Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (All Souls)

Readings: Wisdom 3:1-9; Psalm 23:1-6; Romans 5:5-11; John 6:37-40

“All Souls” is the shorthand designation for today’s observance. Its actual name is The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed. Yesterday’s solemnity of All Saints is our annual celebration of what has traditionally been called “the Church triumphant.” This commemoration is done on behalf of “the Church penitent,” that is, the souls in purgatory.

Two ways in which our Catholic faith can said to be in danger of being “protestantized” in our culture is the demise of the cult of the saints and gradual disappearance of purgatory. Purgatory is then replaced with either de facto universalism, which holds that everyone who is “a pretty good” person goes to heaven or by a simple binary: heaven or hell, determined immediately at death.

But purgatory, along with hell, remain very real parts of the Catholic faith. While it is God who judges, not us, Tradition teaches that our default position is that we can and should be of some assistance to virtually all our beloved dead. Hence, in every Mass, we pray for the dead.

In the seventh (of eight) part of the Eucharistic Prayer, a part simply called in English “Intercessions,” we pray for the dead. For example, in the four Eucharistic Prayers for Various Needs we pray:

Remember our brothers and sisters…, who have fallen asleep in the peace of your Christ, and all the dead, whose faith you alone have known. Admit them to rejoice in the light of your face, and in the resurrection give them the fullness of life¹

The format of the Universal Prayer, commonly called “The Prayers of the Faithful,” includes a petition or petitions for the dead. The very fact that we pray for the dead indicates that some, probably many, of our dearly departed family and friends benefit from our prayers. Our prayers assist them as they make their way into God’s holy presence.

All Hallows Eve is known among some as Reformation Day-commemorating Martin Luther’s proclamation of his famous (or infamous) 99 Theses. Initially and for several years afterwards, apart from their manifest abuse, which he rightly protested, Luther had no issue with indulgences per se. Indulgences have not been abolished by the Church, even now.

On the contrary, Indulgences are still to be sought both for us and for the dead. We are coming to the end of a Jubilee Year. During each Jubilee year there is the possibility of obtaining a Jubilee indulgence.

In his Bull of Indiction for this year’s Jubilee, promulgated 9 May 2024, Pope Francis, in addition to allowing for the possibility of obtaining a plenary indulgence, noted “The Jubilee indulgence, thanks to the power of prayer, is intended in a particular way for those who have gone before us, so that they may obtain full mercy.”²

When we confess our sins and express true contrition, have our sins absolved, and make satisfaction by completing the penance given, the eternal punishment for our sins is removed. But the temporal punishments remain. In his Apostolic Constitution Indulgentarium Doctrina, promulgated on New Year’s Day 1967, a little more than a year after the close of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Saint Paul VI explained temporal punishment:

These punishments are imposed by the just and merciful judgment of God for the purification of souls, the defense of the sanctity of the moral order and the restoration of the glory of God to its full majesty. Every sin in fact causes a perturbation in the universal order established by God in His ineffable wisdom and infinite charity, and the destruction of immense values with respect to the sinner himself and to the human community³

Mother Church grants indulgences for performing good deeds. These good deeds help God in the divine mission of setting the world aright. Indulgences can be partial or sometimes plenary, meaning full or complete.

To be granted any indulgence, in addition to making the “indulgent” act, one must make a confession and receive communion. To gain a plenary indulgence, one must also say a prayer for the intention of the Pope (Pope Leo’s prayer intention for November is for those who struggle with suicidal thoughts) and have no attachment to sin, even venial sin. In addition to doing the good deed, the conditions for a partial indulgence are confession and communion.

From 1-8 November, you can gain a plenary indulgence that is only applicable to the souls in purgatory by meeting the above conditions and then visiting a cemetery. You must visit the cemetery within a few days of your confession and communion.

In a catechesis on Saint Catherine of Genoa, whose best-known spiritual work is her Treatise on Purgatory, Pope Benedict XVI noted that Catherine “did not see purgatory as a scene in the bowels of the earth.” Rather, for her purgatory is “an interior fire.” From the instant of her conversion, “Catherine suddenly became aware of God’s goodness, of the infinite distance of her own life from this goodness and of a burning fire within her. And this is the fire that purifies, the interior fire of purgatory.”⁴ This is nothing other than the fire of divine love.

