Three Years of Courage and Suffering in Ukraine

Today marks three years since Putin's Russia began its full-scale genocidal invasion of Ukraine. We stand with this long-suffering nation in prayer and penance, and with the determination that the leaders of our nation and the nations of the world will not be deceived by the lies of Russian propaganda.

May the Lord grant a just, secure, and lasting peace for the people of Ukraine. Saint Michael, patron of Kyiv, protect all those who dwell in this beautiful land and pray for the conversion of their enemies. Jesus, through Mary, have mercy on us all.

In the written text of yesterday’s Angelus address that Pope Francis released (in lieu of the usual live presentation which his ongoing hospitalization prevented), the Holy Father noted “the third anniversary of the large-scale war against Ukraine: a painful and shameful occasion for the whole of humanity! As I reiterate my closeness to the suffering Ukrainian people, I invite you to remember the victims of all armed conflicts, and to pray for the gift of peace in Palestine, Israel and throughout the Middle East, Myanmar, Kivu [in D.R.C.], and Sudan.”

Praying For Our Beloved Pope Francis

We continue to pray for Pope Francis as he struggles with pneumonia in the hospital this past week.

May the Lord comfort him, and bring him healing and sustenance in the continued profound witness of his Petrine ministry, according to the wisdom and mercy of Divine Providence. 

I'm grateful for this courageous Pope, who continues to shepherd and accompany my life with his great teachings, his love for Christ, and the passion and endurance of his determination to bring the tenderness of God's love to every human person — without regard to the challenges to his own health and old age. Now, he witnesses through his suffering, recognizing the way it connects him through Christ to all the suffering people of the world. In these most difficult moments, Pope Francis's hope for eternal life strengthens my own poor hope, and helps me remember the loving presence of Christ in the midst of my own pain, suffering, and frustration.

Luigi Giussani: “Teacher of Reality”

The Servant of God Luigi Giussani, whom Saint John Paul II honored as a “teacher of humanity,” was called home to God 20 years ago today. Father Giussani became a teacher of my humanity 35 years ago, and his witness to Jesus Christ as the One who unites human persons and makes us free (Communion and Liberation) continues to nourish my memory and build up my desire for eternal fulfillment and my hope in Christ’s mercy and love.

What Father Giussani gave me has remained a focus for my life, a vocational commitment, and also the source of a suffering that I have been willing to endure, and — slowly, increasingly, to my own surprise — even embrace.

In an era of so much celebrity worship and personality cult (where multitudes cheer as false and self-anointed “messiahs” promise them “greatness” as they grasp for power), Father Giussani was something remarkable: he was the real deal.

He was a devoted and faithful priest of the ancient church in Milan, and (in a surprising and compelling way) he was a man — a man who lived every aspect of his life with a passion for the meaning of things, and a man who dedicated all his efforts and energies to the glory of Jesus Christ as God’s answer to the mysterious searchings of human reason and longings of the human heart.

Father Giussani didn’t propose his own greatness, or competence, or ability to “fix” all our problems. He was a humble man. He proposed Jesus Christ. He taught the truth.

And I remember the man, the teacher, speaking with such ardor and conviction in the years when he was still full of physical vitality, giving his lectures surrounded by a pile of dog-eared books on the desk and a bottle of mineral water.

He taught us about the fulfillment of reason in the encounter with the Mystery who became flesh, who defines history, who stays with us and awakens in our hearts the adherence of faith, hope, and love. He said things like these words:

"This is the ultimate embrace of the Mystery, against which man–even the most distant, the most perverse or the most obscured, the most in the dark–cannot oppose anything, can make no objection. He can abandon it, but in so doing he abandons himself and his own good. The Mystery as mercy remains the last word even on all the awful possibilities of history.

"For this reason existence expresses itself, as ultimate ideal, in begging. The real protagonist of history is the beggar: Christ who begs for man’s heart, and man’s heart that begs for Christ."

~ Luigi Giussani

The Design of His Heart

"The Lord brings to nought the plans of nations;

He foils the designs of peoples.

But the plan of the Lord stands forever;

the design of his heart, through all generations"

(Psalm 33:10-12).

