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Year C 1st Sunday of Advent
Readings: Readings: Jer. 33:14-16; Ps. 25:4-5.8-10.14; 1 Thess. 3:12-4:2; Luke 21:25-28.34-36
Today my friends we begin a new year of grace. The great season of Advent is upon us. If you’re already “doing” Christmas, it is time to slow down! Jesus is the reason for the season of Advent as well as for the season of Christmas. Our rush to bypass Advent and get right to Christmas is indicative of our desire to jump over life, skip experience, and land in God’s presence, instead of seeing our lives, what happens to us as our way of with God in realizing our destiny. “Christ does not save us from our humanity, but through it” (PP. Benedict XVI Christmas Urbi et Orbi 2006).
Our word Advent comes from the Latin advenio meaning “to come to”. So, the relationship of this season to the Paschal Mystery of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is fairly straightforward: during Advent we await the arrival of Jesus Christ. Our waiting is not an exercise in pretending that Jesus was not born in Bethlehem more than 2,000 year ago anymore than we observe Good Friday without being conscious of Christ’s resurrection. The arrival we are awaiting is his return in glory.
It is important that our waiting not merely be passive anticipation. Rather, it takes the form of active discipleship. The Christian way of life actively anticipates the Lord’s return and makes his continued presence among us by the power of the Holy Spirit incarnate. The vast majority of history is too often oversimplified as a long advent. On this view, the history of Israel is seen as nothing more than a preparation for the birth of Christ, just as the history of the church is taken as a long wait for his return in glory. However, it is important that we not reduce either of these two periods to merely long waits, lest we empty human history of the value of living. If nothing else, Advent teaches us the importance of history, of time.
Jesus did not abandon us when he ascended into heaven after his resurrection. Rather, "[r]ising from the dead He sent His life-giving Spirit upon His disciples and through Him… established His Body… the Church as the universal sacrament of salvation" (Lumen Gentium par. 48). The primary means through which the Holy Spirit makes Christ present among us are the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. It is the Holy Spirit’s active presence that makes the Eucharist more than merely a memorial, but makes Christ really present among us. We believe that "until there shall be new heavens and a new earth in which justice dwells, the pilgrim Church in her sacraments and institutions," along with the whole of creation "groan and travail in pain…" (par. 48). What we are living is not a promise yet to be fulfilled, but a down payment on what God has promised.
Jesus Christ is present in our assembly today in a number of ways. In turn, we are sent forth from here to make him present to and for the world. Hence, the most nonsensical question a Christian can ask is, "Where is the Lord?" If he is not in you my dear friends, you who, through your baptism, remaining close to him in the sacrament of penance, and your participation in this Eucharist are a member of his body, then where can he be? Faith in Christ Jesus is always far more incarnational than it is mystical. The Father only makes Christ present by the power of the Holy Spirit in our gifts of bread and wine in order for him to be present in you. Indeed, "[t]he mystery of life in Christ is that Christ can live you," but you have to let him in (Michael Card Live This Mystery).
In our reading today from the prophet Jeremiah we have a prophecy of the coming of one who, like David, will unite Israel and rule over her, a just ruler who will keep the promised land safe from invaders. Indeed, many in Jesus’ day failed to recognize him as the Messiah, as the shoot of David, precisely because, as we heard last week on Christ the King, his "kingdom does not belong to this world" (John 18:36). We make the same mistake when by receiving him we fail to understand that he wants to be present to us and through us to the world.
In his first letter to the Thessalonians, which is likely the first New Testament text written, St. Paul exhorts the community "to be blameless in holiness" in order to be prepared for "the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones" (1 Thess. 3:13). The reason Paul composed this letter is because members of that community had begun to die, but the Lord had not yet returned, which caused a lot of anxiety due to their belief in his imminent return. Hence, Paul is exhorting them to live in joyful expectation of that return, the date of which nobody knows, remaining vigilant and awake, by living the ordinary in an extraordinary way, abounding "in love for one another and for all" (1 Thess. 3:12).
In our Gospel today Jesus also exhorts his followers to live in anticipation of his return by remaining awake and alert. He warns against those things that distract us from the purpose of our lives, our new life in him. We are not to become drowsy and inattentive because we choose drunkenness and carousing,or the million other ways we trivialize life. Neither are we to be consumed by life’s inevitable and daily anxieties, which also amounts to making the wrong things the focus of our lives. This is why at Mass we pray “in your mercy…protect us from all anxiety…” Instead we are to remain vigilant and prayerful, but not out of fear, or even out of a misguided expectation that the Lord will return right away, or in 2012, but to live in a manner consistent with our reason for being.
My dear friends, confident that life in Christ is in its living, appropriate the liturgical year: set up, bless, and use an Advent wreath in your home, keep excess and indulgence at bay for a few more weeks, during this time between now and Christmas sing hymns of joyful expectation, fast, pray, confess your sins, be reconciled to others, and above all help those in need. Because faith in Christ is incarnational, the liturgy, made up of its cycle of seasons, deeply rooted in creation, is our primary work. It is how we sanctify time and how God sanctifies us. Liturgy is our active participation in the Paschal mystery, which is nothing less than participation in the very life of God- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Only insofar as we live rooted in love and "blameless in holiness" do we make present the One "who is, who was, and who is to come" (Rev. 1:8). We are called to be his witnesses by living the tension between the already and the not yet, "as we wait in joyful hope" for his coming.
Today my friends we begin a new year of grace. The great season of Advent is upon us. If you’re already “doing” Christmas, it is time to slow down! Jesus is the reason for the season of Advent as well as for the season of Christmas. Our rush to bypass Advent and get right to Christmas is indicative of our desire to jump over life, skip experience, and land in God’s presence, instead of seeing our lives, what happens to us as our way of with God in realizing our destiny. “Christ does not save us from our humanity, but through it” (PP. Benedict XVI Christmas Urbi et Orbi 2006).
Our word Advent comes from the Latin advenio meaning “to come to”. So, the relationship of this season to the Paschal Mystery of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is fairly straightforward: during Advent we await the arrival of Jesus Christ. Our waiting is not an exercise in pretending that Jesus was not born in Bethlehem more than 2,000 year ago anymore than we observe Good Friday without being conscious of Christ’s resurrection. The arrival we are awaiting is his return in glory.
It is important that our waiting not merely be passive anticipation. Rather, it takes the form of active discipleship. The Christian way of life actively anticipates the Lord’s return and makes his continued presence among us by the power of the Holy Spirit incarnate. The vast majority of history is too often oversimplified as a long advent. On this view, the history of Israel is seen as nothing more than a preparation for the birth of Christ, just as the history of the church is taken as a long wait for his return in glory. However, it is important that we not reduce either of these two periods to merely long waits, lest we empty human history of the value of living. If nothing else, Advent teaches us the importance of history, of time.
Jesus did not abandon us when he ascended into heaven after his resurrection. Rather, "[r]ising from the dead He sent His life-giving Spirit upon His disciples and through Him… established His Body… the Church as the universal sacrament of salvation" (Lumen Gentium par. 48). The primary means through which the Holy Spirit makes Christ present among us are the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. It is the Holy Spirit’s active presence that makes the Eucharist more than merely a memorial, but makes Christ really present among us. We believe that "until there shall be new heavens and a new earth in which justice dwells, the pilgrim Church in her sacraments and institutions," along with the whole of creation "groan and travail in pain…" (par. 48). What we are living is not a promise yet to be fulfilled, but a down payment on what God has promised.
Jesus Christ is present in our assembly today in a number of ways. In turn, we are sent forth from here to make him present to and for the world. Hence, the most nonsensical question a Christian can ask is, "Where is the Lord?" If he is not in you my dear friends, you who, through your baptism, remaining close to him in the sacrament of penance, and your participation in this Eucharist are a member of his body, then where can he be? Faith in Christ Jesus is always far more incarnational than it is mystical. The Father only makes Christ present by the power of the Holy Spirit in our gifts of bread and wine in order for him to be present in you. Indeed, "[t]he mystery of life in Christ is that Christ can live you," but you have to let him in (Michael Card Live This Mystery).
In our reading today from the prophet Jeremiah we have a prophecy of the coming of one who, like David, will unite Israel and rule over her, a just ruler who will keep the promised land safe from invaders. Indeed, many in Jesus’ day failed to recognize him as the Messiah, as the shoot of David, precisely because, as we heard last week on Christ the King, his "kingdom does not belong to this world" (John 18:36). We make the same mistake when by receiving him we fail to understand that he wants to be present to us and through us to the world.
In his first letter to the Thessalonians, which is likely the first New Testament text written, St. Paul exhorts the community "to be blameless in holiness" in order to be prepared for "the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones" (1 Thess. 3:13). The reason Paul composed this letter is because members of that community had begun to die, but the Lord had not yet returned, which caused a lot of anxiety due to their belief in his imminent return. Hence, Paul is exhorting them to live in joyful expectation of that return, the date of which nobody knows, remaining vigilant and awake, by living the ordinary in an extraordinary way, abounding "in love for one another and for all" (1 Thess. 3:12).
In our Gospel today Jesus also exhorts his followers to live in anticipation of his return by remaining awake and alert. He warns against those things that distract us from the purpose of our lives, our new life in him. We are not to become drowsy and inattentive because we choose drunkenness and carousing,or the million other ways we trivialize life. Neither are we to be consumed by life’s inevitable and daily anxieties, which also amounts to making the wrong things the focus of our lives. This is why at Mass we pray “in your mercy…protect us from all anxiety…” Instead we are to remain vigilant and prayerful, but not out of fear, or even out of a misguided expectation that the Lord will return right away, or in 2012, but to live in a manner consistent with our reason for being.