Finally, Pope Benedict insisted that Saint Catherine’s Treatise “reminds us of a fundamental truth of faith that becomes for us an invitation to pray for the deceased so that they may attain the beatific vision of God in the Communion of Saints.”⁵

“Chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed,” we heard in our reading from the Book of Wisdom, along with “As gold in the furnace, he proved them,” and “In the time of their visitation they shall shine, and shall dart about as sparks through stubble.”⁶ These also tell of the purifying fire of divine love. As Sacred Scripture reveals: “our God is a consuming fire.”⁷

Dear friends, along with veneration of the saints and purgatory, praying for the dead and seeking indulgences remain vital parts of Catholic faith and practice. Christ has given us these means of grace through His Church to use for ourselves and for the sanctification of our beloved dead. Today’s Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed provides a good starting point to live our faith more fully.

As the title for Pope Francis’ Bull of Indiction for this year’s Jubilee, taken from our reading from Romans, declares: Spes non confundit- “Hope does not disappoint.”⁸

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1 Roman Missal. Eucharistic Prayers For Various Needs I-IV For Reconciliation II, sec 7.^↩
2 Pope Francis. Bull of Indiction of the Ordinary Jubilee of the Year 2025 [Spes Non Confundit], sec. 22.^↩
3 Pope Paul VI. Apostolic Constitution Indulgentarium Doctrina, sec. 2.^↩
4 Pope Benedict XVI. General Audience: Saint Catherine of Genoa, 12 January 2011.^↩
5 Ibid.^↩
6 Wisdom 3:5-7.^↩
7 Hebrews 12:29.^↩
8 Romans 5:5..^↩

"The Lord will keep you from all evil"*

Friday seems a fitting day for All Hallows Eve. I don't know about where you live, but here along the Wasatch Front, almost in defiance of all the delibrate chaos being inflicted on the world, we're having an utterly beautiful autumn. Even though I've never been one to dress up, I do enjoy Hallowe'en.

Sunset Wasatch Front, 30 October 2025

Today begins the Church's annual three-day festival of All Saints and All Souls. In older Church parlance, tomorrow we celebrate "the Church triumphant." Meaning that we celebrate those saints, who even now as they await their resurrection, enjoy the beatific vision. Sunday we turn our attention to "the Church penitent." This is to those who have died and are being purged according to God's mercy and grace, being made ready to enter the hallowed halls of heaven. We celebrate and observe these solemn, yet joyful, days as "the Church militant" (a moniker that can easily be exaggerated and misapplied).

To borrow and modify a slogan from a different observance: Jesus is also the reason for this season.

With this marvelous beginning, during the entire month of November, the Church urges us to remember those who have died and to pray and (gasp!) seek indulgences on their behalf. This prompts me to note that today is also Reformation Day. The day that Protestant Christians celebrate Luther's posting his 99 theses in Wittenberg, Germany. It bears noting that intially and for a long time afterwards, Luther had no issue with indulgences apart from their manifest abuse, which he was quite correct to protest.

Back to the dead. In the first instance, it is important to remember those who have died. Secondly, as Christians have done from the beginning, it is important to pray for the dead. Just yesterday, I was prompted to remember and to include in my Rosary intentions three good friends who have died: Steven, Timothy, and Kyle.

All Hallows Eve, by Lauren Hanna, used under provision of Creative Commons License

These experiences, like life itself, are bittersweet. I am grateful for friends, for family, for colleagues, teachers, mentors, people who, for no apparent reason, have befriended, loved, and helped me. As I grow older, my gratitude deepens. If we're honest, none of us really accomplishes much on our own, all by ourselves.

In my case, I cannot say that there are too many of these people to remember. On the contrary, there are too few to forget. May God grant that I never forget even one of these precious few or what each has so graciously done for me!

This week in reference to news of a Peruvian bishop, originally from Germany, who announced he has attempted marriage by being civilly united with a Peruvian woman, I read a post on another platform pointing out that this bishop made his announcement on- are you ready?- "his Blogspot page"! Leading the snarkster to further quip, if in parenthesis, "which some people apparently still have in this year of Our Lord 2025." I wrote about this back in an August post marking the 20th anniversary of my "Blogspot page." Sorry, "Blogspot page" is like "the Google." How about: "he posted this news on his blog"?

