The Swallow And The Eagle

On this beautiful day I would like to make a couple of short reflections, helping myself (and perhaps someone else) to put things into the right perspective.

Make no mistakes: this is a vale of tears. From injustices of all sorts to illness, want, and bereavement, we are all exposed to a long list of problems, because this is the way the Lord, in His Goodness, has allowed us to, with His Grace, work our way towards Him.

So we have the problems and injustices and diseases on one side, and Christ on the other. Where does this leave us? It leaves us to the point that, whenever we pass a period of time in review and reflect about what it brought us – or, alternatively, whenever we interrogate ourselves about our future, and wonder what it will bring to us, our loved ones, our Nation, and Christianity at large – we need to keep our eyes fixed on Christ, and measure the events in light of this central focal point.

We have already won, because Christ has already won. Our dismay at appalling events – individual or collective – is merely the result (justified, of course; but not all-embracing) of our flying very low, like a swallow surveying the misery of the human conditions.

Christmas Eve is one of the best days of the year to soar like an eagle, look at the world way below us, and reflect that Christ’s light, and inevitable victory, shines over all of it, all the time. It is right to feel righteous anger. It is not right to be despondent, defeatist, or of little faith.

We have already won. Let our enemies exercise, exhaust themselves trying to damage or suppress every sort of righteous cause, and perhaps getting some temporary victory now and then; their time of reckoning will come. Some of them will, hopefully, see the light in time, and we pray that they all might; many others will be the cause of their own doom.

We have already won. Always fight, never fret.

As to us, Christmas Eve is, in fact, an excellent day to make another sort of review: the one concerning our soul. If we think that we have, in the last twelve months, continued on the path to salvation, I’d go out on a limb and say that, in the end, the year has not been bad, at all. If this has not been the case, I’d dare to say that this is a problem that requires more urgent attention that anything else that might be happening out there.

I am not the youngest anymore and, with every year that passes, every 12 months period takes away a larger percentage of the time allotted to me on this earth. This, as every 12 period appears to actually go past me at a speed I could have never imagined decades ago! Yes, I might be called anytime. Still, the above reasoning is valid even if my call is not anywhere near.

I think my year has been fine. I think I can go to sleep, tonight, with a sensible, reasonable confidence that, should I be taken away from this planet in my sleep, I would be able to avoid the worst. It being this way, I cannot avoid – once I soared high, where the eagle flies – thinking that, at the end, everything is going fine.

I wish all my readers a merry Christmas, and the fundamental serenity their faith should, even in the worst times, give them.