Driving along on my way to school I was enjoying a radio interview with a popular author. Apparently a deeply spiritual and extremely wellbalanced man, he was discussing his dialogues with God. As he expressed his beliefs and theology, I delighted in his resonation of my own thoughts. The longer I listened, the more I started thinking he must be Catholic because so many of his thoughts agreed with my own Catholic perspective. Not surprisingly, the interviewer commented that the author had attended Catholic schools and so forth.

    About halfway through the interview came the shock ... "So you don't feel the need, personally, to attend an organized church?" the interviewer inquired.

    "No," came the reply - although he did recognize.its benefits for some,

    I'm not sure what happened in the second half of the interview because my thoughts froze right there. This man who has written four books about his relationship with God just voluntarily stopped receiving Jesus in the Eucharist?

    As their words continued to fill the background of my thoughts, I rationalized that a person can be spiritual and not go to church, but was he truly wellbalanced? The scales were beginning to tip unfavorably.

    He described the church (that is, the Body o Christ) as a "God-limiting institution." I wondered, why would he shut the door on this God with whom he so frequently conversed? This God for whom he considered himself a messenger? This God who inspired him? This God who created him? Why would any of us?

    I couldn't reconcile the contradictions. It just didn't make sense that this man could be so close to Jesus, yet shut him out. There are, however, too many of us who do just that.

    Many people of various denominations believe in God, yet when asked by a spouse or friend to join them in worship, decline. Why? They simply do not see the need for community. This is really strange when you think about it, since Jesus, whose example we follow, spent so much time in communion with others, as well as privately with our Father.

    Sadly, after all his soul searching, books and hours of prayer, the author had rejected the very basic tenet of Jesus' teaching: "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst" (John 6:35).

    This year, celebrate God's coming to us. Stand before Jesus on Christmas morning and let yourself be amazed! Come, join your family and friends. Hear and receive the word of life!

    I was on my way to an interview, and I had not paid careful enough attention to my daily calendar. I was late for a meeting with Fr. Richard Loehrlein and his brother, Fr. Sy Loehrlein.

    Fr. Sy is a priest of the Diocese of Evansville. Fr. Richard is a Marianist priest, home for a while from Malawi, Africa.

    I listened with a great fascination as Fr. Richard told me of his work at Chaminade School, a secondary school for boys and young men near Kawnga, Malawi, Some of the facts were horrifying: the high incidence of AIDS, the number of orphans, the lack of food.

    For many people, there are days and even months between the time they have eaten the last of the grain from the previous year and the time when they will harvest the crops of the current year. These are days of hunger.

    Some of the stories were filled with the power of simple witness.

    Fr. Richard went to see a 16-year-old girl suffering from what seemed to be a fatal snake bite. He anointed her, gave her Communion and returned home in sadness. A day later, he learned, the girl was back to normal.

    The celebration of the Sunday Eucharist usually takes two hours. The entrance procession alone, with dancing and singing, may take 10 minutes. There may be a dozen servers, boys who met earlier in the week to learn and practice for the Mass. Young girls in white dresses will dance; they, too, met for practice earlier in the week.

    I spent well over an hour listening to the stories and leaming of the joy and the sadness of a priest who acknowledga "I live among saints and sinners."

    Fr. Richard returns to his family home for about three months once every three years. That's the pattern he has followed for much of his life, working in the United States, Ireland, Kenya and now Malawi.

    That's when I felt ashamed. My late arrival for the interview was not just a matter of "only 15 minutes" now. From a man who had only a relatively short time to be with his brothers and sisters, I had stolen 15 minutes and I could not give it back.

    One of the first questions discussed in an introductory book for the Christian Family Movement is entitled, My Time, My Treasure: Where have all the hours gone?

    That question usually leads me to wonder about how little time we all seem to have for time together as a family. Now, though, I realize there is another way to look at that question. Trying to regain control of a schedule gone mad is certainly a worthwhile endeavor. Important, too, is the effort each of us could make to respect the time of another.

    How do you use your time? What would a chart show you about your life if you counted up the minutes of an ordinary day for sleeping, eating, working, commuting or chauffeuring, praying and watching TV?

    How much time do you spend in a week preparing for worship? How many days in a year are you hungry? How many minutes in a day do you listen with all your heart to another?

    Take the time today to spend a few of your minutes in honest reflection on the time you have given to others and on the time you have take away from others.

