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“The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn,” preached Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian killed by the Nazis during the Second World War. “It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might say, the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung.”
Some priests called on Catholics to boycott Christmas celebrations in Sri Lanka unless the war and related killings and disappearances end. “Stop all the Christmas celebrations. No Christmas cards, no lights, no decorations, no new clothes. Nothing. We can do that, can’t we?” Father M. Selvaratnam asked during a meeting at the Centre for Society and Religion (CSR) in Colombo. In the past, the government has sponsored Christmas light displays along streets in the capital to acknowledge the Christian holiday.
Many children of Kibera associate Christmas with the quest for family affections, peace and staying together. The sweetness of family life seems to be the dream of many of these street children, the longing for simple, tasty food, too – sweet and tasty because it is shared.
The painter of Hapag ng Pag-asa (The Table of Hope), Joey A. Velasco, made this artwork barely six months after his initiation as a painter. He thinks that he was merely God’s paintbrush, portraying underprivileged children who, eventually, helped him to make a U-turn in his life. The painting gained fame and became a symbol of the fight against extreme poverty in the Philippines.
The UN Conference on Climate Change, scheduled for this month in Bali, is going to deal not only with one of the biggest problems of the world, but also of the most serious ethical issues facing humanity and the Church in the 21st century.
If nothing is done to curb the emissions of greenhouse gases that cause climate changes, the future of the Earth and humanity is at stake. The Nobel Peace Prize shared by Al Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reminds the world that, without a healthy environment, there will be no peace.
The monks and Burmese marchers teach us a thing or two about how to resist tyranny, what the spiritual life looks like, and for Christians, how to follow the nonviolent Jesus.
When the world hardly noticed the need to protect the environment, Sr. Dorothy Stang was already defending the Amazon and the poor people who depend on the forest. Because of that, she was murdered – just after blessing the hired assassins who ended her mission with six bullets.
Chairman Mao once said that all political power grows from the barrel of a gun, another said it grows from a barrel of oil, and now it looks like it is going to grow from a barrel of seed. For a generation, many believed that “they who have the oil will rule the world, and if not, they will kill for it.” The thousands of dead women and children, soldiers and civilians in Iraq is strong evidence that it is true indeed.