Ukraine Catholic Primate: “Without Justice, Peace is Impossible”

Poor Ukraine. Martyred Ukraine. So much destruction. 

Genocide by forced starvation in the 1930s. Ongoing attempted genocide in the 2020s. So much suffering, but also amazing courage, and heroic perseverance of Ukrainians in defending themselves. 

They also defend the peoples behind them — the European nations that struggle to preserve the remnants of a civil society with the rule of law (even as that society crumbles through the loss of its soul). For the past three years, the “democracies” have given Ukraine that which the democracies value most: money. Some have also been further moved and inspired, and have given various forms of constructive human support. Some realize that the invasion that afflicts Ukraine today may well pour over them tomorrow. They fear anything that smacks of appeasement. Others still have pricks of conscience over their specific promise (as signatories of the December 1994 Budapest Memorandum) to guarantee Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders in exchange for Ukraine’s voluntary nuclear disarmament. Thus, Ukraine has felt some measure of “international support” since the beginning of Russia’s full scale invasion. But with the sudden turn of events in 2025, Ukraine finds itself tossed into an even more obscure limbo.

Peace is being “talked about.” But who are the true friends of Ukraine?

I don’t trust current Czar and former KGB agent Vladimir Putin. That goes without saying. He is a war criminal. His rogue regime ought not to be “legitimized” by his being invited to participate in what seem to be “negotiations” to end the war in Ukraine — negotiations that don’t even include Ukrainian participation. Putin’s only role in securing a just peace is to cease his barbarous aggression against Ukraine and evacuate all the Ukrainian territory he illegally occupies.

Who can be trusted to orchestrate and/or participate in “talks” that might bring about peace and security for Ukraine?

I certainly don’t trust the new oligarchs who have recently taken over the United States, but I didn’t trust the previous U.S. oligarchy either. Still, the new oligarchs — whether through rashness, ineptitude, or greed — appear ready to sit at table with Putin and carve up Ukraine for dinner. I hope that I’m wrong about this. I continue to pray for miracles of grace, but I don’t trust these men to follow their own whims. Nor do I trust the current feckless European leadership. It does not appear that any of the agents of the corrupt West are prepared to risk their own investments in the status quo in order to secure the geopolitical space necessary for the emergence of Ukraine as a free nation that seeks more profound bonds for its own internal unity — or, to put it more precisely, communion.

Whom can I trust to help me see what’s really going on in Ukraine?

I trust the man pictured above. He places his trust in God and in the Gospel of His Son, Jesus Christ. He experiences this conflict in its true context, and he knows that Ukrainian unity and solidarity in these recent years has brought closer together all those who seek God with sincerity of heart, and — more particularly — it has brought about an unprecedented fraternal collaboration of Ukrainian Byzantine Catholics and Ukrainian Orthodox Christians. Focused on the plight of their people, Catholics and Orthodox have drawn closer than they have been since the thousand-year-old breach between Western and Eastern Christians. Multitudes all over the world have participated in this closeness through the spiritual solidarity of their hearts and whatever gestures of assistance they can give. Common suffering, common prayer, and common charity are beginning a process of healing that is vital to the heart of the Church as a witness to Christ’s presence in the world.

Let us join them in their prayer for a just peace for Ukraine. And let us not lose hope for the resilience of this experience of unity, which can outlast the machinations of earthly powers — whether they be the ambitions and pretenses of a Muscovite Would-Be Emperor or the “deal-making” arrogance of a “(false) Prosperity-Gospel” Americanist Plutocrat and his minions (although it’s not clear whether or not the minions are the ones who are really in control right now).

Here are some words from the man I trust, His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk, Primate of the Ukrainian “Greek” (i.e. Byzantine) Catholic Church in full communion with Rome and the Successor of St Peter. He spoke in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at an Ecumenical gathering of Ukrainian Catholic, Roman Catholic, and Ukrainian Orthodox bishops, who met to pray for peace in Ukraine on February 16.

"We stand because millions of people around the world — like you — pray [for] and support us. They believe that for God there is good and truth, and evil, lies, and death will never have the last word. We are alive because we are not alone! Thank you for being with us!

