On Thanksgiving Day, a Catholic priest from Nigeria had us singing praise to God for the opportunity to be in the United States. At a Catholic Church in Lower Manhattan, hidden in between courthouses and the New York Police Department headquarters, he told us about his seminary classmate, a priest, who is missing and assumed dead, and a village of Christians recently wiped out by Islamic terrorists. In Nigeria, he said, this is normal. Be grateful for America and for freedom, he insisted, until we were quite literally singing thanks to God with him. It was a needed reality check. We have so many challenges, but our blessings still outweigh them. Especially if we receive it all through a lens of eternity — or at the very least something more.
During one of the first days of Advent, the monthly Magnificat had a meditation from Father Alfred Delp, S.J., in the book Advent of the Heart: Seasonal Sermons and Prison Writings 1941–1944. While shackled by the Nazis – for speaking the truth about what was going on in Munich, where he served, courageously, as the rector of St. Georg Church — the Jesuit priest managed to write (and have smuggled out) some of the most peace-filled thoughts, drawing us beyond current evils, even in the midst of them.
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