Among Christians, 47 percent claim pornography is a major problem in the home. On one porn site in one year people watched 4,392,486,580 hours of pornography. That is the equivalent of every person on the earth watching 12 porn videos.
Let us assume, for the sake of illustration, that two inhabitants of Enceladus, a small planet in the rings of Saturn, should, by some strange coincidence, find themselves standing on a busy street corner in New York.
When children are young we rightly strive to guard their innocence and form a kind of protective sphere where they are somewhat insulated from the harshness and vulgarities of the larger culture. This period, however, is fleeting — the bubble will eventually burst and our children must face the difficulties of the world.
Are all religions the same? No. Ask any practicing Jew, Muslim or Christian. Only a secularist would propose this absurdity. It doesn’t mean that religions can’t coexist. They can and have, but only when we acknowledge that they are different. So how is Christianity different from other world religions?
For the children we serve experiencing homelessness, it can be a dreaded time of year. They may worry about not being able to attend their same school because they moved into an emergency shelter or a different relative’s house over the summer.
We seldom sense the presence of the sacred in moments of terror, natural or man-made. Nature itself, of course, follows the patterns instilled in the universe by God from the moment of first creation. Of course, we humans sometimes find ourselves crosswise with nature’s powers, but God obviously means no evil intent; nature does what nature was created to do.
It all started when I read an article about Popes Francis’ initiative to provide showers for the homeless. One homeless person reportedly said, “They treat us like friends.” Here in Magadan, Russia, we don’t have many homeless, but we have some folks with handicaps who need care.
Alaska has the highest number of veterans per capita of any state in the union. It is a tragedy to see that veterans experience homelessness at a higher rate than the general population across the country.
At a recent Mass our Sunday reading was from 1 Peter 3:15-18, and included this line: “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope.” The homilist that day told us we should spend time thinking about what our explanation would be. Hope defines a Christian. Hope is the noisy and exuberant, sometimes somber and diligent, antithesis to quiet desperation. Hope is what gets us out of bed in the morning, albeit occasionally reluctantly.
“Who is Jesus Christ for us today?” The question popped up for me again as I read the Gospel for this 14th Sunday in ordinary time where Jesus’ family and his neighbors find him: “His wisdom was beyond them. After all, is he not the carpenter’s son? Is not his family living here with us?” Who is this person really?