My dear friends, confident that life in Christ is in its living, appropriate the liturgical year: set up, bless, and use an Advent wreath in your home, keep excess and indulgence at bay for a few more weeks, during this time between now and Christmas sing hymns of joyful expectation, fast, pray, confess your sins, be reconciled to others, and above all help those in need. Because faith in Christ is incarnational, the liturgy, made up of its cycle of seasons, deeply rooted in creation, is our primary work. It is how we sanctify time and how God sanctifies us. Liturgy is our active participation in the Paschal mystery, which is nothing less than participation in the very life of God- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Only insofar as we live rooted in love and "blameless in holiness" do we make present the One "who is, who was, and who is to come" (Rev. 1:8). We are called to be his witnesses by living the tension between the already and the not yet, "as we wait in joyful hope" for his coming.
O que fazer no AfPak?
http://www.abola.pt/mundos/ver.aspx?id=179940
Amanhã, terça, o Presidente anuncia grandes decisões para o AfPak. Vale a pena, por isso, recuperar o texto publicado a 6 de Novembro de 2009, na rubrica Histórias da Casa Branca, do site de A Bola:
O que fazer no Afeganistão e Paquistão?
Por Germano Almeida
Suprema ironia: no dia em que lhe foi atribuído o Prémio Nobel da Paz, Barack Obama tinha agendada uma reunião com o Conselho de Segurança Nacional, para avaliar riscos e vantagens de uma nova estratégia para o Afeganistão.
Em cima da mesa estava a possibilidade de enviar mais 40 mil efectivos – hipótese tremenda para quem acabara de ser agraciado com a mais prestigiada distinção de quem luta pela paz no Mundo.
A reunião realizou-se horas depois do anúncio-surpresa da Academia Norueguesa e Obama ouviu da boca dos seus conselheiros de segurança, e de altas patentes militares americanas, notícias alarmantes sobre o avanço dos taliban no terreno e uma crescente vulnerabilidade das tropas anglo-americanas.
Era difícil encontrar melhor imagem para ilustrar o dilema que atravessa Obama: se aprovar o reforço de efectivos em número tão significativo, está a dar razão à leitura do general Stanley McChrystal (comandante do Exército americano em Cabul), que, num relatório devastador (divulgado, parcialmente, pelo Washington Post e nunca desmentido por fontes oficiais), quase implorou à Casa Branca uma mudança radical na estratégia americana para o Afeganistão.
No documento, McChrystal avisa que o próximo ano será «decisivo» para um possível sucesso americano em Cabul. E exorta o Presidente a aprovar um reforço que pode ir de 40 até 60 mil efectivos, de modo a inverter uma tendência que já chega a uma média de dois soldados americanos mortos por dia.
Mas Obama também sabe que uma decisão como essa implicará enorme perda de popularidade, numa altura em que os esforços de guerra no Afeganistão e no Paquistão (o AfPak) são reprovados, de forma maciça, pela opinião pública.
A retirada «não é uma opção»
Já se sabia que o Afeganistão ia ser «a guerra de Obama». Foi o próprio Presidente que, enquanto candidato presidencial, apontara a mudança de direcção, de Bagdad para Cabul, de modo a «corrigir o erro trágico da Administração Bush e virar a agulha para quem realmente ameaçou a segurança interna dos EUA: os taliban e a Al Qaeda.»
A leitura estava certa e só se desiludiu quem quis ver em Obama o «herói anti-guerra» que ele nunca foi - nem nunca poderia ser. Logo no discurso de 2002, quando era um desconhecido senador estadual no Illinois, Barack condenou a guerra do Iraque não por ser «uma guerra», mas por ser «uma guerra estúpida».
O seu «realismo» fá-lo agora perceber que o agravamento da situação no Afeganistão volta a colocar os Estados Unidos numa posição de enorme risco. «A retirada, neste momento, não é uma opção. Os taliban estão a ganhar terreno e a nossa estratégia está a falhar», admite o secretário da Defesa, Robert Gates.
O senador John McCain, do Arizona, nomeado presidencial republicano em 2008, já desafiou Obama (para quem perdeu a corrida eleitoral do ano passado) a tomar a decisão mais impopular. «A situação no terreno é tão delicada que o Presidente deve seguir a indicação do general McChrystal», apontou, em entrevista a John King, na CNN.
McCain, ele próprio um herói militar, é voz respeitada nos dois campos partidários. A forma clara como defende o reforço de efectivos pode vir a ter influência na decisão de Obama: «Percebo que o Presidente se encontra num enorme dilema, mas em alturas como esta o pior que se pode fazer é tentar agradar a todos, tomando uma decisão salomónica, como um envio de um número muito reduzido de elementos. Isso não ia resolver nada.»
Não há palavras que resolvam
Em Março passado, Obama já aprovara um reforço de 21 mil soldados. No final de 2009, prevê-se que os EUA tenham 68 mil efectivos no Afeganistão.
Até agora, tem vigorado uma estratégia de «contra-insurreição», que exige a presença contínua de um elevado contingente no terreno. Há quem defenda uma mudança para uma estratégia de «contraterrorismo», baseada em acções localizadas, 'hi tech', com uso de mísseis telecomandados e enorme poupança de recursos humanos – opção que reduzirá o número de baixas.
O vice-presidente Joe Biden já admitiu ser essa a sua preferência, numa nítida (e desconfortável) divergência com o general McChrystal. Para Ariana Huffington, fundadora do Huffington Post, «se Obama escolher a estratégia do general McChrytal, e aprovar um reforço de 40 mil homens contra a opinião do seu vice-presidente, Joe Biden devia demitir-se».
O Presidente está em reflexão e ainda não anunciou quando vai tomar as grandes decisões para o AfPak. Para já, só se sabe uma coisa. «Não será para os próximos dias», responde, lacónico, Robert Gibbs, porta-voz da Casa Branca.
Até agora, o notável poder oratório de Obama tem sido capaz de resolver os problemas mais complicados. Mas a espada afegã não se amacia com discursos eloquentes. Como resolverá Barack este dilema?
Obama quer saber como foi possível que o casal de penetras do 'jet set' da Virgínia conseguiu furar a segurança no 'state dinner'na Casa Branca
Um artigo de Nia-Malika Henderson, no Politico.com:
«President Barack Obama has ordered a full review into how a Virginia couple managed to make their way into the White House for last week's state dinner without an invitation, even getting so far as to meet the president in the official receiving line, according to a White House official.
Three days after a pair of Virginia socialites and reality TV wannabes crashed the administration's first state dinner, the White House acknowledged for the first time Friday that they met Obama himself at the event – raising even more questions about whether the breach could have posed a security risk.
“The men and women of the Secret Service put their lives on the line everyday to protect us, they are heroes and they have the full confidence of the President of United States,” said White House spokesman Nick Shapiro in a statement issued Friday evening. “The White House asked the United States Secret Service to do a full review and they are doing that. The United States Secret Service said they made a mistake and they are taking action to identify exactly what happened and they will take the appropriate measures pending the results of their investigation.”
The White House and the U.S. Secret Service offered few details about how Tareq and Michaele Salahi, managed to end up in the receiving line.
So far, findings have revealed a breakdown at one of the security checkpoints, according to an agent, and criminal charges against the Salahis are still a possibility, according to authorities.
On Friday, according to several reports, Secret Service agents visited a Virginia winery owned by the Tareq Salahi's parents, who agents spoke with. The couple, who live in Front Royal, was not there.
A woman who answered the phone at the winery in Hume, Va., refused to comment about the visit.
The couple initially boasted of their exploits on their Facebook page – where they posted pictures of themselves with Vice President Joe Biden and other dignitaries at the event.
The Salahis, aspiring reality television stars who pulled off what appears to be a state dinner first, will tell their side of the story on Monday during a sit-down with CNN's Larry King Live.
Their lawyer, Paul W. Gardner posted a message to the couple's Facebook page saying that his clients were cleared in by the White House.
Secret Service spokesman Jim Mackin said that there is nothing in the investigation so far to indicate that the couple, who was trailed by a crew from Bravo’s reality TV show, "Real Housewives" for much of the day, was waved in by the White House.
The episode has proven deeply embarrassing for the White House and the Secret Service.
"The Secret Service is deeply concerned and embarrassed by the circumstances surrounding the State Dinner on Tuesday, November 24. The preliminary findings of our internal investigation have determined established protocols were not followed at an initial checkpoint, verifying that two individuals were on the guest list," said Secret Service Director, Mark Sullivan. "Although these individuals went through magnetometers and other levels of screening, they should have been prohibited from entering the event entirely. That failing is ours."
Further details about the extent of that failing are expected to be released sometime next week, according to Mackin.
The White House referred most questions to the Secret Service, but sources familiar with procedures during big White House events said that typically someone from the Office of the Social Secretary would be at one of the secret service checkpoints just in case there is any confusion. While rare, guests can be inadvertently left off a list, the source said.
Responding to a question about whether her staff was represented at any of the checkpoints, Social Secretary Desiree Rogers, told AP: "We were not." Yet there were also no attempts by agents at the checkpoint to contact the social office, a source said.
NBC News anchor, Brian Williams, an invited guest, saw the couple arrive by car at the East Gate of the White House, yet said the Salahi's vehicle was turned away.
"Actually the first ring of Secret Service security had worked," Williams said on Thursday's nightly broadcast. "After their vehicle was turned away, they hopped out. What attracted our attention was there was at least one camera trailing them. And a makeup woman got out and fixed the woman’s hair and then started powdering the man's forehead."
