It is Christmas time, a halting of hate time. On this platform of peace, we can create a language to translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other. –Maya Angelou

The Gospel reveals that life is always a mixed bag, but a good mixed bag. The kingdom “does not admit of [full] observation” here. Only in eternity are all shadows resolved. Here we live in faith and trust in the in-between. –Richard Roh

We may find ourselves in social or political contexts that block any attempt at dialogue. Such situations challenge us to persevere in our efforts to create the conditions necessary for dialogue. To persist in this effort requires serenity, patience, and clarity of purpose. As the conditions for dialogue are being established to open a path toward transformation, our creative and steadfast presence becomes a witness. –Arturo Sosa, S.J.

True Christianity is growth in the life of the Spirit, a deepening of the new life, a continuous rebirth, in which the exterior and superficial life of the ego-self is discarded like an old snake skin and the mysterious, invisible self of the Spirit becomes more present and more active. The true Christian rebirth is a renewed transformation, a “Passover” in which [a person] is progressively liberated from selfishness and not only grows in love but in some sense “becomes love.” The perfection of the new birth is reached where there is no more selfishness, there is only love.  –Thomas Merton

God is a missionary God; God’s mission has a church. Focusing primarily on the church’s mission without a larger discernment of the church’s identity with respect to God’s mission will get us nowhere. Instead, we need to place God’s mission as lived out with respect to a holistic gospel into dialogue with the realities of contemporary culture. –Craig Van Gelder, Craig and Dwight Zscheile

Focus:   Discernment is more than gathering and analyzing data. Discernment develops the capacity to perceive where God is at work in the global and local situation in order to choose what better leads to the glory of God, which is nothing other than the fullness of human life. –Arturo Sosa, S.J.

An awareness is growing that humanity is living through a profound change of epoch. The consequences of this change sometimes take us by surprise. We must humbly recognize the inadequacy of our intellectual tools for measuring the effects of epochal change, understanding the present, and visualizing the future. Uncertainty is gaining ground in personal and social life. Uncertainty then sparks fear, provoking defensive reactions that turn our gaze toward an idealized past that never really existed. Fear tempts us to reject the newness of our time. –Arturo Sosa, S.J.

Because we live with hope, we are able to see that what appears to the ordinary eye to be impossible, is possible when we allow the love of God to work in human life. Of course, to place all our hope in him means more than believing that what looks impossible is possible. It means living already, now, as we hope that the life of all will be. The one who has hope not only has faith that another world is possible but behaves as if already living in it. –Arturo Sosa, S.J. 

We seem to be faced with a fundamental choice of whether we are going to fully embrace the reality that God has placed before us, or choose to believe and act based on the gaslighting of others. This is a primary ethical choice for Christians.

Typically, we are blind to countless evidence of God’s grace; by nature, we are so dull and rebellious of heart that we take for granted our creation, preservation, and salvation as entitlements (cf. Ps 103:2; Isa 40:21; Rom 1:21). In the biblical tradition it is different: “believers do not look at the universe and its fate from the angle of their personal interests but rather contemplate it as it appears in the light of God’s will.” —Clifton Black, quoting Otto Piper