While this is generally good advice, it carries an implicit ideology. Acting is seen as preferable to being acted upon; the passive voice, meanwhile, suggests that the agent is either unknown or non-existent.

In the Second Reading for Sunday, August 30 (Romans 12.1-2), St. Paul uses the passive voice. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed . . .”. The people to whom Paul delivers his injunction are asked to choose how they will be acted upon. They are asked to choose between being conformed and being transformed. The people or forces that do the conforming or transforming go unnamed.

This “passivity” goes against the grain of modern societies where we are encouraged to be relentlessly active and questioning rather than accept the hand dealt to us. High value is placed on the entrepreneur and the creator. Those who accept a mere role in society are not well esteemed.

Further, Paul assumes the existence of power other than human power. Paul didn’t have to know anything about today’s social sciences which see power as political or economic. He knew of the power of the risen Lord working through the Holy Spirit. He knew God’s power is greater than Caesar’s power.

When Paul encourages Christians to “be transformed,” he is urging them to let God be the agent in their lives. We don’t need a pile of self-help books to contribute to God’s reign. Primarily, we need to discern and act upon God’s will. Not my will, but God’s will.

This does not make us automatons, robots of the Divine in human affairs. Indeed, Paul uses the two verses of today’s reading to introduce a long series of injunctions on how to live the Christian life. This litany begins at verse nine and runs through the rest of Chapter 12, all of Chapters 13 and 14 and the first few verses of Chapter 15. It tells the ways God’s power can be active in our lives.

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Each precept requires us to make a decision. The decision is typically not between good and evil, but between good and indifference. Living out those decisions can be difficult. Doing so requires both courage and divine grace. To rise above lazy indifference is an action.

Today’s Second Reading is often cited to accentuate the countercultural nature of Christianity. What in those two verses goes against the grain? Two things. First, we are called to respond to God’s power rather than human power. Second, we should overcome moral and spiritual indifference. The first point requires an element of passivity; the second calls us to action.

Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne aptly described the talks leading to the rejected trade deal as not a negotiation but an extortion racket. The Americans wanted to give Canada nothing and to take as much as they could. Their so-called deal would not only have imposed punishing tariffs on Canadian goods but also have destroyed Canada’s ability to negotiate trade deals with other nations, use the French language on packaging, and enter into defence contracts with any nation other than the US.

Coyne argues that the proposed deal was not about trade at all. Its purpose was political – to subjugate Canada to American will. Any further “deals” would only further deepen the oppression.

Yet our outrage at the attempted American shakedown should be tempered by the knowledge that the treaties made between the British Crown and First Nations on Turtle Island amounted to a stripping of Indigenous sovereignty similar to what the US today wants to impose on Canada. The annihilation of Indigenous control over their traditional lands paved the way for settlers to make our homes in the Canadian Northwest.

Bravo to Carney for standing up to the Americans. Bravo also to the chiefs of First Nations who welcomed the settlers, but who also wanted to preserve their own way of life.

Cree chiefs pushed for a treaty with the Canadian government. They saw the rapid diminishment of the bison herds and were disturbed when they discovered surveyors trespassing on their land. Some chiefs believed a treaty would protect their people from the worst effects of settlement.

When negotiations began, some chiefs opposed the plan to move their people to small reserves. “This is our land; it isn’t a piece of pemmican to be cut off and given in little pieces back to us. It is ours, and we will take what we want,” said Chief Poundmaker. Other chiefs believed they would suffer grievously without a treaty. That view prevailed, and the treaty was signed.

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Only later did the Cree learn from the signatories of the first five treaties that those agreements provided little protection. Poundmaker soon found that the government’s promises to provide food rations and farm implements meant nothing.

As well, the Indigenous peoples had no notion that by signing the treaties they were giving control of their land to the settler government. They believed they were only agreeing to share the land and its resources. They had no idea of the devastation the treaty would mean for their people.

The history of Canada-United States trade agreements goes back even further than that of Treaty 6. In 1854, the Reciprocity Treaty was signed and lasted 11 years before the Americans backed out. In 1988, the governments of Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan signed the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement, the first of a series of pacts that created a North American free trade zone.

Most Canadians opposed the 1988 deal, but Mulroney’s Conservatives won a majority in the ensuing election with 39 per cent of the vote.