The couple then went to the pedestrian entrance and what happened at that security checkpoint is the focus of the inquiry. What the couple said to gain entry to the White House is unclear.
From that checkpoint, the couple likely walked into the East Wing visitor entrance and were greeted by military aides. Facebook photos show Michaele Tareq posing with three men in military dress—and someone from the White House social office was likely on hand to greet them as well.
The couple was swept by security at that point but no longer had to show identification once they were in the White House, a source familiar with the procedure said.
The Virginia socialites then walked by a crew of photographers and reporters about 45 minutes before the dinner started, posed for pictures and then likely went upstairs to the reception. The White House said they were never seated at the dinner.
Criminal charges against the couple, who posted pictures of themselves posing in the tent on the South Lawn with chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel, are still a possibility.
"We are not ruling anything out we just need to let the investigation proceed," Mackin said. "We need to verify and make sure we talk to everybody involved."
Mackin stressed that the couple was swept for weapons, yet Ronald Kessler, author of "In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes With Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect," said a metal detector search couldn’t offer full protection.
"There are so many ways to kill a person other than coming in with a weapon," Kessler said on CNN. "Once they were in, they could have grabbed a knife and put it through the heart of the president."
During his campaign for the White House, Barack Obama was assigned secret service in May of 2007 because of security concerns -- the earliest of any candidate in history.»
"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end"*
Being the compulsive blogger that I am, an end-of-the-year post is unavoidable. Because I have spent most of the morning finishing my homily for the first Sunday of Advent, I am kind of drained. It seems like there is always something to do. For the most part I am grateful for that, as having too much time on my hands (to quote the old Styx song) is dangerous for me.
Over the past several days I have been reading the first volume of Eugene H. Peterson's projected five volume spiritual theology (four volumes are published), which takes its title from a line in a sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins: Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology. This book doesn't take my breath away, it gives me breath, that is, inspires me. I have been resisting the temptation to just fill my blog with insights from this very credible tome.
It is appropriate as we prepare to embark on a new year of grace to remember that "[w]orship is the primary means for forming us as participants in God's work, but if the blinds are drawn while we wait for Sunday, we aren't in touch with the work that God is actually doing" (pg. 71). Why? Because as Manley Hopkins so beautifully observed:
"Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not his,
To the Father through the features of men's faces."
*title from the song Closing Time by Semisonic
Over the past several days I have been reading the first volume of Eugene H. Peterson's projected five volume spiritual theology (four volumes are published), which takes its title from a line in a sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins: Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology. This book doesn't take my breath away, it gives me breath, that is, inspires me. I have been resisting the temptation to just fill my blog with insights from this very credible tome.
It is appropriate as we prepare to embark on a new year of grace to remember that "[w]orship is the primary means for forming us as participants in God's work, but if the blinds are drawn while we wait for Sunday, we aren't in touch with the work that God is actually doing" (pg. 71). Why? Because as Manley Hopkins so beautifully observed:
"Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not his,
To the Father through the features of men's faces."
*title from the song Closing Time by Semisonic
"She's a good girl..."
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers singing Free Fallin' is our Friday traditio. I'm not really sure why, but this came to me this morning walking down the hallway in my house. "I'm gonna free fall out into nothin', I'm gonna leave this world for awhile..." For me this song is hauntingly lovely and puts me in mind of the ultimate emptiness that results from the pursuit of a (self-)deceptive kind of personal autonomy, the kind I pursued from my early to mid-20s. It never had any substance or content, but was attractive anyways, it drew me away from reality, from the concrete reality of my own life. I renounced this when I was baptized and I rejected Satan and all his empty promises. I think free fallin' captures this zeitgeist perfectly.
Obama anuncia terça-feira o que vai fazer no AfPak
«Reporting from Washington - President Obama will roll out his new strategy for the Afghanistan war during a televised speech Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern time from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the White House said.
Obama, who has presided over at least nine meetings of his senior advisers devoted to the war, is expected to announce higher troop levels for Afghanistan while also detailing a plan for ultimately withdrawing U.S. forces and handing over security responsibilities to the Afghan government.
In announcing Obama's address to the nation, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that Obama has no appetite for an indefinite military presence in Afghanistan.
"We're in the ninth year of our efforts in Afghanistan," Gibbs told reporters in his White House office. "The president will want to walk through his decision-making process and give people a sense of the importance of our efforts, but reiterate for them that the president does not see this as an open-ended engagement."
He added: "Our time there will be limited, and I think that's important for people to understand."
Before traveling to West Point on Tuesday, Obama will privately brief members of Congress about his decision. The White House has asked the television networks for airtime.
For a president facing a raft of domestic and foreign policy challenges, Afghanistan is among the thorniest. Polls show the war to be unpopular, with Americans eager for an exit strategy. Liberal Democrats who comprise Obama's political base are loath to see him commit more troops.
Yet Obama's ground commander has said at least 40,000 more military personnel are needed for the mission to succeed. Presently, about 68,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Afghanistan. Obama himself has described Afghanistan as a crucial battleground in the effort to defeat Al Qaeda terrorists.
Obama has undertaken a weeks-long review process of strategy in Afghanistan, while Republican opponents have accused him of "dithering."
With lives at stake, Obama has said he did not want to rush the decision.
Gibbs said that "throughout this process, the president has repeatedly pushed and prodded not simply for, as I've said, how are we going to get a certain number of troops in, but what is the strategy? What has to be implemented ultimately to get them out?"
Whatever the number of new troops sent to the region, Obama has indicated he is determined to complete the mission in Afghanistan. At a news conference on Tuesday he said, "I've also indicated that, after eight years, some of those years in which we did not have, I think, either the resources or the strategy to get the job done, it is my intention to finish the job."»
in LA Times
Giving thanks
I'd love to have something really profound to write today, but I keep coming back to simple gratitude. I really don't think anything I could write, say, paint, photograph, or film would capture my gratitude exactly, or even really come close. I keep coming back to the unavoidable fact that God insists I show my gratitude in how I live, living for others, being kind, patient, taking the initiative instead of waiting, returning good for evil, forgiving, letting go of grudges and hurts. It is funny that I'd rather express my gratitude in some other way, no doubt because it is far easier than living!
I love that Eucharist means giving thanks. Jesus Christ is our Eucharist, showing us that we give thanks to God by laying our lives down for others. The list of people, events, and things for which I am grateful would go on and on. Most of all I am grateful for God's great love for me, which is made real in the person of Jesus Christ, for my wife who shows me Christ-like love everyday in her many selfless acts. I am grateful for five children, whose imperfections largely flow from my own. I am grateful for those I am privleged to serve in my ministry (a word that means service). I am also grateful for life's challenges, setbacks, and sufferings. Being born again, recreated, has to be painful at times in order to be real.
I love that Eucharist means giving thanks. Jesus Christ is our Eucharist, showing us that we give thanks to God by laying our lives down for others. The list of people, events, and things for which I am grateful would go on and on. Most of all I am grateful for God's great love for me, which is made real in the person of Jesus Christ, for my wife who shows me Christ-like love everyday in her many selfless acts. I am grateful for five children, whose imperfections largely flow from my own. I am grateful for those I am privleged to serve in my ministry (a word that means service). I am also grateful for life's challenges, setbacks, and sufferings. Being born again, recreated, has to be painful at times in order to be real.
The particular holiness of Karol Józef Wojtyła: the role of mortification in spiritual practice
Today it was publicly made known and basically confirmed that Pope John Paul II engaged in the penitential practice of self-flagellation from time-to-time. The initial report appears in London's Telegraph newspaper. As might be expected, much is being made of this and not for the better, just like when it was disclosed by her confessor and spiritual director that after a certain point in her life Blessed Teresa of Calcutta no longer felt God's presence interiorly.
It is important to note that John Paul II did not propose this practice as something to be engaged in by everyone, or even by many, and certainly not by most. In fact, he never spoke publicly about it. Therefore, it constitutes nothing more than a part of his private spirituality, his deep, intense, and very personal relationship with God. The scandal arises from within a culture in which any sort of penitential practice for the purpose of putting sin to death is deemed ludicrous, even among most Catholics. This is very evident this time of year, when we leap Advent with a single bound in order to get to Christmas. After all, Advent has a penitential character and many Advent practices call for moderation, fasting, and increased prayer, which are typically the last things on anyone's mind as we wander the malls inundated by secular holiday songs while gorging ourselves. As a result, we lose Christmas as a season, one that runs from the Feast of the Nativity to Epiphany or the Baptism of Lord. By that time, we have cleaned up, taken our loot, and started to make our list for next year.
Even for those who pray the rosary on a regular basis, do we just glance over the Sorrowful Mysteries, the second of which is Jesus being whipped and scourged at the pillar, a mystery we contemplate as we ask for the gift of purity? Meditating on this mystery and its fruit should put us in mind of thought patterns and behaviors in our own lives that need to be mortified, put to death, killed. For example, most of us balk at the idea of abstaining from meat on Fridays, even during Lent when it is obligatory, let alone the rest of the year when it still constitutes the normative way of observing Friday, the day on which our Lord was crucified, as a day of penance! How many people even fast one hour prior to Mass, as we are also obligated to do? How many of us really and truly make an effort to fast on obligatory days, which for we Latins is only two days a year?
