God is love (1 Jn. 4:8)<\/i><\/p>\n
In our church the other day, just before the Consecration, a boy of twelve years or so began to scream.\u00a0 He appeared to be going berserk.\u00a0 He showed so much strength the father could hardly pin him down on a bench.\u00a0 Unable to do anything, the mother, like Mary at the foot of the cross, just stood there, next to her son, her eyes streaming with tears.\u00a0 Three parishioners came to their assistance.\u00a0 The priest left the altar to offer comforting and reassuring words.\u00a0 The choir director brought holy water.<\/p>\n
This commotion reminded me\u2014in-between the prayers as the Mass went on and the howling and the groaning that the boy continued to make\u2014of the Gerasene demoniac.\u00a0 But this was a case of some sort of seizure that someone with Down syndrome had.<\/p>\n
And as though the disturbance during Mass was not enough, after Mass my wife and I found out, upon greeting a friend with cancer, that the doctors had given up hope on her.\u00a0 She only has four months to live.<\/p>\n
Both the boy and our friend, along with the victims of recent shootings, have left me reflecting on the need we have of the glorious appearance of our Savior.\u00a0 Helpless, like a mother, in the face of evils that afflict us, we long for the return of the one who went about doing good, driving out evil spirits, curing the sick and preaching the good news about passing over from death to life.\u00a0 We urgently need the glory of the Lord to shine upon us and dissipate the darkness in our lives.<\/p>\n
Admittedly, not everyone believes as we do.\u00a0\u00a0 There are not a few who are confirmed in their atheism, agnosticism, cynicism, skepticism or pessimism because of the existence of evil.\u00a0 But Jesus came also, or precisely, to call them.\u00a0 And it is our duty to draw to our yearning for Jesus\u2019 coming those who are different from us, the \u201cGentiles,\u201d let us say.<\/p>\n
To fulfill this responsibility, one does not need to engage in a debate.\u00a0 Better if one, in imitation of the pagan Magi, acknowledges one\u2019s imperfect knowledge and lives with openness to the truth, pursuing it with humility.\u00a0 One cannot play Herod, then, insensitive to all revelation, and to the signs of the times, for clinging to power at all costs and locking himself up in his interests, vitiating the search for the truth with his selfishness, assembling people \u201csecretly,\u201d which smacks of something sinister.<\/p>\n
Better still that we serve as instruments of the manifestation of the Lord through works of justice and love in behalf of the poor who, seen by the light of faith, represent to us, says St. Vincent de Paul, the Son of God [1].\u00a0 It is through the good Samaritan, through those who \u201cleave God for God\u201d\u2014like the one who went out of the sanctuary and those who forewent their kneeling down in prayer\u2014that the one who hears the cry of the poor is made manifest, not through either the priest or the Levite or those who might have wished that the Mass were not interrupted.<\/p>\n
In the Lord\u2019 Supper, the body of Christ is manifestly discerned when those in need are given attention.\u00a0 This is the Christmas gift that best indicates who Jesus is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"