Before the soldiers arrive, before the physical attacks, in the silence of the night, the soul of Christ struggles in agony.

Unless we remove all of the people, we will never produce a sinless church, one that pursues the good without also perpetrating some evil.

We are all about individual rights, personal narratives and the freedom to choose. So was the Prodigal Son, until the food ran out.

The question of trust, of giving ourselves to something outside ourselves, is quite fundamental. It goes to the nature of who we are as human beings. One might pose the question this way: Are we clams or clovers?

Intimacy can only be shared between those who love. It cannot be summarized. Intimacy lives in silence.

If you picture a dark-winged figure tempting Jesus in the desert, you reduce the real power of evil. Why? Because you have removed the devil’s greatest advantage: the darkness of confusion.

Life does not have to be this way. You don’t have to be this way. You can begin again. All that you require has been here all along. You need only return to the mystery of your own baptism.

To live in the real, to reject illusion is to set our face toward growth and toward God.

You might ask, “Shouldn’t we all pretend to be Jesus?” We should, but that does not seem to have gotten most of us all that far. Perhaps a humbler role is a better beginning.

The Beatitudes do not describe the world in which we live. They tell us how to live in this world so as to seed one yet to come. Belief in another world gives us the courage to resist and to renew this one.