It should come as no shock that the disclosure, which was made as part of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints' investigation into his life, being conducted as part of the effort to have him declared a saint, reveals that he seemed to engage in the practice regularly prior to ordaining priests and bishops. Again, how many of us fast and increase our prayer before something like that, before being confirmed, or going to confession, or getting married? I honestly do not know the answer to those questions, but I am confident that some people do. Again, I am certainly not advocating that anyone incorporate self-flagellation into their lives and spiritual practice, let's work on praying daily and fasting and abstaining regularly, just living what throughout most of the church's history has been known as a Christian life, consisting of the regular and routine practice of the spiritual disciplines. The practice of self-flagellation is, indeed, extreme, but not utterly insane in every instance. For someone to decide to take up such a practice as a result of reading a news report, a magazine article, or a blog post would reveal a great deal of spiritual immaturity, not to mention an utter lack of discernment. In fact, no intense mortifying practice, even extra or extended fasting, should be undertaken without the guidance of a spiritual director who knows what s/he is doing.
For Eastern Christians it is customary to meet with their priest, or their spiritual director, prior to the Nativity Fast and the fast of Great Lent to determine what practice is appropriate for them, given where they are spiritually and the exigencies of their lives. While there are certain universal practices (prayer, fasting, alms-giving) and even customary times to perform them more intensely and intentionally (Advent, Lent, Fridays and even Wednesdays), one size does not fit all. By the same token, there are some sizes so peculiar that they fit very, very few. Nonetheless, these few do something valuable for the rest of us.
Papa Wojtyła, pray for us!
It is important to note that John Paul II did not propose this practice as something to be engaged in by everyone, or even by many, and certainly not by most. In fact, he never spoke publicly about it. Therefore, it constitutes nothing more than a part of his private spirituality, his deep, intense, and very personal relationship with God. The scandal arises from within a culture in which any sort of penitential practice for the purpose of putting sin to death is deemed ludicrous, even among most Catholics. This is very evident this time of year, when we leap Advent with a single bound in order to get to Christmas. After all, Advent has a penitential character and many Advent practices call for moderation, fasting, and increased prayer, which are typically the last things on anyone's mind as we wander the malls inundated by secular holiday songs while gorging ourselves. As a result, we lose Christmas as a season, one that runs from the Feast of the Nativity to Epiphany or the Baptism of Lord. By that time, we have cleaned up, taken our loot, and started to make our list for next year.Even for those who pray the rosary on a regular basis, do we just glance over the Sorrowful Mysteries, the second of which is Jesus being whipped and scourged at the pillar, a mystery we contemplate as we ask for the gift of purity? Meditating on this mystery and its fruit should put us in mind of thought patterns and behaviors in our own lives that need to be mortified, put to death, killed. For example, most of us balk at the idea of abstaining from meat on Fridays, even during Lent when it is obligatory, let alone the rest of the year when it still constitutes the normative way of observing Friday, the day on which our Lord was crucified, as a day of penance! How many people even fast one hour prior to Mass, as we are also obligated to do? How many of us really and truly make an effort to fast on obligatory days, which for we Latins is only two days a year?
It should come as no shock that the disclosure, which was made as part of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints' investigation into his life, being conducted as part of the effort to have him declared a saint, reveals that he seemed to engage in the practice regularly prior to ordaining priests and bishops. Again, how many of us fast and increase our prayer before something like that, before being confirmed, or going to confession, or getting married? I honestly do not know the answer to those questions, but I am confident that some people do. Again, I am certainly not advocating that anyone incorporate self-flagellation into their lives and spiritual practice, let's work on praying daily and fasting and abstaining regularly, just living what throughout most of the church's history has been known as a Christian life, consisting of the regular and routine practice of the spiritual disciplines. The practice of self-flagellation is, indeed, extreme, but not utterly insane in every instance. For someone to decide to take up such a practice as a result of reading a news report, a magazine article, or a blog post would reveal a great deal of spiritual immaturity, not to mention an utter lack of discernment. In fact, no intense mortifying practice, even extra or extended fasting, should be undertaken without the guidance of a spiritual director who knows what s/he is doing.
For Eastern Christians it is customary to meet with their priest, or their spiritual director, prior to the Nativity Fast and the fast of Great Lent to determine what practice is appropriate for them, given where they are spiritually and the exigencies of their lives. While there are certain universal practices (prayer, fasting, alms-giving) and even customary times to perform them more intensely and intentionally (Advent, Lent, Fridays and even Wednesdays), one size does not fit all. By the same token, there are some sizes so peculiar that they fit very, very few. Nonetheless, these few do something valuable for the rest of us.
Papa Wojtyła, pray for us!
Vespers Homily Year B Solemnity of Christ the King
Reading: Revelation 1:5-8
Jesus Christ is, indeed, "the faithful witness" of God because by his Incarnation he fully reveals God to us. Only because he conquered humanity’s most feared enemy, death, is he the ruler of the kings of the earth, far superior in power to even the most exalted earthly ruler. His rising from the dead is the seal of all that is claimed about him and all he claims for himself. On this last Sunday of yet another year of grace, we look forward to the time when he will return in glory, to judge the living and the dead. In the interim between now and then, as his priestly people, consecrated by baptism and continually strengthened by the Eucharist, it is our task to bring about the kingdom that will be fully realized only when he returns, when it will be made to known to all that he truly is the universal king, whom the Father has given dominion over all things.
We are his priestly people only because he loves us, because he freed us from our sins by the shedding of his own blood. His love for us, shown by his dying and rising for us, is the only power that makes him king. But let’s not forget that God- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit- is love and that love is the reason anything exists at all, love is what made the universe, love sustains the universe, and love will redeem and ultimately sanctify creation, making it what it is intended and ordered to be: a communion of love.
As cosmic as Christ’s kingship is, encompassing literally everything that is, was, and ever will be, it is important for us to remember something that Eugene Peterson said recently, namely that "Trinity’ is our theological symbol for insisting that nothing of God…can be understood in an impersonal way." He goes on to remind us that "[e]verything God does and says is personal and can be received only in a personal way." This certainly includes the kingship of Christ. The importance of Peterson’s reminder on this solemnity is simple: It does not matter if Jesus Christ is king of the universe if you do not enthrone him as king of your heart, which is where he most longs to live and reign forever. In all of creation, only the human heart is free to reject or accept the kingship of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ is, indeed, "the faithful witness" of God because by his Incarnation he fully reveals God to us. Only because he conquered humanity’s most feared enemy, death, is he the ruler of the kings of the earth, far superior in power to even the most exalted earthly ruler. His rising from the dead is the seal of all that is claimed about him and all he claims for himself. On this last Sunday of yet another year of grace, we look forward to the time when he will return in glory, to judge the living and the dead. In the interim between now and then, as his priestly people, consecrated by baptism and continually strengthened by the Eucharist, it is our task to bring about the kingdom that will be fully realized only when he returns, when it will be made to known to all that he truly is the universal king, whom the Father has given dominion over all things.
We are his priestly people only because he loves us, because he freed us from our sins by the shedding of his own blood. His love for us, shown by his dying and rising for us, is the only power that makes him king. But let’s not forget that God- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit- is love and that love is the reason anything exists at all, love is what made the universe, love sustains the universe, and love will redeem and ultimately sanctify creation, making it what it is intended and ordered to be: a communion of love.
As cosmic as Christ’s kingship is, encompassing literally everything that is, was, and ever will be, it is important for us to remember something that Eugene Peterson said recently, namely that "Trinity’ is our theological symbol for insisting that nothing of God…can be understood in an impersonal way." He goes on to remind us that "[e]verything God does and says is personal and can be received only in a personal way." This certainly includes the kingship of Christ. The importance of Peterson’s reminder on this solemnity is simple: It does not matter if Jesus Christ is king of the universe if you do not enthrone him as king of your heart, which is where he most longs to live and reign forever. In all of creation, only the human heart is free to reject or accept the kingship of Jesus Christ.
Barómetro: pela primeira vez, abaixo dos 50%
É um sinal de alarme na Taxa de Popularidade do Presidente: pela primeira vez desde a tomada de posse, Barack recebe níveis de aprovação abaixo dos 50 por cento.
SONDAGEM QUINNIPIAC UNIVERSITY
-- Aprovação: 48%
-- Reprovação: 42%
Nota: os dados foram recolhidos na semana de 9 a 16 de Novembro. Pela mesma altura, no entanto, houve estudos da CNN/Opinion Research Corporation, da ABC/Washington Post e da CBS a darem, respectivamente, 55, 56 e 53 por cento de aprovação — valores que se situam na esfera do que têm sido os últimos meses de Presidência Obama
The Solemnity of Christ the King
The last Sunday of the liturgical year marks the Solemnity of Christ the King. So, let's turn to to the preface for the Eucharistic Prayer for this solemnity:
"Father, all-powerful and ever-living God,
we do well always and everywhere to give you thanks.
You anointed Jesus Christ, your only Son, with the oil of gladness,
as the eternal priest and universal king.
As king he claims dominion over all creation,
that he may present to you, his almighty Father,
an eternal and universal kingdom:
a kingdom of truth and life,
a kingdom of holiness and grace,
a kingdom of justice, love, and peace..."
Enthrone Him as King of your heart, devote yourself to waiting in joyful hope for His glorious return!
