Welcome from Brother Dennis Malloy

Lord, in times like these,
We need a savior!

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

I think it’s fair to say that life is messy.  It’s messy in our own little world of family and friends, and it’s messy on the grand scale and all points in between.  A quick glance at the headlines of any major newspaper, or the “top of the hour” review of the never ending news cycle, fills us with the fragility and misery of our world.  Wars without end, countries on the verge of internal collapse, all manner of racial, ethnic, tribal, and faith divisions, proliferation of weapons, natural disasters, food insecurity, financial insecurity, the beat goes on.

Our own nation is coming off a way too long and way too bruising political cycle which has laid bare deep-seated differences among us, leaving many of us perplexed, exhausted, and anxious about how we as a nation can mend the breaches of our own complex lines of division.

And now it is Advent.  This time of hopeful expectation.  What will we do in this moment to stir up our hearts for the Advent journey once again?  Are the prophets’ words of a new vision for the earth, of the messiah breaking into our world, our lives, enough to move us onto this year’s journey?  Their world was filled with great loss and suffering that, no doubt, left them feeling a little short on hope.  But they kept before them the conviction that God knew their mess and was present in it with them and so, they chose life.

Several years ago I received a tee shirt as a gift from a friend at one of our city schools.  Perhaps they were going through their own moment of feeling helpless and hopeless, but the words blazoned across the back of the shirt declared their own conviction that God was with them and would provide.  Lord, in times like these…   

How often we pray what we already believe, “Live Jesus in our Hearts!” We do not need to wait for Jesus to come into our world or our lives; he is already here!  Jesus has taken the mess we have made of ourselves, our relationships, and our world and through his life, death, and rising has given us an Advent heart to bring him forth into the world.

Let us accept Jesus’ challenge this Advent to shake off the inertia, to put down the remote, the mouse, and all the ways we distract ourselves, and to wade into the mess to work with him in bringing about God’s reign … through the mystery of Christmas incarnation as we ourselves take on his flesh … to mend the breach, to bind up wounds, and to announce good news: the savior is within us as well as in our midst.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the world.
Yours are the feet with which Christ is to go about doing good.
Yours are the hands with which Christ is to bless all people now.

— St. Teresa of Avila

Come Lord Jesus!

Brother Dennis Malloy, FSC
Provincial/Visitor