The piece “The Carol of the Season: I Am with You,” first appeared on The Almond Tree, December 15, 2012. Today is the 4th anniversary of that terrible day in Newtown, CT when so many people’s lives were scarred by heartless violence. In a world that suffers as much from a failure of imagination and courage as from an anemic faith — in our better selves, in the goodness hiding within each human person, in God — we continue to wake to a global village whose villagers are still largely addicted to violence and violation.

So, four years later the context in which this reflection was originally written still sadly rings true, but so does its core message of EMMANUEL and the implications of that word, that name, to practice the pathos of God in acts of solidarity with those whose hearts are broken and whose lives are vulnerable.

Read the article here.