In any case, enjoy today. It's a weirdly festive day. As I have done over the years on Hallowe'en, I will end with this exhortation from Saint Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians, one of the earliest written texts that comprise our uniquely Christian scriptures:

For all of you are children of the light and children of the day. We are not of the night or of darkness. Therefore, let us not sleep as the rest do, but let us stay alert and sober (5:5-6)

Speaking of not forgetting, another time-honored Καθολικός διάκονος observance necessitates the late Warren Zevon's "Werewloves of London" (with a shout out to the late Joe Strummer) as our traditio for All Hallows Eve. My late Dad loved this song:

*From Antiphon 1, Evening Prayer, Office for the Dead

Year 1 Monday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: Romans 8:12-17; Psalm 68:2.4.6-7.20-21; Luke 13:10-17

Flesh, spirit, body. What? In this passage, the words “flesh” and “body” are not interchangeable. To grasp what Paul is communicating, it is necessary to distinguish between the Greek words sarx and soma. Sarx translated into English as “flesh” and soma as “body.” The third operative term in this passage is pneuma or “spirit.”

What is confusing is not making this distinction. Such failure leads to bad teaching and bad teaching to bad, sometimes even harmful, praxis. After all, whether before or after the resurrection, to live “by the spirit” is to live in the body, that is, soma while not living in the flesh- sarx. The spiritual life is an embodied life. Otherwise, the Incarnation was in vain.

According to Saint Paul, those whose spirits are infused by the Holy Spirit are God’s children. As children, we can call God “Father.” Unlike Christ, we are not “begotten” of the Father. We are God’s children by adoption. Legally speaking, an adopted child is still a child and as such a coheir along with the begotten child. Hence, our inheritance is eternal life.

Prior to adoption, we were slaves to the flesh. But through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, we went from being slaves to sons and daughters. This is how God saves us.

At least in part, what it means to be enslaved to the flesh is to be enslaved to the inevitability of death and the fear it prompts. In terms of today’s Gospel, resurrection from the dead constitutes Christ’s ultimate healing. The fall was not merely the cause of physical death but also the cause of physical injury and illness.

Cistercians of Our Lady of Atlas Abbey, Algeria

By His death and resurrection, perhaps more than anything, Christ frees us from death and the fear of it. The importance of our freedom as God’s children is highlighted by Saint Paul’s repetition of this especially in his letters to the Galatians and the Romans.

Of Gods and Men is a 2011 movie about the Cistercian martyrs of Algeria. In the spring of 1996, nineteen monks from Our Lady of Atlas in Tibhirine, Algeria, were abducted, tortured, and killed by Islamic extremists in the spring of 1996. In 2018, Pope Francis declared these 19 monks as “Blesseds,” the penultimate step before sainthood.

There is a scene in the film that serves as a beautiful example for the major theme of our readings for today. In the scene, Brother Luc, who is a medical doctor and a monk, provides medical services for the almost exclusively Muslim inhabitants of Tibhirine, Algeria, tells his abbot that he is committed to remaining at the monastery despite the danger of being killed by Islamic extremists or by the Algerian army.

“Throughout my career,” Frérè Luc tell his abbot, “I’ve met all sorts of different people. Including Nazis and even the devil.” He continues, “I’m not scared of terrorists, even less of the army. And I’m not scared of death. I’m a free man.”¹ A bit later in the film, Brother Luc is shown embracing a mural of Jesus on the cross, the true sign of his freedom.

This is what is it looks like to live in what Saint Paul a few verses on in Romans 8 calls “the glorious freedom of the children of God.”²

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1 Scene from Of Gods and Men. ^↩
2 Romans 8:21.^↩

"Most Merciful God, we humbly confess..."

Gospel: Luke 18:9-14

Today's readings are an embarassment of riches. Well, we live in a new guilded age complete with robber barons. And so, the phrase "embarassment of riches" means little-to-nothing to many people. Nonetheless, let's use some of these treasures of wisdom and truth.

One doesn't have to be too attentive to realize that at its heart Christianity is a religion of paradox. Yes, I mean r-e-l-i-g-i-o-n, which is not a bad word!. It is worth adding that true religion doesn't just lead to relationship, it is relationship, that is, communion.

The paradoxical nature of being Christian is brought into full relief by Christ Himself at the end of today's Gospel when He clearly teaches that those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves, or let themselves be humbled, will be exalted.

