I took off my jacket and hung it neatly over the back of the chair at the front of the rom, eyeing the 8- and 9-year-old students in my catechism class.
“There now. That’s better,” I said, taking my seat. “I don’t need a jacket in the classroom.
“But you know, my feet are really bothering me today. They’re sore from overdoing it on a hike. Why don’t I just take them off and set them in the corner over there?”
There’s something about the dawning of a new year that makes us look back over our shoulder at the past 12 months and recall the many twists and turns of life. Who could have known the challenges and blessings that lay ahead for us all?
God. That’s who.
The high-pitched ring tone echoed in my ear as I lay on the bed, listening, hoping, praying he would answer.
It was December 1984, and I was a lovesick college student, barely out of my teens, trying to connect with the man who had stolen my heart. How could I bear to live without him? What if he stayed in his Venezuelan homeland and didn’t return to the U.S. after the Christmas break? Was there a future for us? Could we make it work despite the fact we were from two very different worlds?
Placing the last few ornaments on the Christmas tree, the lyrics of a traditional carol floated around The Soulful Catholic’s living room:
A thrill of hope; the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks, a new and glorious morn.
It was the kind of headline that appeals to the self-delusion and selfishness that characterize the darkness into which our post-Christian Western civilization has sunk: “Your feelings are your truth.”