Hillary Clinton: como ela se tornou secretária de Estado
Um artigo de fundo da Vogue, escrito por Jonathan Van Meter, com fotografias de Annie Leibovitz:
«It is a dreary morning in early October in Washington, D.C., and perhaps because Hillary Rodham Clinton is wearing a black Oscar de la Renta suit on such a colorless day, she seems somber. I had trailed her for nearly two weeks this summer in Africa and then again in New York during the United Nations General Assembly, and I had grown accustomed to seeing her in the vivid suits she favors. Africa is nothing if not colorful, and so not only did bright red or teal or periwinkle seem situation-appropriate, but her clothes somehow matched her demeanor, which was almost uniformly cheerful. Sometimes the color/mood connection was made overt: One morning, as her motorcade arrived at the U.N. for a panel on violence against women and girls, she stepped out of a shiny black luxury sedan in a red suit and was met by Esther Brimmer, her Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, also wearing red. "Good morning, Esther," said Clinton. "I see you got the color memo."
Today's memo? Not today. When she walks into one of the many grand diplomatic reception rooms on the eighth floor of "the Building," as everyone calls the State Department, she is clutching a big mug of milky coffee and is wearing no makeup. She looks tired and cranky. She is about to tape three I'm-sorry-I-can't-be-with-you-here-this-evening videos for events she can't attend. This is obligatory drudge work, to be sure, but it's drudgery that requires her to suck it up and find that extra gear: She must be on. Clinton says hello to the group—not her usual effervescent eye-popping hello but a barely mustered blanket nicety. She sits where she is told, facing a teleprompter, and her ever-present and very chic deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, hands her a small case filled with cosmetics. Holding a compact, Clinton puts on mascara, lipstick, blush, and a little powder. She yanks her jacket straight, affixes her mic, and signals she is ready by sitting up and staring directly into the camera. And—click!—just like that, the public Hillary appears: upbeat, reassuring, in control, wide awake, means business. She nails all three videos in one take. Done. Next.
She walks into the adjoining ballroom, where she has been keeping Katie Couric waiting, and sits down to do a lengthy and tough interview on the war in Afghanistan and President Obama's agonizing decision-making process. Not surprisingly, her mastery of the issues is dazzling. Even Couric is blown away. In fact, Clinton is so clearheaded on the subject, so eloquent, that it raises the question: Why hasn't Hillary Clinton been more out in front on the most troubling foreign-policy issues of the day?
During the first several months of Clinton's tenure, there were a lot of raised eyebrows over the fact that she seemed to have a weirdly low profile for the highest-ranking member of the president's Cabinet and the leading spokesperson for the nation's foreign policy. Some even suggested that it was the administration's intention, or that her power was somehow diminished by the fact that there were so many special envoys: Richard Holbrooke for Afghanistan/Pakistan, Dennis Ross for Iran, and George Mitchell for the Middle East. "It's just dead wrong," says Madeleine Albright, who reminds me that appointing the envoys was Clinton's idea. "This is the thing that people have to understand about her. She is not into 'I have to be the one front and center.' She wants to solve the problem!"
In recent months, much of the grumbling has dissipated as she has recovered from an unfortunately timed broken elbow, gotten her bearings in the job (Ross has since left his Iran posting, allowing Clinton to take the lead with that crisis), and appeared on television with greater regularity. Although it is still hard to get the real measure of her success, her initial accomplishments and dedication to the president are compelling people to see her in a new light. From her first trip, to Asia in February, through the more than 30 countries she has visited since, Clinton has at the very least proved how focused and indefatigable she is; and while there may not have been much on the line in Africa, her itinerary just underscored the point. "You could define the trip by what she didn't do," says Johnnie Carson, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of African Affairs. "No sightseeing, no museums, no shopping." There's also the fact that so many Clinton-administration veterans are on the national-security team, folks like Tom Donilon and Dennis Ross. More recently, her biggest triumph to date came during her moment of "limousine diplomacy," when she saved the Turkey/Armenia accord at the last minute. Still, over time she is going to "need a big win that's all hers," says someone who has covered Clinton for years.
But there is one other thing that lends her an aura of success, an echo from her days in the Senate: She plays well with others, especially older Republican men. The night before the Couric grilling, she did a rare joint interview with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates onstage in an auditorium at George Washington University; it aired as an hour-long CNN special. At the beginning of the interview, Gates marveled over how well the two get along. "You know, most of my career, the Secretary of State and Defense weren't speaking to one another," he said. He chalked up their fruitful partnership to his own deference to Clinton's rank. "I think it starts with the Secretary of Defense being willing to acknowledge that the Secretary of State is the principal spokesperson for United States foreign policy. Once you get over that hurdle, the rest kind of falls into place."
The evening was a reminder of something about Clinton: She is tough—more hawkish than most liberals; she's comfortable with war talk in a boys'-club environment. "I think Hillary now prides herself on the fact that she's part of the gravitas team," says Chuck Todd, the NBC News chief White House correspondent. "Her, Joe Biden, Bob Gates…the over-60 crowd." But it was also a reminder of something else: She is a rock star. Students camped out in line for hours to get tickets to the event, which sold out in minutes. When she first appeared onstage the audience leaped to their feet, and the applause was deafening. "They weren't cheering Bob Gates," said a fellow in uniform sitting next to me. And despite the gravity of the occasion, a young woman bellowed at the top of her lungs, "I love you, Hilllllary!!!!," as if she were at a Lady Gaga concert. Seeming to acknowledge her superstar status, Clinton made a crack at the very end of the proceedings, saying that Gates had served most of his 43 years in public service "in secret" (referring to his CIA days). "And I have no secrets." The crowd roared with laughter.
The Harry S. Truman Building, where the State Department is housed, is a monstrosity—a huge lump of stone and glass that overwhelms and defines the Washington neighborhood of Foggy Bottom. Built in the late thirties, it occupies 2.1 million square feet and houses some 8,000 employees and has 43 elevators. The interior has all the charm of a psychiatric hospital. So when the elevator door opens onto the eighth floor—Hillary Clinton's new supersize domain—I am surprised by the grandeur, so at odds with the rest of the building. It's no White House, but it sure beats the Russell Senate Office Building.
I am relieved to hear that our interview will be held over lunch in a private dining room, the Madison Room, along with Huma Abedin and her Michael Clayton-esque image man and fixer, Philippe Reines. She will be taking her time eating, unrushed. As we sit down, Clinton tells me that she had the furniture rearranged in this room when she arrived at State so that the table would be closer to the window. "The best view in Washington," she says, and she is right. When we stepped out onto the loggia earlier, just as the sun was coming out, to take in the sweeping vista from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument, I got crazy-patriotic-spooky seat-of-power goose bumps.
After a bit of spirited chitchat about the TV show Mad Men ("That's how it was!" she says. "That's why the women's-liberation movement was so shocking. It was like news from outer space") and some ill-advised foreign-policy questions on my part, which seemed to bore her, Clinton's mood turned on a dime as soon as I shifted the focus to her—her life and her feelings. When I ask her if she can walk me through her career from First Lady, senator, and presidential candidate to Secretary of State, in terms of level of difficulty, job satisfaction, and public scrutiny, she lets out an amazing peal of high-pitched giggles. "They are such different experiences!" she says, still laughing. "It's like looking at this fruit salad. Do I like peaches better than I like plums better than kiwis?" But then, like the lawyer she was trained to be, she answers me, going through each of the stages of her hugely public life, methodically, clearly, succinctly. But when she gets to the Secretary of State part, she surprises me.
"I was stunned after the election when President Obama asked me to consider this," she says. "I really was very unconvinced. I did not think it was the right thing to do. I didn't want to do it. I just really had a lot of doubts, and I kept suggesting other people: Well, how about this person! How about that person! This one would be really good! But then a friend of mine called me and basically said, 'How would you have felt if you'd been elected and you'd called him and asked him to do this?' And that really made a big impression on me. How do you say no? And so…I said yes. And here I am." She laughs and picks up her fork and stabs a kiwi out of her fruit salad and pops it in her mouth.
I ask whether she knew that Obama was going to invite her to join his administration. "Philippe kept saying, 'He's going to offer you Secretary of State.' I said, 'Philippe, that is ridiculous! It is absurd.' " "I witnessed it," says Huma.
"You witnessed it," says Clinton, shaking her head in disbelief.
"Not going to happen, not in a million years," says Philippe, gently mocking his boss's reaction at the time.
"Not going to happen," says Clinton.
"Fun days," says Philippe.
"For you, maybe," says Clinton with a mordant laugh.
As Clinton's staffers later tell me, this is the short version of the story. The long version—a drama that unfolded over about ten days—says a lot about Clinton's state of mind after the election. It is a story that has not been given a full airing until now, and one that requires that we go back for a moment, to what was one of the most exciting—and competitive—presidential primaries in U.S. history.
The Clinton folks say that there were some ugly moments during the campaign that really stung, things that were hard to forgive, but, says one staffer, "far fewer than you would think. The campaigns, especially the hierarchies, disliked each other far more intensely than the candidates ever did." Obama reportedly chided his staff for making fun of Clinton when she cried in New Hampshire: "Give her a break. You don't know what it's like." Another person said this: "She was a pain in the ass, taking him the distance, but she definitely made him a better candidate. And the truth is, it's that very attribute of not getting out, that resiliency, that doggedness that he saw—that's what led him to pick her. If she had left the race any earlier, I don't think she'd be Secretary of State." (On her desk at the State Department is a plaque inscribed with Winston Churchill's famous admonition: NEVER, NEVER, NEVER GIVE UP.)