The kenotic hymn found in the second chapter of Saint Paul's Letter to the Philippians holds that Christ the Lord "humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross," which is precisely why He was exalted!¹.

This hymn brings together the paradox found in today's Gospel with the major Christian paradox: by seeking to save your life you lose it and it is by losing your life for Christ's sake, or after the pattern of Christ, that you save it.

There is a thread that runs through the narrative of Philip Roth's novel Sabbath's Theater that helps flesh this message out: "Whoever imagines himself to be pure is wicked!" Speaking of the Pharisee and the tax collector respectively, Jesus says "the latter went home justified, not the former."²

The Pharisee remains unjustified because he cannot, meaning he is utterly, even ontologically, incapable, of justifying himself. Conversely, it is the tax collector, who knows he cannot justify himself, who leaves justified, not just "in the sight of God" but by God. What is required is true repentance, taking a good, hard look at your life and the ways you fall short. It's strange to me that such a suggestion, even among Christians, is now seen as an affront.

Today's Gospel reading is another of those parables only found in Saint Luke's Gospel. The central figure in each of these parables is the Gentile, the unclean person, the person deeply aware of his own flaws. These are those who gain divine favor, who do the right thing, who are apppropriately (i.e., deeply) grateful. In short, it is a Samaritan or a tax collector, not not the member of God's chosen people, but the outsider.

During his papacy, Pope Francis took aim at a certain forms of Catholic pharisaism, which not only still persist but seem to be catching. It's a works based righteousness. As with the Pharisees of old (i.e., the scrupuously observant Jews, especially those who looked down on others), Francis' criticisms along these lines didn't land well with many members of the clergy and laity alike. But then truth rarely does, especially in our post-truth/alternative fact era. Increasingly, it seems we can't handle the truth.

Christianity is lived in either the first person plural or the first person singular. Weirdly, despite it being an attempt to make us face ourselves, this parable almost always puts the listener in mind of someone other than himself. Realzing this should have the effect of a "'Gotcha!'"

What the tax collector uttered, while being so deeply aware of his own unworthiness that he couldn't even lift his gaze heavenwward, became the core of what is now known as the Jesus Prayer, the most incisive iteration of which is- "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me the sinner."³

When it comes to rightousness, making another person the basis of your comparison is damnably silly. No matter how righteous or "pure" s/he might be, that person is flawed, sinful in some respect. Even Saint Paul urges ancient Christians in Corinth to imitate him only to the extent he imitated Christ.⁴ When it comes to holiness, righteousness, purity, Jesus Christ is the measure.

I have Good News and bad news. Bad news first: on your own, try as you might, you'll never measure up, ever, not in a million billion years! Being truly human Jesus Christ measured up. But, being truly God, He had no need to do so for Himself. He measured up for you and for me as well as anyone who would believe in Him and repent.

Repentance means ever so much more than merely being sorry for one's sins- though that is the beginning. To repent means committing to change and recognizing you need God's help to do so.

What do you do in confession except judge yourself in order to humble yourself? What else do you do in making your Act of Contrition in confession other than say, "Lord Jesus Christ, be merciful to me, a sinner"? Blessed, indeed, are the in the poor in spirit.

In our Collect for this Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, we implore God to "increase our faith, hope, and charity, and make us love what you command, so that we may merit what you promise."⁵ While God's grace elicits and even actively solicits our cooperation, faith, hope, and charity, being theological virtues, are gifts from God, which is a way of saying these are graces.

It is by loving what God commands that one can "merit" what God promises. What does God command? Loving Him with your entire being and loving your neighbor as you love yourself. You have to love loving. You can do this because you were first loved.⁶

What, then, does God promise? Eternal life. Eternal life, too, is a gift. But like all gifts, it must be accepted. A gift not accepted isn't a gift.

Bear in mind that eternal life isn't the life the starts at mortal death. It begins when you die and rise with Christ through Baptism by the power of the Holy Spirit. It comes about through faith, which is a prerequisite for being baptized. Eternal life is life in the Spirit. It is the Spirit that enables the faithful to make God's kingdom a present reality.

New life starts with a death. Kill your pride before it kills you.