"We want peace. Every Ukrainian longs for peace, for nights without air raids, mornings without explosions, days without deaths and nights without fear. But a ceasefire is not peace, but a political agreement that cannot bring justice. A ceasefire that leaves people suffering under occupation is rather a cruel mockery. Without justice, peace is impossible — it is an illusion and an empty promise."

Shiver

“February Made Me Shiver” (2025).

Weather keeps changing, day by day. Brittle like glass bones. Cutting tendon and skin. Sharp.

Pope Francis to U.S. Bishops on the Human Dignity of Migrants

Pope Francis has published a letter dated February 10 and addressed to the Bishops of the United States of America. It is clearly intended for a general readership, addressing not only immediate pastoral concerns but also reaffirming recent teachings or the ordinary magisterium of the Church as well as indicating and clarifying perennial points of Catholic Social Doctrine. 

This letter emphasizes that the inviolable dignity of every human person must be at the center of any just immigration policy. Its purpose is not only to strengthen the U.S. Bishops or Catholic Christians. It is to help form the consciences of all the people of the United States regarding human truths that everyone desperately needs to discover and remember.

I am reproducing the letter in full, as presented in English translation on the official Vatican website (see HERE), with minor adjustment of endnotes to in-text brackets). This is for the pedagogical purpose of encouraging people to read the text, and for my own reference in the record of this personal blog. Full endnotes and links are accessible on the Vatican website.

Of particular note is his invocation of Our Lady of Guadalupe as protector of those “who live in fear or pain due to migration and/or deportation,” and as the bringer of peace and reconciliation to peoples. We can entrust with confidence all our concerns regarding the problems of “America”—North, Central, and South—to our Merciful Mother and her singular presence and intervention (beginning in 1531) at Tepeyac Hill, near Mexico City, at the center of this pan-hemispheric continent, for the healing of all the peoples who dwell upon “this land.”

————————————————————————————

LETTER OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS TO THE BISHOPS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA [source here]

Dear Brothers in the Episcopate,

I am writing today to address a few words to you in these delicate moments that you are living as Pastors of the People of God who walk together in the United States of America.

1. The journey from slavery to freedom that the People of Israel traveled, as narrated in the Book of Exodus, invites us to look at the reality of our time, so clearly marked by the phenomenon of migration, as a decisive moment in history to reaffirm not only our faith in a God who is always close, incarnate, migrant and refugee, but also the infinite and transcendent dignity of every human person. [See DDF Declaration Dignitas Infinita (2024), 1]

2. These words with which I begin are not an artificial construct. Even a cursory examination of the Church’s social doctrine emphatically shows that Jesus Christ is the true Emmanuel (cf. Mt 1:23); he did not live apart from the difficult experience of being expelled from his own land because of an imminent risk to his life, and from the experience of having to take refuge in a society and a culture foreign to his own. The Son of God, in becoming man, also chose to live the drama of immigration. I like to recall, among other things, the words with which Pope Pius XII began his Apostolic Constitution on the Care of Migrants, which is considered the “Magna Carta” of the Church’s thinking on migration:

“The family of Nazareth in exile, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, emigrants in Egypt and refugees there to escape the wrath of an ungodly king, are the model, the example and the consolation of emigrants and pilgrims of every age and country, of all refugees of every condition who, beset by persecution or necessity, are forced to leave their homeland, beloved family and dear friends for foreign lands.” [Pius XII, Apostolic Constitution Exsul Familia (1952), 1]

3. Likewise, Jesus Christ, loving everyone with a universal love, educates us in the permanent recognition of the dignity of every human being, without exception. In fact, when we speak of “infinite and transcendent dignity,” we wish to emphasize that the most decisive value possessed by the human person surpasses and sustains every other juridical consideration that can be made to regulate life in society. Thus, all the Christian faithful and people of good will are called upon to consider the legitimacy of norms and public policies in the light of the dignity of the person and his or her fundamental rights, not vice versa.

4. I have followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations. The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality. At the same time, one must recognize the right of a nation to defend itself and keep communities safe from those who have committed violent or serious crimes while in the country or prior to arrival. That said, the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.

