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Poetry
Accept the Gift A Letter to James Wright, Deceased
Leonard J. Cirino

Like snow, the poem breaks into petals

Arts & CultureBooks
Behind the Serene Public Image'
Sally Cunneen
Assigned to read Thomas Hardy 8217 s The Return of the Native in high school I was fascinated by its evocation of our pagan agricultural past Reading Jude the Obscure recently however I suffered all the way through Hardy 8217 s determined destruction of hope in the life of his stonemason hero
Arts & CultureBooks
Long Live Matthieu
Tom Deignan
In 2002 Pete Hamill scored a bestseller with his novel Forever which told the story of an Irish immigrant granted the gift of eternal lifeso long as he never leaves the island of Manhattan Meanwhile next year Brad Pitt will star in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button based on an F Scott Fitzg
Current Comment
Current Comment
The Editors
Unrepentant MediaWith the announcement by North Carolina’s attorney general, Roy A. Cooper, that he was dropping all charges against three Duke University lacrosse players wrongly charged with rape, a lengthy travesty of justice has been undone. Errors in the case were so egregious, exoneratio
Columns
The Deepest Desire
Margaret Silf
Desire has a bad press. Most of us, at least those beyond a certain age, have grown up thinking that anything we desire is probably something we shouldn’t even be thinking about, and whatever God’s will might be, it is surely diametrically opposed to what we actually want.
The Stories We Tell
Jeremy V. Cruz
I sat in reflective silence as my sister drove us from the movie theater to our parents’ house. We had just watched The Pursuit of Happyness, Will Smith’s film based upon the true story of Chris Gardner, who lifts himself and his son out of poverty and homelessness and becomes a successf
Letters
Letters

Joyful Evangelizers

The reflection by James Martin, S.J., on joy in the Christian life appeared most appropriately in your Easter issue (4/2); overwhelming joy was the Easter experience of Jesus’ first disciples. Their encounter with their risen Lord transformed them into dynamic evangelizers. I am convinced of the intimate connection between Christian joy and effective evangelization. If people today do not receive the Christian message from joyful evangelizers, I doubt they will receive it at all. I say this based on 37 years of foreign missionary service in Bangladesh and the Philippines.

In 1975 Pope Paul VI wrote two apostolic exhortations for the jubilee year. His well-known Evangelii Nuntiandi (Evangelization Today) is probably the best document he ever wrote; his little-known Gaudete in Domino (Christian Joy) was written for Pentecost 1975. Paul VI affirms the evangelization-joy dynamic. He asserts that the Gospel must be proclaimed by witness...the witness of an authentic Christian life; and this task must be done with ever increasing love, zeal and joy. The pope identifies various obstacles that impede evangelization; the most serious is lack of joy and hope.

At the conclusion of GD, Paul VI writes about the joy of being Christian and he notes that it would be very strange if this Good News, which evokes the alleluia of the Church, did not give us the look of those who are saved.

In the final exhortatory section of EN, Paul VI speaks personally to all evangelizers: Let us preserve the delightful and comforting joy of evangelizing, even when it is in tears that we must sow.... May the world of our time...receive the Good News, not from evangelizers who are dejected, discouraged, impatient or anxious, but from ministers of the Gospel whose lives glow with fervor, who have received the joy of Christ.

Indeed, Father Martin got it right: Christian joyand joyful evangelizersare the most effective witnesses of the Gospel. They are the most infallible sign that Jesus lives!

James H. Kroeger, M.M.

Arts & CultureBooks
Gods Agent
Daniel J. Harrington
The words ldquo messiah rdquo and ldquo messianism rdquo are often used loosely not only in popular culture but also in religious discourse even in biblical scholarship This magisterial study of these terms in the Bible and related ancient sources by a premier biblical scholar of our time brin
Arts & CultureBooks
Take the Test
John A. Coleman
Stephen Prothero a historian of American religion and the author of a much acclaimed earlier volume American Jesus takes his cue for his title from E D Hirsch rsquo s 1987 volume Cultural Literacy What Every American Needs to Know Prothero addresses a huge paradox America is very religious b
Editorials
Peace in Northern Ireland
The Editors
The promise of a new era of peace in Northern Ireland will be realized on May 8, when the 108 members of the Northern Ireland Assembly meet and elect a 12-member administration. It is to be led by Ian Paisley, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, the largest Protestant party in Northern Irel
Why We Must Withdraw From Iraq
Robert W. McElroy
The United States has reached a new chapter in its intervention in the Middle East, as the enormous obstacles to achieving peace are being recognized more clearly with every passing day. We have lost our way in Iraq—strategically, militarily and morally—and we need to forge a pathway for
Faith in Focus
Liberal Catholicism
Maggie Kast
A friend recently said to me, I presume you regard yourself as a liberal Catholic. In response, I asked myself what kind of Catholic I am, and what is liberal? I came into the church 25 years ago at mid-life, without previous religious faith, practice or upbringing. My parents had been secular anthr
The Word
Love Is the Answer
Daniel J. Harrington
There are two great questions in the Easter season How could the community formed by the earthly Jesus carry on without his physical presence And what can the church of the 21st century learn from the earliest Christian communities Last Sunday rsquo s reading from John rsquo s Gospel suggested th
Arts & CultureBooks
Turning Up the Heat
Kristin Shrader-Frechette
Most people realize that over the last 40 years the tobacco industry has spent millions of dollars to mislead the public about the dangers of smoking People are less likely to know that oil companies are doing something similar ExxonMobil has spent 16 million to fund a web of organizations charg
Arts & CultureBooks
A Winning Combination
Mary A. McCay
As the poet Joan Murray points out in her introduction to this stellar collection the glitteringly self-deprecating Pushcart Prize has been bringing extraordinary literary talents to a broad readership for 30 years This volume is the third in a series of prize-winning Best of the Best volumes from
FaithThe Word
The effects of an "Easter faith"
Daniel J. Harrington
The phrase “Easter faith” refers to the conviction that Jesus who was dead has been raised and thus has brought about the victory of life over death.
Arts & CultureBooks
Her Nature, Her Future
William J. Collinge
Last fall hearing Bob Dylan 8217 s 1975 song Shelter From the Storm on the radio several times brought to mind a student from around that time who had written an outstanding paper with that title using the words of Dylan 8217 s song to shape an interpretation of Gnosticism So I searched for th
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
Drew Christiansen
We buried Joe Hacala two days short of his 62nd birthday. Joe’s last job was as president of Wheeling Jesuit University. It was a natural fit, because Joe was a native West Virginian, deeply committed to his home state and the poor people of the Appalachian region. Joe and I came together in W
News
Signs of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Jerusalem Hospice Open to Patients of All FaithsWhen Sister Monika Dullmann first came as a volunteer to Saint-Louis Hospital in Jerusalem as a young theologian, the most difficult task she faced was watching terminally ill patients suffer. Sister Monika, now the hospital director, said 20 years of
Politics & Society
A Professor, a President and the Klan
Jim McDermott
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education (May 1954), racial tensions in Alabama heightened considerably. When in February 1956 Autherine Lucy, a black student, began attending class at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, white students and community membe