The grandchild of that agreement is still in effect, although the Americans so routinely violate that deal, which also includes Mexico, that it may as well not exist.

Carney is the Poundmaker of our day, seeing the long-term damage the proposed trade deal would cause to Canada. Unlike Poundmaker, Carney had the authority to reject the treaty that was offered.

The collapse of current trade negotiations between Canada and the US on August 21 is surely an historic moment. Because of that moment, we ought to acknowledge that the main objections to the 1988 free trade deal have now been realized.

Opponents maintained that linking the Canadian and American economies so closely made Canada vulnerable to a crisis like the one we will now endure. The United States has a long history of isolationism, a movement that never disappears and sometimes sits in the driver’s seat. We cannot forget the lesson we have learned.

At the same time, we must be cognizant of the Canadian government’s role in running an extortion racket with First Nations. The treaties were agreements that Indigenous leaders were under great pressure to sign. Even worse, they were pacts whose implications the chiefs were unable to understand. They led to the surrender of their lands and enforced poverty. Also, the 1876 Indian Act led to the residential school system and made it illegal for First Nations to celebrate their traditional religious ceremonies.

In the treaties and the Indian Act, Canadians can see a fate which our leaders have dodged, at least temporarily. At the same time, we should now see more clearly the debt we owe to Indigenous people. The stripping of their culture and way of life continues to call out for redress today. May justice soon be done.

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One question seeks permission for the Alberta government to request greater control over immigration to reduce it to what the government calls “more sustainable levels.” The question says the government wants to emphasize “economic migration,” that is, to focus on allowing those immigrants we expect will increase the province’s prosperity.

The second question asks whether voters support the province passing a law that would eliminate new immigrants’ right to receive education, health care and other provincially funded services.

The third question seeks voter permission to bring in a law that would bar all non-permanent immigrants who have lived in Alberta for a year or less from receiving any provincially funded social support programs.

The final question asks whether voters support the government charging “a reasonable fee or premium” to those with non-permanent immigration status for access to education or health care programs in Alberta.

These questions all assume that immigrants are seen, not as persons, but as economic units. Although Alberta is Canada’s most prosperous province, our government is asking us whether we want to harden our hearts to those who come from away, sometimes from countries at war or other places with few opportunities.

Our government assumes that all newcomers are of value only for their economic assets and that the acceptability of any immigrant should be judged solely by their immediate profitability to the provincial economy. If you are going to cost the government money, you are unacceptable.

Further, the majority of immigrants to Canada today are non-Caucasian, coming largely from countries in Asia and Africa. As such, there is an underlying racism to these referendum questions. In effect, if not intentionally, these referendum questions, if approved as the government appears to desire, will reduce non-white immigration to Alberta.

Still further, unlike the referendum question on Alberta remaining in Canada, no one asked for these immigration questions to be put to the voters. There was no province-wide petition asking for a referendum on these questions. They came solely at the government’s initiative.

All Christians who accept the Bible as a source of divine revelation should be horrified by such questions coming to a vote. Likewise, all Catholics who accept the teaching of the popes and bishops on migration should be appalled. All Albertans with a sense of decency and morality should reject these questions out of hand.

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Many people look on the foreigner as a person unworthy of our concern. They are not part of “us,” and so they must earn their own way, if they are allowed into our domain at all. The Alberta government thus further reduces the status of the foreigner. Not only are immigrants not part of the clan, but they are also economic entities that, in many cases, are a losing proposition.

Among the ordinances that Moses received from the Lord is this one: “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22.21) In the Book of Leviticus, the Lord tells Moses, “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you.” (19.34) That is, we ought to make no distinction between one of our group and the stranger.

In his description of the Last Judgment, Jesus identifies himself with the stranger and declares that those who do not welcome strangers “will go away into eternal punishment.” (Matthew 25.46) Indeed, Jesus truly was a migrant when Mary and Joseph spirited him away to Egypt to escape death at the hands of the tyrant Herod.

In his 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis lauded “the ability to do some things simply because they are good in themselves, without concern for personal gain or recompense. Gratuitousness makes it possible for us to welcome the stranger, even though this brings us no immediate tangible benefit. Some countries, though, presume to accept only scientists or investors.” (139) That last sentence sounds all too much like what the Alberta government is proposing.

