IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
I once had the privilege of visiting Holy Land. It’s a strangely different place. Soaked in history, in struggle, in religion, in blood. Virtually every inch of its soil has been soaked in blood, including the blood of Jesus. History leaps out at you from every stone.

Ancient things come to the surface there and mix with the things of today. When you stand in its sacred spots, you begin to understand why Moses was told to take his shoes off and why, through the centuries, so many wars have been fought over this small strip of desert. Aptly named the Holy Land, I walked its ground, barefoot in soul.

Of all the things I saw there, including the tomb of Jesus, few touched me as deeply as did the Church of the Visitation. It stands in sharp contrast to most of the other churches there that mark the key events in Jesus’ life.

Unlike most of the other churches, the Church of the Visitation is a very modest building. You don’t see any gold or marble. Its wooden walls and oak ceiling are plain and mostly bare. However, on the front wall, behind the altar, there is a painting that depicts the scene of the Visitation, and it was this painting that struck me deeply.

It’s a picture of two peasant women, Mary and Elizabeth, both pregnant, greeting each other. Everything about it suggests smallness, littleness, obscurity, dust, small town, insignificance.

You see two plain looking women, standing in the dust of an unknown village. Nothing suggests that either of them, or anything they are doing or carrying, is out of the ordinary or of any significance. Yet, and this is the genius of the painting, all that littleness, obscurity, seeming barrenness, and small-town insignificance makes you automatically ask the question: Who would have thought it? Who would ever have imagined that these two women, in this obscure town, in this obscure place, in this obscure time, were carrying inside of them something that would radically and forever change the whole world?

Who would have thought it? Yes. Who would have thought that what these obscure peasant women were gestating and carrying inside of them would one day change history more than any army, philosopher, artist, emperor, king, queen, or superstar ever would?

Inside them, they were gestating Jesus and John the Baptist, the Christ and the prophet who would announce him. These two births changed the world so radically that today we even measure time by the event of those births. We live in the year 2025 after that event.

There’s a lesson here: Never underrate, in terms of world impact, someone living in obscurity who is pregnant with promise. Never underestimate the impact in history of silent, hidden gestation. How can any of us have any real significance in our world when we live in obscurity, unknown, hidden away, unable to do big acts that shape history?

We can take a lesson from Mary and Elizabeth. We can become pregnant with promise, with hope, with the Holy Spirit and then, hidden from the world, gestate that into real flesh, our own. We too can reshape history.

If we can grasp this, there will be more peace in our lives because some of the restless fires inside us will torment us less. In brief, there’s a perpetual dissatisfaction inside us that can only be stilled by accepting something we might term the martyrdom of obscurity, that is, the self-sacrifice of accepting a life in which we will never have adequate, satisfactory self-expression. That acceptance can help still that pressure inside us which pushes us to be known, to make a difference, to make our lives count in terms of the big picture.

We all know the feeling of sitting inside of our own lives and feeling unknown, small time, undistinguished and frustrated because our riches are unknown to others. We have so much to give to the world, but the world doesn’t know us. We yearn to do great things, important things, things that affect the world beyond the boundaries of the small towns we live in (even when we are living in large cities).

What can help bring some peace is the image expressed in that painting in the Church of the Visitation, namely, that what ultimately changes the world is what we give birth to when, in the obscurity and dust of our small towns and in the frustration of lives that forever seem too small for us, we become pregnant with hope and, after a silent gestation process, one not advertised or known to the world, we bring that hope to full term.

When I was teaching at Newman College in Edmonton, our president then was a Holy Cross priest who brought us some Maritime color. When surprised by something, he would exclaim: “Who would have thunk it?”

Yes, two pregnant women, two thousand years ago of no status, isolated, standing in the dust, forever changing the world? Who would have thunk it?

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a professor of spirituality at Oblate School of Theology and award-winning author.)