5. This is not a minor issue: an authentic rule of law is verified precisely in the dignified treatment that all people deserve, especially the poorest and most marginalized. The true common good is promoted when society and government, with creativity and strict respect for the rights of all — as I have affirmed on numerous occasions — welcomes, protects, promotes and integrates the most fragile, unprotected and vulnerable. This does not impede the development of a policy that regulates orderly and legal migration. However, this development cannot come about through the privilege of some and the sacrifice of others. What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.

6. Christians know very well that it is only by affirming the infinite dignity of all that our own identity as persons and as communities reaches its maturity. Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. In other words: the human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings! The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation. The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan” (cf. Luke 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception. [See encyclical Fratelli Tutti (2020), 3]

7. But worrying about personal, community or national identity, apart from these considerations, easily introduces an ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest as the criterion of truth.

8. I recognize your valuable efforts, dear brother bishops of the United States, as you work closely with migrants and refugees, proclaiming Jesus Christ and promoting fundamental human rights. God will richly reward all that you do for the protection and defense of those who are considered less valuable, less important or less human!

9. I exhort all the faithful of the Catholic Church, and all men and women of good will, not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters. With charity and clarity we are all called to live in solidarity and fraternity, to build bridges that bring us ever closer together, to avoid walls of ignominy and to learn to give our lives as Jesus Christ gave his for the salvation of all.

10. Let us ask Our Lady of Guadalupe to protect individuals and families who live in fear or pain due to migration and/or deportation. May the “Virgen morena”, who knew how to reconcile peoples when they were at enmity, grant us all to meet again as brothers and sisters, within her embrace, and thus take a step forward in the construction of a society that is more fraternal, inclusive and respectful of the dignity of all.

Fraternally,

Francis

From the Vatican, 10 February 2025

World Day of the Sick 2025

In conjunction with the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, February 11 is the “World Day of the Sick,” an observance that has meant much to me and countless other people through the years. This year’s message from the Pope was summarized and rendered in graphic form by the Roman Dicastery for Integral Human Development.

The formatting is interesting, if perhaps a bit “cluttered” (not that I could have done it any better). I appreciate it as a media technique for our more image-dominated (and perhaps less patient) digital world, and—or course—for the content of the message itself. Tap the image to enlarge it (the print is small).

Lourdes: Mary and the Tenderness of God

These are a few words from the Servant of God Luigi Giussani during a pilgrimage to Lourdes with the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation in 1992:

"Mary is the answer created in history to the fact that our nature is desire for happiness, that our life is desire for truth. Mary conceived in her womb the mystery of God made flesh, made man to live the life of all people and end His life the way all human lives end: with death. Incarnating Himself in Mary, God says: 'I will bring to fulfillment your desire for happiness; your desire for truth, justice and completeness will come to completion. I will make Myself your companion so this may come to pass.'

"The Lord, becoming man in Our Lady’s womb, coming into the world to save the world, underlines that the original relationship of the Mystery with His creature, whatever the condition in which life must be lived, is tenderness. 'No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends' (John 15:13); there is no greater sacrifice than to lay down your life for the work of another, and the other, in this case, is each of us as realization of our own destiny. 

"God’s tenderness brings with it the announcement of the positivity of all things: 'Even all the hairs of your head are counted'" (Matthew 10:30).

Christina Grimmie Seems So Long Ago...

Eight years and eight months ago, Christina Grimmie passed away. Once again, this day, I remember her and honor her legacy.

We live in strange times. The particular and peculiar characteristics of our world in one sense don't appear so different now than they did on that awful summer night in June 2016. In other senses, however, the previous decade seems very long ago indeed. Many things appear to be changing rapidly, and we analyze and struggle and fight with one another over what these changes mean. We are overloaded with conflicting narratives, alleged information, and relentless images and sounds, but we don't seem to be growing in wisdom and understanding. Do we intend to push forward recklessly into every technological possibility, driven by our urge for ever-greater power (and ever-greater profits)? Do we think we won’t be held accountable for the oppression and suffering of all the human persons we push aside as we plow over the world pursuing our inflamed ambitions?