Pope Francis then went on to entitle Chapter Four of the encyclical, “A Heart Open to the Whole World.” Our hearts should be open to the whole world. The oil buried deep beneath Alberta’s soil, the source of our prosperity, was not placed there by our current generation of engineers. It was a gift from the Creator, a gift we are called to share with those most in need.

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O Lord, your gifts are so much more mysterious and overwhelming than the human mind can comprehend. Your infinite wisdom and knowledge penetrate deep into the human heart. You know us better than we know ourselves. We do not know where you are leading us, but we trust that it will be for the good of all.

Praise is the highest form of prayer. When we praise God, we forget ourselves and are swept up into the realm of the totally transcendent. Curiously, it is when we leave our own concerns completely to the side that we become our truest selves. We are wired to praise God and, in doing so, transcend ourselves. Everything else is dross.

For nearly two millennia, Benedictine monks have been praying the psalms seven times a day. They have given their lives over to praising God, working only as much as they must to sustain their physical lives. The keynote of their lives is the prayer of praise.

Rarely does the Responsorial Psalm in the liturgy line up with the Second Reading. This Sunday is an exception. Psalm 138 proclaims, “I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart;/before the angels I sing your praise;/I bow down toward your holy temple,/and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and faithfulness.”

Praise is prayer without an agenda. The way of the world is to seek results. We need to believe our efforts have achieved something. When we take that attitude to prayer, everything falls apart for all we “achieve” are what come as gifts from God. In praising God, we seek nothing other than adore the One who is utterly beyond us. Through praise, we become small and, in doing so, discover the fullness of being human.

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St. Paul occasionally wrote about “the powers” without describing who or what they might be. However, based on rather slim scriptural evidence, Wink maintained that every institution, or nation, or organization has a spirit that determines its ethos. For example, the Tesla motor vehicle company has a spirit, as does the government of Canada, as does the Knights of Columbus, etc.

The scriptures on which Wink based his belief typically refer to these spirits as angels, although he was dismissive of the idea that these spirits are actual beings. They are more akin to spiritualities that define the life of these institutions. Nevertheless, he maintained that the spiritualities of the different powers do not stand alone but are intertwined “in a bewilderingly complex network,” making it nearly impossible to alter the nature of any of the powers.

The main hope for change lies in intercessory prayer, something I will get to in a moment. First, the evidence for the existence of such powers.

Wink notes that the letters John wrote to the seven churches in the second and third chapters of the Book of Revelation were directed not to the churches themselves, but to the angels associated with those churches — an interesting observation.

More significantly, he singles out the story of a supernatural creature appearing to the prophet Daniel in chapters 10 and 11 of the Book of Daniel. Daniel had been praying and fasting for the freedom of Israel for 24 days when the “man” appeared to him. The man had heard Daniel’s prayers since the first day but could not respond because “the prince of the kingdom of Persia opposed me twenty-one days.” (10.12-14)

Michael, “one of the chief princes,” came to spell off the “man” so he could visit Daniel and tell him what would happen to the people of Israel.

In Wink’s reading, the man and the prince are angels who have been combating the angel of Persia, except they are not real angels since angels don’t exist in Wink’s cosmos.

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Daniel’s prayer and fasting have been successful, but only after a three-week battle between the man and the angel of Persia. Wink concludes that our prayers for deliverance can be successful, but they must first overcome the power that blocks answers to prayer.

Wink further concludes that prayer is one indispensable means of engaging and defeating the Powers. Intercessory prayer is not so much aimed at driving out evil spirits as at strengthening good spirits. Built into intercessory prayer is a vision for an alternative future. “History belongs to the intercessors, who believe the future into being,” he writes.

Prayer is necessary to rattle God’s cage, wake him up and stir God to action.

In his favour, I will say that Wink has led me to a new enthusiasm for intercessory prayer and to see it as a necessary part of the quest for peace and justice. I also agree that changing the ethos of an institution is a monumental task. The entanglements of an organization with the surrounding culture are a complex web.

Still, Wink’s theology strikes me as an exercise of his imagination more than a well-founded theory well rooted in Scripture. He is too quick to dismiss the existence of spiritual beings. The NRSV translation we use in the Canadian Catholic Church employs the terms “angel” 178 times and “demon” 77 times in the New Testament alone. That is firm testimony to the existence of such beings. I don’t accept that the biblical authors were making up this stuff or were deluded by ancient superstition.