KNEADING FAITH
By Dr. Fran Lavelle, D. Min
On my recent trip to Italy, I witnessed a daily ritual every morning just outside our hotel. A small van would park across the narrow street on what was basically a wide sidewalk. Two men routinely hopped out of the van and proceeded to gather baskets of freshly baked bread, bundles of fresh herbs, and a basket of seasonal vegetables and fruit. The delivery was made around 6 a.m. And, being a lover of good bread, I was excited to note the fresh delivery every day. The scene struck me as quaint and European.

It was not until I returned home for the full impact of this daily ritual to sink in. I was reading my news feed on my phone when I saw that the board of Tesla was voting later that week to give Elon Musk a trillion-dollar, performance-based stock package. The words “trillion dollars” bounced around my brain like a thousand pingpong balls being lobbed at a wall. One. Trillion. Dollars.

Now before anyone thinks this is an anti–Elon Musk missive, it is not. He happens to be the subject of this particular absurdity. He, as the richest man on the planet, may be part of the problem, but he is not the primary problem.

I tried to wrap my head around what a trillion dollars represented – it is actually 1,000 billion. Spending $1 million per day, it would take approximately 1,148 years for Musk to exhaust his fortune. There are 8.1 billion people in the world. An estimated 808 million people, or about 1 in 10 people worldwide, are living in extreme poverty in 2025. Imagine how many people could be lifted out of poverty with a trillion dollars.

I think we can all agree that a trillion dollars is an absurd amount of money for one person to possess. For whatever reason, I saw in my mind’s eye the small delivery van and the basket of freshly baked bread. The phrase from the Our Father followed: “Give us this day our daily bread.” Our. Daily. Bread.

In light of this reality, perhaps the social commentary is not about Elon Musk or even the class of multibillionaires around the globe. The question we need to focus on, especially in this age of increased poverty, is when did we lose sight of having “enough”? Daily bread. What does enough food look like? What makes a house a home? Are our basic needs being met?

I am the first to admit that in the story of the grasshopper and the ant, I am the ant. I work diligently, storing away summer’s bounty in the freezer for the winter months to ensure we can enjoy tasty oatmeal and blueberries on cold February mornings, or that we have garden-grown bell peppers in March for a heartwarming bowl of beans. But preparing for lean times and hoarding are two different things.

Is the quest for more than enough just a part of who we are as humans? Jesus told us that we would always have the poor among us. Is that an outcome of our inability to share, or something else entirely?

Pope Leo XIII saw similar trends and in the late 1800s formalized the modern approach to Catholic social teaching. These principles have been consistently affirmed by popes over the subsequent years. Our current Pope Leo XIV, recognizing the devastating reality of poverty, once again is shining a light on the principles of Catholic social teaching, especially regarding preferential treatment of the poor.

It is no surprise, then, that care for the poor is the subject of Pope Leo XIV’s first apostolic exhortation, Dilexi te (Latin for “I have loved you”). The document was being drafted by Pope Francis at the time of his death. Thankfully, Pope Leo saw to its completion and publication. In it, the faithful are encouraged to renew our commitment to the poor by animating Christ’s love and recognizing that current global poverty goes beyond material need.

Dilexi te draws from Scripture, church teaching, and the lives of saints. Together, these three form a solid basis for exploring what it means to serve the poor.

As we continue our journey through Christmas, it is an excellent time to deepen our appreciation of exactly how Jesus came into the world. His humble beginnings remind us to lift up the lowly, to comfort the afflicted, to see each other as God’s begotten sons and daughters.

Dilexi te reminds us that Christian love calls us to go out to the margins and unite people in the love of Christ. Changing culture, economic structures, and perhaps most importantly, changing hearts will not be easy. We are being called to empty ourselves of want. We are being called to examine our needs. We are being called to care for one another. Perhaps when we are satisfied with “our daily bread,” we can begin to recognize how to share with those on the margins.

(Dr. Fran Lavelle is the director of faith formation for the Diocese of Jackson.)