Hillary ended her candidacy in June and began campaigning for Obama, often with Bill. Even so, according to Clinton staffers, until the convention a lot of bad blood remained between the camps. It has been reported that it had been a nagging part of the VP-selection process for the Democrats. Obama would say, "Are we thinking enough about Hillary? Why are we dismissing her?" But there were simply too many raw feelings. Last year in early August, when I interviewed senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett in her Chicago office (where she had pointedly taken down her Clinton photos), she described the political marriage as "one big happy family." Really? "I mean that! All will be…all is improving dramatically. I think both Barack and Michelle have had wonderful conversations with Senator Clinton, and she's pledged to be helpful, and he's pledged to help her with her debt. But it was a tough primary. And it was long."
At the convention in Denver, Clinton gave the speech of her life and then went down on the floor and, in a very emotional moment, called off voting, convincingly throwing her weight behind Obama. "She was sucking it up," says one of her aides. "She was doing what was right for the party and for the country. And it was so transparent. You couldn't ascribe any other motive to it." One staffer was with her in Denver when she bumped into Michelle Obama the day after her speech. "And Michelle said, 'That was great,' and they had a little moment. After that, they started to speak. Say whatever you want to say about the Clintons, but they are poster parents for successfully raising a child in the White House, and I think they started talking on that basis: I have kids; we have to uproot them." (In September, Michelle and Hillary shared their first meal at the White House. "I had lunch with her in the Yellow Oval Room on the second floor, and we talked as we have in the past about how her girls were doing and getting adjusted and how the dog was doing, all the day-to-day matters of life," Clinton told me. "But we also talked about what she was doing to encourage better life habits, particularly around eating and exercise, which I think is a big deal. I think it's a very good cause for her to champion." When I ask Clinton what she thinks of Michelle's supporting young fashion designers, she says, "She can carry it off and she enjoys it, so more power to her.")
Once Clinton recovered from the disappointment of losing, she became genuinely excited about returning to the Senate. Even more, she was looking forward to going "home," as she told me. But just a few days after Obama's election, Clinton aides started hearing rumblings—from reporters and people connected to Obama's transition team—that the president was going to ask Clinton to be his Secretary of State. When they told her, she just laughed. Nonsense! And then over the weekend the rumblings turned to "credible intelligence," as one person put it. Clinton spoke to the president briefly that Sunday evening, but she remained unconvinced, partly because all he said to her was "I want to talk to you" and partly because of a misunderstanding between their schedulers that suggested a lack of urgency. So when Clinton flew to Chicago that Thursday and was offered the job, she was, as she says, "stunned."
"Even during the toughest part of the primary he told me how much he respected her," says Valerie Jarrett. "Early on in the primary I had a sense that if things worked out favorably for him, he would want to have her close."
Clinton now had to decide—quickly—whether she wanted the job, whether she could take on the job, and there were some major sticking points. For one, her campaign had been $24 million in debt. Clinton had written off the $13 million she had lent the campaign, and after raising donations she was left with another $10 million that had to be retired—a very tall order. Were she to become Secretary of State, she would be forbidden by law to campaign on her own behalf, and the best asset she had for extinguishing the debt was herself. The other impediment to Clinton's confirmation was her husband's foundation work. As one staffer told me, "The press made it about conflict of interest and their work overlapping. The truth is, she didn't want any of his good works to have to be scaled back because of what she was doing. I wasn't there, but President Clinton said something to her like 'The good you will do as Secretary of State will more than outweigh whatever work I have to cut back on.' "
All of these hand-wringing calculations took place in the span of a few days, and for various reasons—those mentioned above, others known only to herself—Clinton wavered daily. This seesaw effect created what was described to me as a "boys against the girls" dynamic among her advisers. Reines and Andrew Shapiro, her foreign-affairs adviser in the Senate, were pushing her to take the job, reportedly through occasional "E-mails that bordered on the disrespectful," someone told me. On the other side were the women who have been Clinton's most trusted advisers for years: Maggie Williams, Cheryl Mills, who is now her chief of staff, and Capricia Marshall, all urging her not to accept.
Each time Clinton wavered, Obama would talk her through it again. "At the end of the day," says one of her aides, "it was the president who sold her on it. He didn't delegate it." Says another staffer, "They started talking about it substantively, looking around the globe, and they were basically in the same place. The things they disagreed about in the campaign? We didn't believe he was actually going to have coffee with Ahmadinejad. It was something he shouldn't have said in the campaign, and we pounced on it. The tiny differences in their foreign-policy ideas during the primaries evaporated during the general election."
But as the hours ticked by, it was becoming increasingly obvious to her staff that Clinton wasn't going to accept. Out of desperation and knowing that Joe Biden was "gung ho" about the idea of Clinton as Secretary of State, Reines and Shapiro lied to their boss that it was Biden's birthday (it was actually the next day) so that she would call him and he might sway her at the eleventh hour. They were throwing the kitchen sink at her, I was told, "grasping at straws."
Reines and Shapiro went to bed Wednesday night thinking she was getting ready to call the president to say she wasn't going to do it. "We went to work Thursday not just preparing for the worst but prepared," says Reines. "There was a statement. Waiting to push the button. And every minute that went by that it didn't happen, the air was coming out of it. And then you could just tell by mid-morning, something had changed. I remember Maggie Williams called. Huma said, 'This is crazy!,' which I could just tell, knowing Huma, that it was something big. And then Maggie called me and said, 'So there's been a little development…. ' " Clinton had decided to accept.
What finally changed her mind? "Obama wouldn't take no for an answer, and he was just very smart with her," says one of her aides. "He talked about it from the right place in the right way, helping her imagine what it would be like. And she said, OK, well, let's think about it some more. Eventually he was successful at convincing her. He would not let her off the hook. Knowing her and having worked with her—that button got pushed, that we-need-you-to-serve-your-country button."
The Secretary of State's plane is no Air Force One, but it's a pretty sweet ride. A reconfigured U.S. Air Force Boeing 757 that seats about 40 passengers, it is outfitted with a cabin for the secretary that is both an office and a bedroom. (Everyone wants to know: How does she do it? Turns out Clinton is a champion sleeper: She naps on command; she is impervious to jet lag.) Behind her cabin there is a secure first class-like cabin for her top staffers; this is followed by a cabin for diplomats and distinguished guests, and another where her secondary staff sit, including a traveling doctor (on this trip, a woman from Texas who looks like Jean Stapleton) and Clinton's interpreter, an eccentric little man who seems to speak every language known to mankind. And then behind that, there is a cabin for the diplomatic security team; then, in the very back, in the last few rows, the press, who are the only people on the plane who have to sit in coach seats three across—which, on this trip, an arduous twelve-day slog through seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa, means 21,496 miles. In coach.
Not surprisingly, the ten members of the traveling press are both the most fun people on the plane and the crankiest people on the plane. They also drink more, smoke more, eat more. And complain more. And obsess about what Hillary is wearing more. And discuss her good- and bad-hair days more. But most of all, they spin out theories about the imagined dynamics of Hillary's relationships with the two most important men in her life: Bill and Barack.
Our landing in Kenya—the homeland of Barack Obama's father—could not have been more perfectly scripted to drive this group bananas. Just as we are about to touch down after traveling for nearly seventeen hours, everyone's BlackBerrys glow to life, and all at once they are greeted with the news that Bill Clinton is in North Korea meeting with Kim Jong Il, negotiating the release of the two now-famous prisoners Euna Lee and Laura Ling. They are aghast. How could he? He's stealing Hillary's thunder! Obama had to have signed off on this! The timing is atrocious! Right at the beginning of her biggest trip as Secretary of State! Or so it goes in the back of the plane. But in some ways, the press reaction is all that counts, and in their world the upstaging is instantaneous and total.
There seems to be consensus among the reporters about something else: All of the worst things and all of the best things about being Hillary Clinton are in play as she leads the State Department into a new era. Many people, not just this group, think her Clinton baggage is a distraction, as evidenced by the fixation on Bill's North Korea trip. (This was also one of the worries many had about her becoming president.) Hill and Bill are ostensibly the first presidential couple to come of age in the OK! magazine era: We obsess over every scrap about their private lives in the same bizarre, compulsive way we do with Brad and Angelina.
In Africa, where Clinton has been on long multicountry trips three times in fifteen years, she is practically a deity. (The fact that she wrote a huge best-seller, It Takes a Village, based on an African concept does not hurt.) "I love the vitality and energy of the people of Africa, almost despite the circumstances that many of them find themselves facing," she tells me. "I'm absolutely engrossed in the fact that we all came from Africa. I find that just an amazing thought. I like the positive energy that a lot of people are projecting. But I also recognize that in some of the places we visited, you really are on the thin veil of what's best and what's worst about us as human beings."
As her 24-car motorcade sped through Nairobi, thousands lined the streets. Adoring crowds of women—dancing, singing, ululating, and holding handmade signs expressing their gratitude—were present at nearly every stop. Both of the Clintons are beloved across much of the continent, but it was the women turning up to touch Hillary who were so moving. I asked one woman in Cape Town why she loved Hillary Clinton. "Because she is an African woman," she said. "She stayed with her husband, she works hard, and she keeps her family together."
One of the refrains I kept hearing from reporters was Condi would never do this. Clinton, a woman from politics, knows how to work a crowd. Sometimes her motorcade would arrive and she would jump out and just plunge right in, getting out ahead of her security team, who often looked a little panicked. She danced her funky little dance at the dinners held in her honor (as seen on YouTube). In Cape Town, she threw a party for the press and drank with the best of us, talking for more than two hours, into the night, with surprising off-the-record candor about everything from her husband to her disdain for certain world leaders. She's fun. She laughs at herself. And she is full of surprisingly sharp, pointy little retorts, barbs, and comebacks. On several occasions she drifted to the back of the plane, allowing zesty debates to flower, often asking, "What's your take?" of different reporters, who hung on her every word. One of them told me his opinion of Hillary had completely turned around: "My parents hated her, and I thought she was a bitch who surrounded herself with horrible people. But she's nice! She's really frank and blunt and funny. One time she said to me, 'We need China.' Condi would never do that. I like her." Condoleezza Rice, I was told, almost never even came out of her cabin.
