For Lincoln, Thanksgiving was a day to not only reflect on our blessings but repent for our shortcomings and find ways to seek reconciliation to God and to our neighbors.
If heaven is like a wedding banquet, then purgatory may be understood as preparation for a great celebration. It is not a dreary waiting room at the D.M.V., but a place of lively hope.
Enforcement tactics do not in the end deter asylum seekers, who are typically fleeing life-threatening circumstances, but stricter enforcement does push border crossers to more dangerous paths.
I use a motorized wheelchair and communication device because of my disability, cerebral palsy. Parishes were not prepared to accommodate my needs nor were they always willing to recognize my abilities.
Around the affluent world, new hostility, resentment and anxiety has been directed at immigrant populations that are emerging as preferred scapegoats for all manner of political and socio-economic shortcomings.
“Each day is becoming more difficult, but we do not surrender,” Father Igor Boyko, 48, the rector of the Greek Catholic seminary in Lviv, told Gerard O’Connell. “To surrender means we are finished.”