Was the angel Gabriel who Mary thought she encountered at the Annunciation a non-personal “force” who somehow came to her in in the form of a real being? It doesn’t make much sense, does it?

Wink argues that institutions have a deeply embedded spirituality but does not want to discuss the sources of such spiritualities. He does not want to say that angels and demons lie behind those spiritualities, but he lacks any terminology that does not presuppose their existence.

Either angels, demons and other “powers” are delusions believed in by gullible people or they have a real spiritual existence. There isn’t any middle ground. You either accept modern materialist reductionism or you believe in a spiritual realm that today is often dismissed as archaic superstition.

St. Paul maintained, “Our struggle is not against blood and flesh but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6.12) The reasonable conclusion is that, while institutions and nations may have spiritualities that reflect both good and evil, those spiritualities reflect the action of real beings on those organizations.

The further implication is that positive social change means taking the angels and demons seriously. We need to do more than change laws and social structures. We must also take the “powers” seriously and do what we can so that good prevails.

One would have thought that Jesus’ self-giving love to the point of surrendering his life on the cross would have taught the early Christians something about humility. Apparently not. For Paul must respond bluntly to the moral superiority of the Gentile Christians.

In verse 29, Paul tells those Christians: “The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.” Here, he responds to the question raised by last Sunday’s reading: how can Christians trust a fickle God who has renounced his covenants with Abraham and his children? God is not fickle; God has not renounced the covenant. Rather, he has expanded the covenant to include those non-Jews who have accepted God’s forgiveness in Christ Jesus.

But what of these Jews who did not recognize the hour of God’s visitation? True, they were “disobedient,” but you Gentiles were also disobedient. Indeed, God imprisoned all of you, Jews and Gentiles, in disobedience so that he could show his mercy to all. So, don’t be so haughty in your belief that you have succeeded where the Jews have failed. Rather, recognize that all have failed so that God can be merciful to all.

Our call is not to moral and spiritual perfection. That is beyond our reach. We are all sinners. Instead, our call is to accept God’s love so that we can receive his mercy. We can only be open to mercy if we are humble enough to face our sinfulness.

Our God is the God of inclusion. God does not choose sides to condemn some and to welcome his favourites. God extends mercy to all.

This is the great wonder of the Divine. God is the author of creation, a cosmos he created for all, not for a handpicked few. In that, we are given a mission – to reach out and welcome all who have been cut off from the benefits of creation because of human ideologies and systems of exclusion.

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The pattern of inclusion and exclusion is everywhere. It leads to wars, irreconcilable family feuds, and divorces that often leave children as the main victims.

Those of us indirectly involved in such disputes are prone to pick sides. In difficult marital situations, we hear one side of the story from the family member closest to us and decide that represents the full truth. Then we witness isolated events that we use to bolster our already-formed biases as to who is at fault. In truth, if we cannot serve as mediators in such disputes, we should just keep our noses out of them and avoid one-sided judgments.

One of my deepest regrets is silently taking my dad’s side in the lifelong enmity between him and his father. I didn’t fan the flames, but I eventually stopped visiting my grandfather in his last years.

What were the real roots of this feud? Who knows? My grandfather was a physically strong Ukrainian immigrant with a prodigious work ethic, my dad a quiet boy with an artistic temperament. Perhaps Dad did not meet his father’s expectations and as is so often the case with eldest sons, took the brunt of whatever punishments the father wielded.

Dad sometimes told the story of his father chasing him around the house and smacking him with a violin that grandpa had made. I never asked about that violin. Was that an expression of my grandfather’s own artistic yearnings, something he resented seeing expressed more fully in his son?

Understandably, Dad grew up to be very self-focused. I don’t know if he ever gained the ability to truly love another person. From an introverted child, he grew into an extrovert, forever showing off his artistic and other accomplishments to others in a never-ending search for approval. Dad rarely sought payment for his artwork; he gave most of it away, still seeking the encouragement he never received as a child.

In 1985, my grandfather fell in his home where he lived alone and broke his hip. It took him a few days to crawl to a phone where he called an ambulance. A few days after that, I happened to be in Regina and went to visit him in the hospital. He was extremely angry with me for not coming to visit him in the five years since his wife had died. If he hadn’t been in traction, I don’t know what he would have done.