At one point I tell Clinton about the Condi-would-never-do-this mantra. "I don't know," she says with a look of distaste at the whole concept. "I think it's important in these jobs to be yourself. I believe very much in people-to-people diplomacy, getting beyond the leaders. I went to Uzbekistan about twelve years ago, and the then-ruler, Islam Karimov, who is still the ruler, was fascinated by my husband. He kept saying, 'Well, I see him on TV, he's always making speeches, he's always shaking hands. What's he doing?' I said, 'Well, that's a democracy, President Karimov. He works for the people, so you go out and see the people.' A lot of the people in some of the countries we've been in, they're not unabashed fans of the U.S., but you've got to reach out. You pick up all kinds of senses and feelings from doing that."
Does being a Clinton help?
"It helps enormously. Around the world, people will say, 'I remember when your husband came' or 'We haven't really made any progress since your husband was here.' There's just a lot of very positive feedback. It's a great door opener. And I have political experience that enables me to look at a leader and say, 'I understand your political problems. I've been in politics. I've had to run for election.' So when a leader tells me that he can't do something because a certain group wouldn't like it, I say, 'But that's what politics is about.' Look at what President Obama did. He organized from the grass roots; he created a political organization. That's what you have to do."
This was Clinton's message all over Africa: Stop complaining and get organized. It was a tough-love message delivered most forcefully (and successfully) in Kenya, in private with the leaders of the country; and she delivered it at the University of Nairobi, where the crowds outside were perhaps the biggest of the entire trip and where the students inside received the message with enthusiasm. In that auditorium, I was struck by Clinton's tone. It sounded like a speech that only a mother could give. Clinton has this innate ability to be almost but not quite hectoring, the sort of "Come on, get your act together, let's go!" that mothers deliver to children so effectively. Perhaps some countries are prepared to hear certain things only from a woman?
"It's a really interesting question," says Clinton. "In our country, having had Secretary Albright and Secretary Rice and now my filling this position, it's no big deal, having a woman do the job. But in much of the rest of the world there is a strong message. You can go to some countries and there's not a woman in the room. They don't even make the effort to give me the token woman minister. None. But whether it's true or fair, when women get elected to office, they believe they are imposing a different mind-set on the political and business climate of their countries. There's a lot of evidence that women are more focused on the future, more willing to see investments actually deliver results. And in lots of African countries the honorific for women is 'Mama.' So I had lots of people say to me, 'Mama, what about this; Mama, what about that?' "
There is a corollary to this aspect of Clinton that I noticed in Africa: She mothers the people around her. Janine Zacharia, a reporter for Bloomberg News, had burned herself while cooking a couple of days before the trip. As soon as Clinton saw her bandaged hand she made a fuss, asked her what happened, and wanted to know if she had everything she needed to take care of it. Another time, we were in Goma, in eastern Congo, at an outdoor press conference, and I was getting scorched under the hot sun. While Clinton was speaking, I tried to stealthily move under a tree for shade. When she was finished, she stepped off the stage and walked up to me. "Where's your hat?" she said, sounding just like my mother. "I forgot it," I said sheepishly. "Well, we'll get you one. Someone get Jonathan a hat!" On another occasion, I had foolishly eaten a salad in Liberia, and Clinton heard I was in my hotel room, very ill. The phone rang: "The secretary would like us to bring you some Cipro." A few minutes later her physician appeared at my door with drugs. She handed me the Cipro and another pill given to chemo patients so that they can stop vomiting long enough to take more drugs. "This stuff is very expensive," she said in her Texas drawl, "but we made sure to always travel with it ever since Bush, the father, puked all over the prime minister in Japan. I said, 'Not on my watch.' " After the doctor left, an aide appeared. "The secretary asked me to bring you this." It was a Sprite and a few slices of white bread.
There were so many strange and sublime moments on this trip: a woman farmer in a cornfield outside Nairobi squealing with delight when she met Clinton, "I am one of the women you speak about all the time! You are meeting me! And I have met Hillary Clinton!" A handshake from Sheikh Sharif, the president of Somalia, that clearly moved Clinton. "He was very touching," she says. "He had immense dignity, coming to me publicly, a representative of both the United States and a woman." A moment in Pretoria when a reporter asked the South African minister of foreign affairs, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane (who oddly enough looked a bit like Clinton in her robust bearing and bright colors), what has changed about South Africa's relations with the United States and she shot back with an edge in her voice, "The zeal and passion that Hillary Clinton brings to the relationship is what has changed!" Clinton speaking to a group of African businessmen: "Because people are poor doesn't mean that they don't have any money."
The most extraordinary day of the entire trip was a testament to this very idea, what Clinton calls "smart power," and it is something she is very passionate about: that the micro-economies of the poor are deeply important, and when the so-called soft issues—violence against women, food safety and agriculture, sustainable development—are not tended to, the result is chaos, instability, conflict, and war. The Victoria Mxenge housing development, a project outside Cape Town started by a few homeless women who were living on the side of the road with their children, has grown through microloans into a sprawling 50,000-home development. Clinton had visited as First Lady in 1997 and then brought President Clinton back a year later. When her motorcade arrived there on a glorious Saturday afternoon, she was met by a ragtag brass band that had a New Orleans vibe, women ululating at the top of their lungs, choral singers, and dancers, and it all added up to an explosion of joy—a happy chaos. Hundreds of people behind barricades screamed and pushed and reached out to touch Clinton as she ran along the line; some of the women were in tears. One of them yelled, "It is so nice to see you again!" Clinton was ebullient. Caroline Adler, a young State Department staffer, said, "She gets crowds wherever she goes. But this? This is unique. This feels like euphoria."
Two days later, the euphoria turned to hostility. Kinshasa was the only place in Africa where Clinton's charm and star power were useless—where the very fact of her being a Clinton worked against her. For more than a decade, the country has been devastated by war; 5.4 million people have died, the world's deadliest conflict since World War II. There is a lot of distrust of America among the Congolese people and bitter feelings about some of the Clinton administration's policies. So when Clinton appeared at a town-hall meeting with the former NBA star Dikembe Mutombo and launched into her tough-mother-love shtick, it seemed tone-deaf. When the students were given a chance to speak, their questions were uniformly angry and filled with suspicion. One of Clinton's advisers told me that Clinton often mirrors whomever she is addressing, and here was Exhibit A. Onstage in a hot, fetid room, she became testy. Just before the famous "meltdown" seen round the world, she said to one student, very sharply, "I'm only here to make a very simple point: We can either think about the past and be imprisoned by it, or we can decide we're going to have a better future and work to make it. That is the choice. We're not going to work with people who are looking backward, because that's not going to get us where we want to go."
And then came the question about China and the World Bank that included this: "From the mouth of Mrs. Clinton, can you tell us what's on the mind of Mr. Clinton?" Clinton pulled out her earpiece and snapped, "Wait! You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?" She glared at the student. "My husband is not Secretary of State; I am." She paused and then let rip again. "If you want my opinion, I will tell you my opinion. I am not going to be channeling my husband." It was not so much what she said but her tone that seemed to signal a sensitive nerve had been struck.
Clinton was brutalized in the press for days. Two words summed up the gist of the criticism: very undiplomatic. She has barely said a word about it since. When a reporter from The New York Times asked about it in a press conference in Liberia, he practically ducked. She didn't even bother to answer. But when we were still in Africa I asked her about it, reminding her that this wouldn't be published until December. "Well, it was a very aggressive mood in that auditorium," she said, surprising me. "The looks on people's faces…." She caught herself. "But on the one hand, I got it because they are so despairing. On the other hand, I just sensed a real disappointment in everybody, including the United States. Forget it. There's nothing anybody can do. Why are you even here? It was a very intense experience." I tell her that the question from the student made me cringe. "I'll tell you, it made me cringe. As you saw. And the actual text of the question was pretty clear in the way it was translated. But, you know, it was just one of those moments."
One aspect of the incident that went unreported is that Mutombo, a national hero in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who has invested millions in his country, swooped in and rescued Clinton from the long, awkward, stunned silence that followed her outburst. He defended her and put the students oh so gracefully in their place. "Madam Secretary say hope is something is in the sky," he said in his broken English. "Don't you hope that maybe one day you will have a better house and you'll have a better job, maybe you can go and find the way to help your mother and your father? My dad worked as a teacher making only $37. All he did is stress the education. And we used the education as a vehicle to move us forward, and that's why I'm here today sitting here. So you better have hope."
A speech right out of the Clinton playbook. As everyone was rushing out of the auditorium, Clinton came offstage and was approached by the student, and they had an amicable exchange. Outside, Clinton ran into Mutombo and said, "Oh, my God, I'm in love with you! I want a transcript of what you said. That's the message."
One Friday in late September I spent a day following the secretary through endless meetings during the United Nations General Assembly. It was the day of high drama at the U.N.—the day the world found out that Iran had a hidden nuclear facility in Qum. Clinton's good mood was unfazed. She joked at one point that the U.N. during this week, an annual occurrence, is like "a mosh pit." She walked around obsessing bemusedly about the fact that the same chemicals used to dye hair can be used to make a bomb, asking at one point, "Well, do you need a whole vat of it?"
