which she would have to care for a dying husband. I have no idea whether she was incredibly shallow or had some severe phobia about disease and death.

The carnage has begun. Is there any way it can end without the annihilation of Ukraine? NATO has (rightly) refused to enter the fray, fearing that its participation will lead to the further spread of war and possibly to nuclear war. Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia are having no effect on the fighting. It may be months before economic sanctions bring Russia to its knees. Ukraine’s heroic defence is no match in the short run for Russia’s military might.