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Two American citizens killed by federal agents in Minneapolis this month. Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother and poet, shot on January 7th. Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, shot yesterday. And this Sunday, the Church hands us readings about light breaking into darkness and smashing the rod of the taskmaster.

Jesus began his ministry after John was arrested. State violence is the context for mission. When Catholics cannot agree on whether shooting unarmed citizens is murder or justified force, what exactly unites us? Is Christ divided?

The Christmas story isn't a sentimental fairy tale. It's a declaration of war against every empire, every throne, every structure of domination that has ever claimed absolute authority over human beings. God doesn't enter the world as a mighty warrior or a powerful king. God enters as a baby—born to an unwed teenage mother, in an occupied territory, under a tyrannical emperor, announced first to social outcasts.

Listen to the Christmas readings and you'll hear something dangerous: A census under Caesar Augustus. Shepherds getting the news before the powerful. The Word becoming flesh. Mary singing revolution. A refugee family fleeing state violence. This is how God overthrows the powers and principalities. This is how the kingdom comes.

For seven days before Christmas, the Church sings seven ancient prayers at evening prayer. Each one addresses Jesus with a different title drawn from Old Testament prophecy. Each one begins with "O." Each one ends with the same desperate plea: Come.

They're called the O Antiphons. They're older than most European nations. And they represent something deeply weird about Catholic Christianity: We spend the week before Christmas not celebrating, but crying out in longing. Reverse their order and you get "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." Hidden in their Latin titles is a secret message: ERO CRAS—"Tomorrow I will come."

Here's the most subversive thing the Church does all year: On the last Sunday of the liturgical calendar, right before we reset the clock and start over with Advent, we proclaim that a tortured, executed criminal is the King of the Universe.

Not a warrior king who conquered nations. Not a philosopher king who impressed everyone with his wisdom. A crucified king. A king whose throne was a cross and whose crown was made of thorns. If that doesn't strike you as deeply, radically weird, you've been domesticated by two thousand years of Christian culture.

Here's something that should make every religious person uncomfortable: After centuries of revelation, after the Law of Moses with its 613 commandments, after endless debates about ritual purity and proper sacrifice, the prophet Micah reduces God's requirements to exactly three things.

Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with God. That's it. No mention of correct liturgy. No discussion of what you wear to church. No checklist of devotional practices. Just three profoundly simple requirements that somehow manage to be both easier to remember and infinitely harder to live than any rulebook.

Today, Catholics around the world celebrate the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica. We're not celebrating a saint. We're not celebrating a miracle. We're celebrating the fact that on this day in 324 AD, Pope Sylvester I consecrated a church building in Rome.

The entire Catholic Church pauses to commemorate the dedication of a specific building most of us will never see. If that doesn't strike you as deeply, beautifully weird, you're not paying attention. Because this feast reminds us of something scandalous: matter matters.

Here's something that'll make you uncomfortable: If you oppose abortion but don't support universal healthcare access and food assistance programs like SNAP, you're not pro-life. You're pro-birth. And there's a massive difference.

The American "pro-life" movement has been hijacked by partisan politics to mean one thing and one thing only: opposing abortion. But the Catholic tradition—the actually weird, radically consistent tradition—insists on something far more demanding: a seamless garment of life from conception to natural death. And that includes making sure people can eat and see a doctor.

November 1st: All Saints Day. November 2nd: All Souls Day. These two days tell us something profound about Catholic theology that drives both Protestants and secular folks crazy: the doctrine of purgatory. And it's one of the most hopeful, most merciful teachings the Church offers—precisely because it refuses to reduce salvation to a binary.

Purgatory means that death isn't the end of our capacity to grow, to change, to be made holy. It says: God isn't done with them yet. The process of sanctification continues. That's not binary thinking. That's radical hope.

You want to know what's truly countercultural in our age of optimization, personal branding, and ruthless self-actualization? Try giving everything away. Not just your money—though that too. But your liberty, your memory, your understanding, your entire will. Everything you have and are.

That's exactly what St. Ignatius of Loyola asks God to take in the Suscipe, the prayer that concludes his Spiritual Exercises. It's a prayer of total surrender, and it's possibly the most radical thing you can pray in a culture built on control, accumulation, and the myth of the self-made person.

St. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13:13, "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." These aren't just nice sentiments for greeting cards. In Catholic theology, faith, hope, and love (charity) are the theological virtues—the supernatural gifts that orient us toward God and make us fully human.

But we've built an economic system that systematically dismantles all three. When profit becomes our organizing principle—not just an economic mechanism, but the lens through which we see all of reality—it doesn't just redistribute wealth. It fundamentally reshapes what we believe is real, what we dare to hope for, and how we relate to one another.