    Examine your time. Help others in your family or in your household to take more control of the time that otherwise might just slip away and be lost.

This week, give 15 good minutes to someone you would rather ignore. And give some time, too, to the Lord.

    Just how much courage that will still take was made painfully clear a few weeks after the Littleton horror by an incident at Deer Path Elementary School in Lake Forest, Ill., as reported by John Kass in the Chicago Tribune.

    A small group of third-grade boys were behaving strangely, at least by the lights of the authorities at the Deer Path public school. The boys seemed to form a clique. They met on the playground for what appeared to be curious, even dangerous, rituals. They wore unfamiliar medals around their necks and made strange gestures during their meetings, where a lot of whispering went on, rhythmi cally, and in wha sounded like code Ian guage.

    Cliques. Incantations Ritualistic behavior. Th Deer Path authoritie moved quickly to brea up this threat. The leade of the "clique," a youngster named Christian Neubauer, was called in and interrogated, as well as the other boys. Teachers and other faculty tried to get them to inform on each other. What were they doing? Who was in volved? What were these medals?

    The boys, it turned out, called themselves th "Peace Club." They had been praying the rosary an reciting the Prayer of St. Francis that begins, "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace..." The medal was the Miraculous Medal.

    No problem? Not quite. One of Christian Neubauer's teachers told him that praying at home was all right, but praying at school wasn't "1,eave your religious issues at home," she ordered. Christian's mother, Jennifer, was hauled before the star chamber in the principal's office and queried about the Marian medals. "How would you feel," the principal asked, "if your son came home wearing a swasfika around his neck? How would you like it if we allowed devil worship in the school?"

    The inquisitors were obviously ill-informed about many things. One of the facts of which they were ignorant was Jennifer Neubauer's resume. Neubauer i an attorney who did not take kindly to the equation o the rosary with a satanic rite and the Miraculou Medal with the swastika. The school officials were in formed that they were way out of line, and that eve the Clinton administration had defended the right o children to pray at school during recess. The inquisition finally stopped. A school official said that it had all been a misunderstanding.

You bet.

    The ' "misunderstanding" is pervasive throughout the secularist educational establishment in the United States. In the 15 years since Richard John Neuhaus coined,the phrase, "the naked public square," to suggest what America would look like shorn of religious symbols, religiously grounded values, and religious ideas, things have gotten demonstrably worse in some quarters. Some naked public squares have become free-fire zones in which it is open season on religious conviction and expression. Deer Path Elementary School was one such zone of officially enforced, state-sponsored secularism, until Jennifer Neubauer said, "No."

    Which brings us back to Columbine High School. Although this facet of its life was not very extensively reported at the time of the massacre, Columbine was a dream school, so far as the Secularist education establishment was conceded. it took values-clarification seriously (but it didn't teach the virtues). it sepcialized in self-esteem programs (but not in challenging teenagers to the moral heroism of self-mastery). It was the naked public square, upper-middle-class division. And it became a killing ground.

    The two phenomena cannot be unrelated. When the only moral absolute taught and enforced in public schools is political correctness, and when children are regularly subjected to the toxic waste dump of violence and degraded sexuality that is too much o today's pop culture, no one should be surprised if the result is drastic moral deformation. Nor should anyone be surprised if the result of that deformation is ghastly, public and lethal. That is what Columbine should have taught.

    Resurrection means letting go of the old and passing into a new existence. When we think of resurrection, we much think outside the box of our present life. We must think "new, different." We must see new possibilities.

    Christ's own resurrection is the perfect model of this. Jesus did not come out of the tomb, wash the grime from his body, get dressed and then go meet his friends to say: "Boy, do I have a story for you!" Rather, Jesus passed into a whole new way of being, physical yet spiritual, visible yet not seen; touchable yet beyond embrace. It was truly NEW life, not just an extension of the old.

    Belief in resurrection should not be foreign to us. We experience many types of death and resurrection already in this life. There are many times we must give up on the old - let it go, let it die. And then we step into a new life that we've never known before.

    Here's what I mean. Fr. Ronald Rolheiser (whose fine column now appears in The Catholic Times) names some of the deaths and resurrections we undergo in our lives in his book: The Holy, Longing. He speaks, for instance, of the death of our youth, health and wholeness. At the age of 40, 60 or 70 we face the death of our healthy physique, bodily strength, our good looks. Our vitality slips away and our energy ebbs. We can become bitter and pity ourselves, or we can "step into" life as a 40, 60 or,70-year-old. We are "born" into that life, where we may not run the marathon, but where we enjoy grandchildren, wisdom and maturity. Not all bad. Resurrection.

