4th Sunday of Advent
Good Morning: Digital Neighbors, ADD Irregulars, WSN Niche’ Curators and Memeing Maniacs! The Fourth Sunday of Advent and the Messianic Title of O King of the Nations. As the final Sunday of Advent the readings at Mass always turn our attention to the person of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We look at how her yes opened to the door to the Mystery of the Incarnation.
Yes to God or a Higher Cause, to the Mysterium, to the Numen can change your life. Some embark on the path of selfless sainthood or mysticism, others become the worst type of demagogues and fanatics that menace their neighbors. Not all higher causes are good or praiseworthy, some are menacing and destructive. While many want to blame religion for the worst events in world history, it is really human nature pushed through various funnels of behavior, indoctrination and the removal of critical thought and questioning that brings out the worst in us. Sadly for many, it doesn't take much to remove critical thought and thus questions and doubts never arise. They are the potential for the best of herdthink and worst of mob mentality. I am not sure how much of humanity prefers to be led and told, but the number is worrisomely high. Good leaders (not perfect, there are none), real shepherds are invaluable to the safety, well-being and improvement of the flock. If your higher power or cause is impersonal, your treatment of other will be impersonal. Ask any citizen in a communist country how well it goes with a party or ideology of grievance and division.
For good Jews & Christians, our God is a personal God, a God who calls us to covenant, a God who binds Himself to a people and to individuals. When that is remembered and embraced, God can use humble men and women for great good in the world. Small works of mercy, acts of grace can make all the difference in the life of others. Often unnoticed by the world, such acts of mercy are the delight of the Divine. A quote from the Screwtape letters came to mind this morning and will conclude my thoughts, the wisdom/warning of Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood.
“One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His.
We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.” - C. S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters.
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
Good morning, digital neighbors! I will be away this week at Convocation and mostly offline. I will check in to keep the email from piling up, but I will not be doing my morning missives, checking in for Teams Coffee Talk, or any other posting throughout the week. Please know that you will be on my mind and in my prayers.
Our Vicar for Priests sent out this message to the faithful to explain the nature of the Convocation:
Once every four years for the past four decades, the priests of the Archdiocese of St. Louis have been called together by our Archbishop for a week-long Convocation. It is a time of prayer, enrichment for ministry, and fellowship in priestly fraternity.
As the experience of priestly life and ministry in our Archdiocese continues to evolve — particularly as priests are called upon to pastor multiple parishes simultaneously, and as communities as large as 1,800 to 2,000 households are increasingly served by only one priest — opportunities for enrichment for our priests, such as ...
Padre - Tom Miller invites you to a Coffee Talk, Speakeasies, Schmoozes, Tea Times, Afterhours and other gatherings.
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2026 Coffee Talk with the ADD Irregulars
Thursday, January 1, 2026
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XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
