The Hope of Humanity

“Each small meanness, each thoughtless expression of hatred, each envious and bitter act, regardless of how petty, can inspire others, and is therefore the seed that ultimately produces evil fruit, poisoning people whom you have never met and never will. All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined – those dead, those living, those generations yet to come – that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands.” ~Dean Koontz

I have said it in my book,, and countless times in conversation, this past year: that corny old song “Let There Be Peace on Earth” is resonating with me, especially in its last line, “let it begin with me.” We have to be the peace we want to see. We have to be the church we want to support. We have to be the apocalypse — the revelation of Christ in the world, as and in I wrote here:

Henri Nouwan wrote,

First Christ takes us as we are.
He blesses us.
Then He breaks us.
And gives us to the world to bless.

A thing I have learned in life, and have tried to teach my children, is that the most difficult part of any task, be it writing a book or pursuing a course of study, is to simply “begin as you mean to continue”—to start the process of doing, in order to achieve being. If secular illusions are to be tumbled amid the building up of the Kingdom, let us get started where we are, today; in our families, and then in our neighborhoods and parishes and our schools. Let us begin, finally, to understand the true meaning of apocalypse by becoming it—not destruction and mayhem but revelation, as in the revelation of Christ to each other—in these strange and transitional days.