    We face the death of our honeymoons. All honeymoons die. Fifteen years into a marriage, the passion of the honeymoon can be dead. But not the marriage. We can dream of those romantic first days and try to bring them back. Or we can "step into" a new marriage relationship, 15 years richer in love and stability, a marriage blessed with children and income. Not all bad. Resurrection.

    Some of us must face the death of the God of our youth and the church we once knew and loved. We used to feel so close to God - at our communion, on our wedding or ordination day. Or when we would hear the bells, sing the Latin and smell the incense. But it's different now. The church of my youth is dead. But the church itself is very much alive, risen to new life, with a new spirit, new rituals, new vitality. Not all bad. Resurrection.

    All of these - and all other "deaths" we experience in this life - are part of the great paschal mystery, Christ's passing from this life, through death, into a new life. Rolheiser calls the paschal mystery "the secret to life." I call it the strong, driving rhythm that sets the beat for all of life. Over and over again: Death to life - not just any life, but NEW life.

    The heart of our Christian life is dying to sin and rising to new life in and with Christ. It begins sacramentally in baptism and continues in the daily struggles and joys of life. It is the final destiny for us all.

    The sacred days of the Triduum (Holy Thursday through Easter) celebrate in word and ritual, in song and symbol, Christ's dying and rising. It's the heart of the church year. "It's the secret of life." We join all of the dying and rising of our lives to that of Christ.

    We can think of Easter as resuscitation, and ask about pizza and chocolate bunnies in the next life. How much better to see Easter for what it is: Christ stepping into new life and we with him. "It's the secret of life." Not all bad. RESURRECTION.

    But God cannot be overcome by evil. Because God has gifted men and women with free will, he permits their sin and evil deeds. However, he can and does bring good out of the evil some of his creatures do. God will never be overcome by evil. His victory lies precisely in his ability to defeat the evil intent of evil men and,,women by allowing good to issue from the suffering their perverted acts cause.

    The evil intentions of Jesus' enemies sought to silence him forever when they nailed his bruised and torn body to the cross. But God, through the crucifixion of Jesus, gave the world a savior who, by his sufferings and death, would forever be a source of strength and courage to all humans.

    The wicked enemy was foiled at his own game. He intended evil but God brought about good instead. Those who caused Jesus' excruciating sufferings and death were conquered by Jesus' words of loving forgiveness: "Father, forgive them  " and we today are challenged by his heroic example of forgiveness to do the same.

    Had Jesus died cursing his enemies, evil would indeed have scored a victory over good.

    It is impossible to measure the good that God brought about through Jesus' death. The crucifix has been and is loved and venerated by millions of believers'. Sinners looking at the mangled body of Jesus are often moved to repentance and turn to him for forgiveness. Surely, all who look on Jesus crucified, with more than a passing glance, receive the grace of a deeper love for the God who so humbled himself, suffered and paid the debt of their sin.

    Jesus, meek and humble of heart, teaches us to love, and to root out of our lives all hatred.

    He wasn't malicious in intent. He loved his daughter. In his mind, this was an act of mercy. He couldn't bear to see her suffer any longer. Nobody doubted his sincerity. His daughter was almost totally disabled physically and mentally, lived in constant pain, and there was no favorable prognosis in terms of her ever getting better or of her pain ever lessening. So he, in as humane a way as possible,,ended her life.

    Her death became a huge national,.story, a drawn-out court battle that lasted for years, ending up in the Supreme Court of Canada and a nationwide moral and religious debate that has bitterly divided families and communities.

    The death of this young girl, Tracy Latimer, raises an issue we can't agree on today: What's the value of a human life that is severely disabled" What's the value of a life such as Tracy Latimer's?

    Biblically, the answer is clear. When someone is deemed expendable, for whatever reason, at that moment she or he becomes the most important person, spiritually, in the community. The stone that is rejected by the builders is the cornerstone for the building. This means that the Tracy Latimers within our lives are a privileged place where the rest of us can experience God.

    One of the central revelations of the cross is that there is a very privileged presence of God in the one who is excluded, in the one of whom society says, "Better that she should die for the people." Scripture is clear on this. Already in the Jewish Scriptures, we see that the prophets emphasize the idea that God has special sympathy for "orphans, widows, and strangers." At that time, these particular groups had the least status, the least power and were deemed the most expendable. They could be left to die so that society could get on with its more urgent business.