We will never be able to make by our own hands any thing that can love us in the way each one of us so desperately needs to be loved. We have been created as persons, to love and to be loved. We are given to ourselves and to one another, children of the Mystery who is Love, who has loved us, and who has made us brothers and sisters. Whatever we do, whatever we make from our own work and cleverness has value insofar as it expresses our free response of gratitude and love to the One who in this very moment gives us our existence and our ineradicable dignity. Now and always, to live is to remember, rejoice, and grow in this gift of love.

Such was (and remains) the vitality of the brief beautiful life of Christina Grimmie. So I have once again endeavored (with technological tools and much “work”) to craft a portrait of her unforgettable face. Having reached the limits of my own energy and weakness, I can only share my work (above) with love and gratitude to God for Christina and for all of you who see and read the poor fruits of my efforts.

Last month I wrote about the “new ways” of portraiture. There are many digital tricks that seem amazing, but they are mostly superficial. The capacities of AI keep multiplying, but I only find it more and more frustrating and complicated to work photographs into worthwhile artistic expressions. Media tools that are supposed to increase accessibility can just as easily lead to bewilderment. Maybe for me this is just part of growing old.

Still, my efforts are on a very basic scale. I can't imagine what implications the new technologies will have on the processes and organization of governments, though it appears that nations are plunging headlong into the vast experiment. We think we see where we are going, but are we blind to our own blindness? God have mercy on us all!

Christina Grimmie's risks in music and media took her in directions she never could have imagined, to earthly successes and to the unexpected circumstances that resulted in the tragic and violent end of her earthly life. But her efforts were shaped by the boldness of love for the One who created her, redeemed her, and called her to Himself. 

She is a sign of what ultimately matters, what gives meaning to successes and failures, to strength and powerlessness, to hope for all of life that cries out for eternity.

Saint Josephine Bakhita Finds True Freedom

Yesterday we celebrated a woman who was empowered by the love of God, and who gives hope to all powerless women, abused women, trafficked women - to oppressed women and men throughout the world. 

She was abducted from her African village and native people of South Sudan in the latter half of the 19th century. She never remembered her birth name, but the Arab slave traders had called her "Bakhita," which means "lucky." 

There was nothing that looked lucky about the horrible abuse and mutilation that she suffered for years as a slave in Northern Sudan, but then she was brought to Italy, found Christ, and was baptized Giuseppina Fortunata ("lucky"). She became a religious sister and for 40 years worked at the convent and among the people simply but with profound charity. She not only forgave her oppressors, but said she would kiss their hands if she saw them, because they brought her to Jesus.

Jesus overcame evil with good, hatred and violence with the love beyond all measure, the love of God poured out and given to free us from sin, to free us to share in eternal life - to attain the joy for which every human person was made.

Jesus gave Bakhita her true freedom, and formed within her a heart overflowing with mercy and compassion. 

Saint Josephine Bakhita, you have a lot to pray for. We need you. Pray for an end to violence, human trafficking, and child abuse. Pray for South Sudan, for those suffering persecutions, hunger, the ravages of war in Africa and through the world, for an end to all forms of slavery, for respect for the dignity and beauty of every woman and every man, for the perseverance to never give up searching for God's will, and trusting in him when he shows us the way. Pray for us, that we might love and forgive our enemies out of the conviction that God loves us and them, and orders everything in his wisdom and mercy to the good.

Like Ice on Raw Nerves

"Cold Hard Winter" (February 2025). So many cutting winds, like ice on raw nerves. So cold ...

The Subtle Idolatry of the New Politics

These distinctive times of explosive technological expansion are ushering in a "new epoch" in human history in which humans have access to unprecedented levels of material power, and must grapple with the bewildering scope of possibilities and dangers entailed by that power. Among other things, the epoch of power poses dramatic challenges for politics — it gives humanity the "tools" to construct human (or inhuman) societies which immerse and involve their members on a larger scale than anything we have seen or imagined before.

Historically, we have seen the destructive nature of particular important-but-limited communities that take on an "absolute" definitive status for their members. The result resembles a kind of idolatry — a kind of "divinization" of an ideology or a system, or of a nation, race, ethnic group, or tribe. And we see now the rise of "new tribes" not connected by kinship, but defined by what (or whom) they exclude, and by the pseudo-identities they generate through the images of electronic media, simplistic slogans, superficial "rituals," and other propaganda techniques that are accessible to everyone in this new epoch.

