A revolution is a turnaround. Any social turnaround involves a change in shared attitudes and corresponding group behavior.

When Jesus. a social revolutionary, proclaimed that "the kingdom of God is at hand" (Mark 1:14), he added, "repent, therefore, and believe the Gospel." Repentance here--metanoia in Greek--means an attitudinal turnaround, a change of heart and mind. The fact that the kingdom has been "at hand" and not yet fully grasped for more than twenty centuries suggests the absence of the desired turnaround; the revolution is still ongoing.

Continue »

This is a particularly personal question for me since I'll turn 80 on May 25th.

Am I satisfied? Yes, but not completely. I doubt that I'll ever be (or should be) completely satisfied.

Am I grateful? Most assuredly so. I'm grateful for the gift of life, faith, family, friends, health, the opportunities I had to develop intellectually and spiritually. I'm grateful for so many opportunities to serve, especially service to others in need. I'm grateful for the gift of priesthood in the Jesuit order.

I believe that the good life--the really good life--is a live lived generously in the service of others. I fall short of that goal, but keep trying to move toward it (a goal without a goal line) and that motion forward is, in a sense, a measure of satisfaction.

If you take the word apart, "religion" means re-connect, or tie back.The Latin verb "ligare" means to tie; that's where we get the English word "ligament."

The Bible tells the story of the first break--the cutaway, so to speak--whereby Adam and Eve and their descendants were separated from God through Original Sin. We needed a reconnection; we had to be tied back. They call it redemption (buying back), and this, of course, is God's work. We Christians see it as God's gift to us in Christ, our Redeemer--our buyer back.

Christ had to become man in order to do this. As God, he had nothing whereby he could die; as man, we had nothing whereby we could live, observed St. Augustine. But when God became man in Christ it was possible to get the re-ligging (the work of re-ligion) underway.

So religion is man-made to the extent that the God man redeemed us and established a Church through which the work of redemption can continue down through the ages.