“We are meant to be Incarnational people…”

“One evening, while awaiting his train at Penn Station, my elder son was approached by a disheveled, mildly aromatic middle-aged woman; she said she was hungry and wondered if he might spare some change. Instead, he walked with her to a food stand and bought her a hamburger and fries and a drink. As she ate, he sat with her, and they chatted pleasantly. When I asked him why he didn’t simply hand her a few dollars and keep walking, which is what I would have done, he said that would have seemed “dismissive” — that the woman was as deserving as anyone else of being seen, and heard, and known, even if just for a little while.

In the noise of the world and our harried distractions and self-absorption, we lose track of the mystery and message of Christmas: that we are meant to be an Incarnational people, a people of intention, consenting to be aware of each other, fully present to each other, alive to each other, affirming each other, for God’s sake.”

—Elizabeth Scalia.  Read it all.