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1 See Philippians 2:5-11.^↩
2 Luke 18:14.^↩
3 Luke 18:13.^↩
41 Corinthians 11:1.^↩
5 Roman Missal. Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time.^↩
6 1 John 4:10.^↩

Hopeful cynicism

For me, 2025 has been just as strange as 2020, maybe even weirder. There are a variety of reasons for this both personal and professional, or really at that intersection of my life. Don't worry, I am not going to catalog those reasons.

A lot of the strangeness of this year has to do with me being on the cusp of a new season of life. Honestly, sometimes it feels more like standing on a precipice deciding whether or not to jump. Like most important things in life, no one prepares you for this. Maybe that's because there really is no preparation adequate to the task.

I am much better able now to grasp why, when people reach a certain age, it's tempting to just keep doing what they've conditioned themselves to do in most cases over decades. Beyond financial concerns, there is a whole "back end" you don't see until you're close enough to peek around the corner.

Yes, I'm being vague. In less than a month, I turn 60. Not that this in and of itself is necessarily a huge event. But there are decisions I must make about my future. When thinking about my future, it's sobering to realize that much more of my life is behind me than before me. "Disconcerting" seems to me the right word.

Like a lot of people, in getting married, raising a family, building a career, etc., it feels that in some ways my life has been pretty "plug n'play" for a long time. Perhaps too long, if I'm being honest. So, how to make the most of the years, hopefully decades, I have remaining is the question I face. It is not one I am going to answer with a blog post.

I have to point out, that rededicating myself to this little on-line endeavor about a year ago (26 October 2024, to be exact) was a step in the right direction. I had nearly forgotten how much "blogging" means to me. After all, it's been part of my life since I was about 40! Despite my desire, I wasn't sure I could pull it off. But here I am a year later enjoying and doing it with a fair amount of ease.

As I ponder "whither my life?", I have become acutely aware that I am not nearly as grateful as I should be. My natural disposition is to be critical, especially of myself, rueful, and even resentful. Gratitude doesn't come easily. Given all that I have to be grateful for, this is much to my shame. I don't even mind divulging that as I grow older fighting cynicism becomes more and more of a battle.

As to being tempted to become a cynic, I try to bear in mind an observation made by George Carlin, which I paraphrase: "Scratch a cynic and underneath you'll find a disappointed idealist." C'est moi. It isn't even that "the world" and everyone else fails to be all that I would like or once thought it possible to be, it is just as much myself.

What really keeps me from becoming a cynic is the theological virtue of hope. At least in part, this is a function of having less life in front of me than behind me. What happened to that idealistic if deeply self-doubting young man?

Life certainly has its sorrows and disappointments. In many ways, you reap what what you sow. And, I don't think it's enought, to crib from Monty Python, to simply "look on the bright side of life." I don't deny that life has its bright side. But, for me, pie-eyed optimism is not gratitude and optimism is certainly not hope. It was singer/songwriter Tracy Chapman who declared herself "a hopeful cynic." I like that maybe more than I should.

One of the songs I find myself listening to in certain odd moods is U2's "Walk On." Since I invoked this song in my homily last Monday, it is our traditio:

Year 1 Monday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

Readings: Romans 4:20-25; Luke 1:69-75; Luke 12:13-21

Faith led Abraham to act. He acted in the hope that what God promised He would do. Abraham loved God with his entire being and entrusted himself to God wholly. This is why Saint Paul, both in his Letters to the Galatians and Romans, holds up Abraham as an example of righteousness.

Abraham stands in stark contrast to the wealthy, successful, self-satisfied rich man in the Lord’s parable found in today’s Gospel. In 1 Timothy, we learn that “love of money is the root of all evils.”¹ Greed, a one-word synonym for “love of money,” is one of the seven deadly sins. The inspired author of this letter notes that it is due to greed some “have strayed from the faith…”²

It is empirically demonstrable that the more affluent a society grows the less religious it becomes. Wealth makes you believe you are self-sufficient. In the U.S. we have the myth of the “self-made man.” I say “myth” because no one is self-made either in terms of life or even of wealth.

This isn't to say there are no wealthy people who place their hope in God. Certainly, there are well-off people who hold their wealth lightly and whose lives aren't devoted to accumulating wealth for its own sake and who are happy to generously give.