I was also happy to see her taking delight in a favorite new colleague, David Miliband, the tall and dashing 44-year-old British foreign secretary. When I mentioned to her over lunch that I had spoken with him, she lit up. "Oh, my God!" I joked that I got a crush over the phone in about five seconds partly because of his accent, and she said, "Well, if you saw him it would be a big crush. I mean, he is so vibrant, vital, attractive, smart. He's really a good guy. And he's so young!"
For his part, Miliband seems smitten, too. "She applies intellect but also psychology to the dossiers that she's studying. She uses her experience in a very impressive way. She brings it to bear in a way that enriches a conversation but doesn't swamp it. She learns from history without being trapped by it. I think it's also important to say that she's delightful to deal with one on one. She's someone who laughs and can tease, and she's got perspective as well."
Early in the day Clinton's motorcade crept across town to the Sheraton, where her husband was putting on his annual Clinton Global Initiative. Hillary was to give a speech about food safety and was the day's big draw. When we arrived and went into the Green Room, she disappeared up a flight of stairs. About a half hour later she appeared with Bill and Chelsea. When she walked in and saw the faces of her staff, people who have worked with the Clintons for years, she said loudly, "Oh, my God! It's like a family reunion!" For this family, that is the strange truth. As they waited to go onstage together, the TV monitors showed a montage of video clips being played in the auditorium, many from speeches by both Clintons. Chelsea, looking so soigné in a flirty black dress and killer shoes, stuck close to her mother; Bill stood on the other side of the room, alone, staring at his notes.
They went out onstage to a standing ovation and roaring applause, and then Bill said, "I want to begin by expressing my extreme indebtedness to CGI, to all of you who have participated, for giving me the first chance I have had in a week to see Hillary." And then he said, "Most of what I know about what I do today I learned from her. She has become the best public servant our family has produced. I am very proud of her."
As I stood there, my mind wandered back to the end of the trip to Africa. The last stop was Liberia; Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the only woman president on the continent, and the two women have a deep affection for each other. Clinton gave a speech to the legislature that absolutely killed. "I spent two years and a lot of money running against President Obama, and he won. And then I went to work to elect him. And then, much to my amazement, he asked me to be his Secretary of State." The room erupted in applause. "And I must say that one of the most common questions I'm asked around the world, from Indonesia to Angola, is, How could you go to work for someone you were running against? I said, 'Because we both love our country.' " The audience leaped to its feet and cheered for nearly two minutes. As I looked around the room, there were men with tears running down their faces.
On the way home we land in Cape Verde to refuel and stay the night. We check into an all-inclusive resort that feels like a Sandals. The next morning, I am up at the crack of dawn. I wander down a long path to the ocean and take a swim. I am the only person in sight. On my way back, I see Clinton in the distance with just one security guy, heading toward the ocean. She, too, is going for a swim. It is a bittersweet moment: Hillary Clinton is doing something purely for pleasure, for herself, but she is doing it alone, in a place designed for couples.
Two hours later, my phone rings. Clinton would like to do the interview, the one that I've been requesting throughout the trip, now. I am picked up in my room and taken to an empty restaurant. A table is moved and staged, just for us. She comes into the room and is…a different person. For the first time in eleven days, she is no longer the Secretary of State, with coiffed hair and a brightly colored suit on. She is Hillary, a woman who just went for a swim in the ocean. Her hair, still wet, is pulled back with a white braided headband. She is wearing a navy blazer with white piping on the lapel and a silver-and-pearl choker. She is radiant. When I tell her she looks pretty, her thank-you is so heartfelt that I blush. Everyone around her—her staff, the press—talks about how she has become more attractive with age and that photographs do not tell the story. When you are around her you are constantly struck by her charisma, her vitality, her confidence. Everywhere she goes people tell her that she is prettier in person. It never ceases to amaze her staff. "People think it's a compliment," says one aide. "And then when they walk away, she's like, 'Well, what did they think before they met me?' "
As Clinton and I sit and talk, she begins to rearrange everything—the cups, the silverware, the napkins, the creamer for her coffee—until it is just so, all the while listening and talking and not missing a beat. Remembering my illness, she asks me how I am feeling and then says, "Let's get some Sprite for Jonathan." Still mothering!
I bring up something I have been thinking about during the whole time we have been in Africa: Why is Hillary such an inspirational figure to so many women? Mary Beth Sheridan, a reporter on the trip from The Washington Post, said to me one day, "Margaret Thatcher ran a whole country. No one would ever describe her as an 'inspiration.' " Clinton seems amused by the comparison and then ponders it for a moment. "Well, I don't really understand it myself," she says, finally. "But it may in part be because people feel like they know me; they have watched me on the world scene for seventeen years now. They've seen my ups and my downs." She lets out a dark little chuckle. "They've seen my best and my worst. They've seen my public and my private—they've seen everything.
"So many women feel like I'm on their side," she says. "I somehow, through my life or their perception of me, give them courage to do things. And I think it's also that, whether I am meant to or not, I challenge assumptions about women. I do make some people uncomfortable, which I'm well aware of, but that's just part of coming to grips with what I believe is still one of the most important pieces of unfinished business in human history—empowering women to be able to stand up for themselves.
"I try to live my life in a way that I think has meaning," she continues. "I was raised to believe that I have to give back, that I was incredibly blessed to be an American, to have a good education, to have an intact family with two parents who encouraged me. I never felt in my family that I couldn't do anything I set my mind to because I was a girl, which was unusual even when I was growing up. I have a great partner who has been enormously supportive to me. I have a wonderful daughter. I have a 90-year-old mother who lives with us. I have so many blessings. And yet I know how hard it is even for people in today's world who have all of the attributes of education and income. Life is challenging for everybody." She takes a deep breath, leans back, and looks at me with those bright-blue eyes. "That's the best I can come up with!"»
Memorial of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Today Christians East and West, at least the ones who use the Gregorian calendar, commemorate the Blessed Virgin Mary's Presentation in the Temple at Jerusalem, her being led by the High Priest into the Holy Holies, according to tradition, in anticipation of her body becoming the Holy of Holies. The following is from a homily given on the Feast of the Entry of our Most Pure Lady Theotokos into the Holy of Holies given by Saint Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica in the 14th century:
"The author of evil was jealous of Adam, when he saw him being led from earth to Heaven, from which he was justly cast down. Filled with envy, he pounced upon Adam with a terrible ferocity, and even wished to clothe him with the garb of death. Envy is not only the begetter of hatred, but also of murder, which this truly man-hating serpent brought about in us. For he wanted to be master over the earth-born for the ruin of that which was created in the image and likeness of God. Since he was not bold enough to make a face to face attack, he resorted to cunning and deceit. This truly terrible and malicious plotter pretended to be a friend and useful adviser by assuming the physical form of a serpent, and stealthily took their position. By his God-opposing advice, he instills in man his own death-bearing power, like a venomous poison.
"If Adam had been sufficiently strong to keep the divine commandment, then he would have shown himself the vanquisher of his enemy, and withstood his deathly attack. But since he voluntarily gave in to sin, he was defeated and was made a sinner. Since he is the root of our race, he has produced us as death-bearing shoots. So, it was necessary for us, if he were to fight back against his defeat and to claim victory, to rid himself of the death-bearing venomous poison in his soul and body, and to absorb life, eternal and indestructible life.
"It was necessary for us to have a new root for our race, a new Adam, not just one Who would be sinless and invincible, but one Who also would be able to forgive sins and set free from punishment those subject to it. And not only would He have life in Himself, but also the capacity to restore to life, so that He could grant to those who cleave to Him and are related to Him by race both life and the forgiveness of their sins, restoring to life not only those who came after Him, but also those who already had died before Him. Therefore, St Paul, that great trumpet of the Holy Spirit, exclaims, 'the first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit'" (1 Cor. 15:45).
To do all this, Christ required a clean vessel in which to be conceived, carried, and born. So, Mary is truly God-bearer. In her womb, with her full and free cooperation, God planted a new root for our race- His Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom we become children of God.
To help bring home the beauty of this memorial, my venerable brother deacon, Greg Kandra, posts prayers from the Melkite Liturgy over on The Deacon's Bench.
In an unrelated note, I draw your attention to my latest piece for Il Sussidiario- Abbas’ resignation would raise serious concerns for both Palestine and Israel.
Love of the church is love for Christ
In his address to the bishops of the United States, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the Papal nuncio to the U.S., quoted this beautiful passage from something Pope Paul VI wrote towards the end of his life: A Thought About Death:"I pray that the Lord gives me the grace to make my imminent death a gift of love to the Church. I could say that I always loved her; it was her love that drew me out of my petty and uncontrolled selfishness and guided me to her service; for her, and for no one else, I think I have lived. I would like the Church to know it, as a confidence of the heart, which only at life’s end does one have the courage to express.
"Finally, I would like to comprehend her entirely: in her history, in her divine plan, in her final destiny, in her complex, total, and unitary composition, in her human and imperfect consistency, in her disasters and her sufferings, in her weakness and in the misery of so many of her children, in her less pleasing aspects, and in her perennial efforts of fidelity, love, perfection, and charity.
"Mystical Body of Christ: I want to embrace her, greet her, love her, in every being which she consists of, in every bishop and priest who assists and guides her, in every soul that lives for her and honors her."
Of course, it was Papa Montini who restored the diaconate as a permanent order in the church, permitting married men to serve in an ordained capacity. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon him.
Following the papal tradition of visting the tombs of their predecessors in November, Pope Benedict XVI visited Pope Paul's grave this month. The current Holy Father also visited his birth place.
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