I returned to my parents’ house and told Dad I didn’t think he should visit his father in the hospital. I didn’t want his last memories to be of his father on the verge of violence, never able to realize that he had been the adult in the room and had the responsibility to build a harmonious relationship with his son.

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Of course, the effects of this feud spilled over into Dad’s relationship with Mom, myself and my two younger siblings. I don’t need to get into that, except to say that the deleterious effects of feuds never end with those most immediately involved in them.

Nor do I know what drove my grandfather. Why was he such an angry and sometimes manipulative man? Why did he move from Ukraine by himself at a young age to live in a country halfway around the world? Those things were never discussed.

Still, I regret not visiting him during the last years of his life. He had done nothing directly against me. I didn’t have to agree with all his gripes against my dad, but it would have done me no harm to step across the boundary that separated us. Moreover, he was a man in his 90s, living alone in a large house. All such people deserve compassion and attention.

The worst evils in our society come when we rip apart those things that God has created as one. St. Paul’s epistles are a concerted plea for unity in the Church and in humanity. However, when we separate that which God united, we doom them to existing as separated, isolated beings. Curiously, that autonomy is the modern conception of the human person. When we elevate ourselves to a sublime uniqueness or condemn others to a prison of aloneness, we undermine their humanity.

The hope for humanity lies in solidarity. The trinitarian God is the model for human living. None of the divine persons are autonomous; all define themselves through total self-giving to the others. With courage and creativity, we can imitate divine life, sharing in it through a dedication to the good of others.

Chapter 8 ends with Paul joyfully proclaiming that nothing can separate us from the love of God. And then he is overwhelmed by sorrow and anguish. What could be the problem? The problem is that his reverie over God’s love is shattered by the realization that most of the people of Israel reject Jesus as the Messiah. God’s promise to Abraham has not been realized.

Did God reject his people? If so, God must be a fickle deity who cannot be trusted. And if God is fickle, how then can the followers of Jesus trust him? So, if the Gentiles can commit themselves to Jesus, God must be true to Israel. Paul faces this alarming situation with anguish. He will take three chapters to work his way through the problem intellectually.

But at this point, he is grief stricken. He himself is a Jew, and his ties to the Israelite community are more than intellectual. These people are his family. Paul is in an existential crisis. Almost in despair, he will do anything to give his people a relationship with Jesus. He says he would even be cut off from Christ if only it would result in the Israelites accepting fulfillment of the promise in Christ Jesus.

A millennium earlier, Moses made a similar offer in order to bring back the wayward people of Israel: “Now, if you will only forgive their sin – but if not, blot me out of the book you have written,” Moses said to God. (Exodus 32.32)

How many of us would make such a proposal – to be cut off from the Lord so that his kin would accept this God?

Paul proclaims the right of the Israelites to God’s promise: “to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law . . .”. It is only in the verse following the end of this reading that he begins his answer to the question. Not all Israelites “truly” belong to Israel. It is “the children of the promise” – those who follow Jesus – who should be counted as Abraham’s descendants.

(To be continued)

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We rightly see these as signs of climate change, a process hitting other parts of Canada and the world with devastating fires. Northern Alberta has known such blazes too in recent years, with sections of major settlements destroyed, but this season the signs have changed.

Scientists make educated predictions based on observable data and established patterns or laws. Prophets also take note of observable phenomena, but they don’t make predictions as much as note the direction in which our moral and immoral behaviour are leading. They see what is happening, and they hear the word of God. If you want to see the future of climate change, turn to the scientists; if you want to know whether we are headed for societal breakdown, tune into a reliable prophet.

Prophets base their “findings” on how we measure up to the covenant between the people and God. Many pre-Christian religions were based on covenants between God and the people. In the Mosaic covenant, the land, stones in particular, were witnesses to the people’s fidelity to the covenant. When Joshua wrote a covenant to which the Hebrew people were bound, he then took a large stone and placed it under an oak tree in the sanctuary of the Lord.

“See, this stone shall be a witness against us; for it has heard all the words of the Lord that he spoke to us; therefore, it shall be a witness against you, if you deal falsely with your God.” (Joshua 24.27)

People of the Enlightenment think this is nonsense. Stones don’t hear the words spoken by people, let alone remember them and bear witness if the promises made are broken.

