Joy, Venezuela’s Vatican-China deal, and numb for the holidays

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Happy Friday friends,

I am back in Washington after our first-ever Pillar Pilgrimage to Rome. It was, honestly, a time of great consolation for me.

The first weeks of Advent are meant, as we all know, to lift our eyes a little higher to the horizon of the end of time and the coming of the Lord in glory. As someone perpetually preoccupied with the immediate, it was an immense gift to be “forced,” in a way, to set the quotidian concerns of the day’s news aside — at least a bit — and be reminded that there is a Good News much more important for me to both give and receive.

The pilgrimage came also just as The Pillar is about to turn five years old, and the significance of going to Rome to rededicate ourselves, and recommit our work to the service of the Church was not lost on me.

All of the Church, and the whole meaning of the Christian life, is to serve as a witness of He who came into history with the Incarnation and who is to come again at the end of time. One of the lines of the Gospel that haunts me most is Christ’s question: When the Son of Man comes, will he find any faith on earth?

Will he find me worried about The Pillar’s subscriber numbers, the state of the Vatican’s finances, seeking in a dozen different ways to work my own measure of justice in the world? Or will Christ find me waiting expectantly for the dawn, animated by the reality of his incarnation, and confident in the resurrection?

I certainly hope it is the latter.

This weekend is Gaudete Sunday, of course. And as I was discussing with a newly made friend while in Rome, it’s worth remembering that it is an imperative, not a suggestion. Sharing joy around Christmas is an important part of bearing witness to the truth of the holy day. But as important is sharing the reason for our joy.

When I arrived home, there was an immediate seasonal to-do list. There is a four-year-old clamoring for a tree, and I feel the internal impulse of the suburban dad to bust out the ladder and wrap the house in lights, both of which I will see to ...