Wealth easily deceives a person into believing s/he has no need of God or, worse, that God, a little bit of religion for the sake of morality, is one of life’s optional extras or, as a certain biting critique of Christianity understands it, as a means of social control- the opiate of the masses.³

In his classic American novel The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck puts these words of the lips of his character Ma Joad, who has just received a kindness from another poor person- a dime to buy sugar: “If you’re in trouble or hurt or need – go to poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.”⁴ This is a sad but telling insight.

The question our readings today pose is in what or in whom do you place your hope? Abraham placed his hope in God and God alone. At God’s command, he packed up all he owned, took his family, and left Ur of the Chaldees for the land of Canaan, a place he had likely never been and probably knew existed only because God told him about it.

The second verse of the U2 song “Walk On” describes Abraham’s predicament beautifully:

You're packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been/
A place that has to be believed to be seen⁵

This describes not only what Abraham did but what the Lord calls you and I to do. Among the things God will not be impressed with at end of your life are your bank account, your investment portfolio, your cool cars, beautiful home, and your vacations hither and yon.

In what do you place your hope? You place your hope in what you believe will give you security. In this parable, Jesus demonstrates dramatically not only the grave error of trusting in wealth but putting your hope in anyone or anything other than God.

With this parable, Jesus urges his listeners to grow “rich in what matters to God.”⁶ And so, to extend U2’s song:

You’ve got to leave it behind: All that you fashion/
All that you make/All that you build…
All that you dress up/
And all that you scheme/
All you create/
You’ve got to leave it behind”⁷

Like Canaan, the land promised by God to Abraham, our destination must be believed to be seen.

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1 1 Timothy 6:10.^↩
2 1 Timothy 6:10.^↩
3 See Pope Benedict XVI Encyclical Letter Deus caritas est, sec. 26.^↩
4 John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath, chapter 26.^↩
5 U2. Song “Walk On” off the album All That You Can’t Leave Behind, released in 2000.^↩
6 Luke 12:21.^↩
7 "Walk On."^↩

Tension, trust, peace

Looking at the "Posts" page here on my blogging platform this morning (I feel so smart using such techie words), I noticed that there is some tension between what I posted Friday and my reflections on today's readings composed yesterday afternoon. Far from wishing to resolve this tension, I want to embrace and highlight it. Why? Because this tension is indicative of the tension inherent in Christian life.

To what tension am I referring? It can be noticed by simply reading the titles of my last two posts: "'Defend us, O Lord, from all peril and dangers of this life'" and "Trusting God is an experience." But the tension lies more in comparing the content of these two posts than in the titles.

On the one hand, we ask the Lord to defend and protect us from life's inevitable perils and dangers and, on the other, the importance of experiencing for ourselves how, usually, rather than spare us life's difficulties and disappointments, Christ accompanies us as we face them. Of course, the biggest of these is the inevitability of death.

Isn't the Lord's death and resurrection the pattern of Christian life? Dying and rising. Christianity is a religion of paradox. The central paradox is that in order to live you must die. If you're anything like me (I hope and pray you are not!), you have to rinse and repeat with some frequency. Isn't the fruit of the first Glorious Mystery of the Holy Rosary- Christ's resurrection- faith?

Despite many repetitions, I still want what I want. While I wouldn't say I demand that God gives me what want, I can be very petulant when I don't receive what I want and especially when I don't "get" what I feel I deserve. Also, I don't hit curveballs very well. Does this mean I need more batting practice? Don't go all Nietzeschian on me!

Yet, I am very suspicious and quickly become ill-at-ease when life seems to break my way, to borrow a phrase. I am deeply aware that, in light of Jesus' teaching, many things that seem like blessings may, in the end, prove to be my undoing. Worldly prosperity is not a Gospel value. This is a hard one to choke down. Wealth and good fortune in this life won't save you but, I have it on good authority, they can easily damn you.

Familiarity with the Gospels and with the lives of the saints is so very useful, even necessary. God is good. I am not. In His goodness, by His grace, the Lord remains with me.

Resolution of the tension inherent to the life of faith is not the goal. Rather, it's learning to live this tension, which is simply to live life, experiencing how the Lord is with me in and through its perils and dangers. As the late liturgical scholar Mark Searle wrote: "Tension creates energy."

This doesn't mean being physically or mentally tense. Paradoxically, it means the opposite. Trusting God is our peace. It is true peace. In the end, the only peace. In the words of Van Morrison's question is a perennial one: "When will I ever learn?"