A new kind of idolatry is casting a shadow over our times. It exists in full realization in some places in the world, while in others it lurks as a tendency, as the possible future of present unhealthy aspirations, as an inchoate or partial reality, as a danger, and — undoubtedly — as a temptation. This is not the old "hard" religiously-specified pagan idolatry of worshiping statues or personified forces of nature. It is the much more subtle new "soft idolatry" that marginalizes and effectively replaces God — the One who alone fulfills the transcendent destiny of the human person — with a merely human social or political project.

In recent years (and in recent weeks), government policies in the United States - and the unceasing barrage of words accompanying them on all the media platforms - illustrate the dangers that are spreading all over the world. The problem is not expanding or reducing the size of political institutions, but the role of political power in shaping the human person's understanding of his or herself. Sometimes power pushes against human dignity by promoting a vast social ideal that falsifies the genuine aspirations of human beings as persons (for example, the ideal of "Socialism-with-Chinese-Characteristics-in-a-'moderately-prosperous'-Society" as imposed on one-fifth of the world's population by Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party). Other times, different impositions of power aim to reduce human persons into partisans of a particular "tribe," a self-sufficient, self-exalting, selfish national or ethnolinguistic group with a "manifest destiny" to "greatness," which generally reduces itself to pretentions to become the greatest commercial empire obsessed with materialist consumerism and isolated by the fear of real or imagined "enemies" in the rest of the world.

Both of these extremes, and the various tendencies that borrow from them, are "idolatrous." They tether the human spirit to their paltry materialistic horizons (and they are not afraid to co-opt "God" in a reductionist sense, in service of their projects). Simply, one might categorize this whole phenomenon as "the idolatry of money." More broadly, it is the idolatry that emerges from covetousness and envy, with all the belligerency and chaos that these idols can unleash especially when they disguise themselves as political programs or social movements.

This new idolatry is subtle because its gradual but ultimately totalizing absorption of the human person spreads covertly within society like an incubating disease. It builds itself up through diverse inflammatory manifestations of social problems that often seem to contradict each other. It grows within societies when there is widespread insecurity about personal identity, weak interpersonal and communal bonds, rival ideologies, various artificially aggravated fears, rumors and confusion, negligent ignorance, cultivated superficiality, lack of civil discourse, lack of principles, reliance on pseudo-"authorities" and magnetic or manipulative personalities, pressure for cultural conformity, revenge, group-think, nostalgia, utopian dreams, excessive hopes for prosperity, for progress, for total safety from danger, for many other things (the list could go on and on) ... and — of course — the increasing (and always justified as "necessary") application of good old fashioned brute force.

It all conspires to eclipse the transcendence of human destiny, suffocate the heart of the human person, and preoccupy people with a multitude of distractions. It infects the politics of our time, which in various ways pretends in a practical sense (or sometimes pretends — which is already too much) to rule over all our thinking about the meaning of things, to fill our minds with its claim to be the highest measure of life.

The political ideal of the new epoch is idolatrous insofar as it aspires (even without the awareness of all who participate in it) to "deflect" the human search for transcendence and invade its space, or to use power to suppress it and take its place. It is accompanied (and "enabled") by the reduction of the scope of human desire to the empirical categories of objects-to-be-possessed, and the prevalence of practical materialism as the social norm.

In terms of depth and danger, these emerging forms of political idolatry are venturing into "uncharted territory." Politics now has at its disposal the continuing explosive growth of material power for everything from making things to processing and distributing information to bridging distances and gaining unprecedented dominance over space and time to enhanced forms of multi-sensory engagement through media technology and the (gigantically expansive) realm of so-called "artificial intelligence."

What are the monstrous political possibilities that might emerge in the future, perhaps even the near future? Will we have the awareness and attention necessary to recognize them and the courage to resist capitulating to them?

Love of Money

This text may sound prosaic, but there is much in these few words that we all need to ponder — especially those of us who live in the richest society (by far!) in the history of humanity: "Let your life be free from love of money" (Hebrews 13:5).