    The prophets' message was revolutionary: God has a special sympathy for those whom society deems least important and how we treat those persons is the litmus test of our faith, morals and religiosity.

    Nowhere is this stated more clearly than in Jesus' death on the cross. The crucified one is the stone rejected by the builders. the one deemed expendable so that normal life will not be disrupted. But the crucified one is also God and there is a special intimacy with God that can be had only iii standing, as did Mary and John, near the cross, in solidarity with the crucified one. the one who is being excluded.

    Sometimes that's hard to see and accept because, unlike Jesus, the excluded ones in our culture are not always innocent and loving. For example, the Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh, was executed last summer. Our society, like the high priest of old, had pronounced its judgment: "Better that one man should die for the people!" But, unlike Jesus, Timothy McVeigh didn't radiate innocence, love. moral integrity, repentance, or inmost anything else that speaks of God's presence. So how is he the cornerstone for our building?

    By his exclusion, by his being deemed expendable, by being the one executed. At the precise moment when his executioners spread his arms and lashed them to a table and the lethal injection was brought in, Timothy McVeigh became the Christ-figure - a man helplessly stretched out, unanimity-minus-one, better off dead for the benefit of others, grist for those who need a scapegoat, the focus for moral reflection, the central figure in the community and the one who, for that moment and in that situation, becomes a privileged presence of God because, as the cross makes plain, God is specially present in the excluded one.

    Many of us are familiar with an incident recorded by Elie Wiesel. In one of the Nazi death camps, a prisoner had escaped and, in retaliation, the Nazis took a young boy, hanged him publicly, and forced everyone to watch this horrific spectacle. As the young boy dangled on a rope in front of them, one man cursed bitterly: "Where is God now?" Another man answered: "There, on that rope. That's 6od!,,

    Protection. The more I thought about the role my husband and I have as our children's protectors (in addition to being their cooks, garbage collectors, chauffeurs and entertainers), the less likely abduction by a stranger seemed and the more likely abduction by society in, general became. While trangers snatching children is still so rare and that it makes front-page news, the abduction a child's value system is so common, many of us don't see it anymore.

    I decided I needed to be less worried about some villain lurking in the shadows and more worried  about the dominant American culture kidnapping the souls of my sons.

    Every generation of parents has had its own enemy to fight in terms of protecting their young. Ages ago, winters, starvation and wild animals posed the biggest danger to children. In the more recent past, were terrified of polio. Today, the biggest threats to our children are insidious and in disguise materialism, consumerism and a culture that glorifies violence, casual sex and self-centeredness and prey on our ehildren on a daily basis.

    For the first time in human. history, many stand gain more - at least in the short term - by corrupting- children than by caring for them. There money to be made in selling children toys they don't need and clothes that will go out of style in six months; in convincing them to buy food that corrodes their arteries and entertainment that corrodes their minds. There is money to be made in taking teens' natural interest in sex and using it to sell everything from CDs to TV shows to, glossy girls' magazines. Too many stand to make a huge profit if they can convince children that in all things, more is not enough.

    I realized, as I watched my little boys play in the front yard, that the Gospel values of living simply, caring little for possessions and reaching out to the marginalized are not only different, than the values of society at large, but are actually at odds with those values' And that's where abduction comes in. Because in order for big corporations to convince my sons that they need to watch a cartoon with rude or violent characters, buy countless plastic action figures or judge people by the brands they're wearing, they will first need to convince my children that the values they have been taught at home are wrong. They will need to steal our family's - our faith's - teachings. And they're working to do it - with clever billboards, slick commercials and even by using those child ren whose value systems they've already stolen..

    But my husband and 1, and many parents we know, are working just as hard. Having been given the gift and responsibility of parenthood, we are holding tight to our children, even as our culture strains to pull them from us. We are seeing through the empty promises of commercials and are teaching our children to do the same. We are deciding that driving past is often better than driving "thru." We are acting as guardians and protectors of our children - making decisions.about what music, TV programs and clothes are welcome-in our home - and which are not. And most importantly, we are. making choices in our own lives that teach our children that we value helping people and protecting the earth, over buying more and more stuff.

    And yet, I know no matter what we do, it is still. possible that our children's values may be abducted, for there are no guarantees. We offer them the best protection we know and send them out into the world - and we pray they will not be taken.