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Centuries later, when “the whole multitude of the disciples” followed Jesus into Jerusalem praising God and calling Jesus a king, the Pharisees objected. Jesus responded, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” (Luke 19.40) Jesus wasn’t kidding; his was a prophetic statement echoing that of Habakkuk. Habakkuk told those who do evil, “The very stones will cry out from the wall, and the plaster will respond from the woodwork.” (2.11) In the case of Jesus, the stones would shout for joy if the people didn’t.

The Mosaic covenant was written on two slabs of stone, and when a huge stone is rolled in front of Jesus’ tomb, we know the Most Holy lies inside. A new covenant is about to be revealed.

These are not scientifically verifiable statements. They are descriptions of creation groaning under the weight of human evil or of creation’s yearning for the liberation of the resurrection. They are pleas to turn and follow the Lord.

What evil does creation rebel against? Surely the evil of one or two generations of people using far more than their share of the earth’s resources while laying nothing up for those who will come later. The evil of continuing to use vast amounts of fossil fuels even when the effects of such overuse should be apparent to all.

Humans become willfully blind and deaf to the harms our actions cause. To pay heed to those harms would mean acknowledging our responsibility to change our ways. However, even if we are blind and deaf, the stones can see and hear. The stones witness to our folly even if we don’t.

And the wind blows hard across the Prairies. And fires burn, thunder crashes and lightning flashes. “The judgment of the stones cannot be happening here, to us,” we whisper to ourselves when no one else is around. And so we wait for another year in the hope that this year, and the year before, and the year before that are shown to be illusions. That everything will return to normal.

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Many people leave the Church because of hardships in their lives. They ask, “How could a loving God make me or my loved one suffer so much?” They can’t square that circle, so they conclude there is no loving God. In fact, the circle cannot be squared, at least not by humans. We are gifted with a love we don’t understand.

But isn’t that the point? If we could comprehend all that God does or allows – or maybe even anything God allows, it would not be God we are comprehending. It would be some figment of our imagination. God’s love is far beyond our understanding. It is a mystery because God is a mystery.

Faith takes trust; in hard times, it can take enormous trust. For many, the distress and hardship are more than we can handle. My sister Carole suffered from schizophrenia for 25 years and finally took her own life. Schizophrenia must be near the top of the list of the toughest hardships one can be given. Why would God allow someone to suffer from this malady? I simply do not know.

Did Carole lose trust in the love of God? That question calls for an examination of her life that is far more detailed than I can get into. Even if I could, I would not venture an answer. What I do know is that her last request to me was to pray for her. That was 13 years ago, and I am still praying. Her request told me that she retained hope, even if the suffering was unbearable.

So Paul wants us to consider whether there is anything that would prevent – not us from loving God – but Jesus from loving us. His answer is a resounding, categorical No. Jesus will never stop loving us, even if we are such confused, overwhelmed and dastardly sons of bitches that we no longer even know what love is.

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What a pledge! No matter what horrible things we have done – and we all do them – Christ will continue to love us. No conditions, no hesitations, no hedging his bets. In this, Jesus is more of a saviour than we will ever understand.

If my dad were still alive, he could do my marketing for me. We had radically different personalities, him the extrovert and me, like Mom, an introvert. Dad loved nothing more than having a story to tell or a project he wanted others to know about. He could go to a shopping mall and engage groups of people with news about his current endeavour. I cringe at the thought of doing that.

However, marketing is a crucial task for book authors. My first real book, Jesus Christ: The Heart of Vatican II, is in the process of being published and should be available this fall. I loved writing the book; now comes the hard part.

However, writing the book was not something I dreamt of doing either. As I explain in The Heart of Vatican II, I would not have written it at all if not for the encouragement of the late Archbishop Joseph MacNeil, who was my boss and eventually my friend. MacNeil retired as archbishop of Edmonton in 1999, and six years later, I began writing a lengthy series of articles on Vatican II in the Western Catholic Reporter.

MacNeil prodded me a few times to publish those articles in book form, but I didn’t like the idea. In my view, the articles were too journalistic and had nothing new to say. The newspaper was closed in 2016, and my friend, the archbishop, died two years later.

In 2023, my wife Nora and I attended a concert of the Ukrainian men’s choir at First Presbyterian Church in downtown Edmonton. I ran into Father Stephen Wojichowsky, another cleric I admire, and he too urged me to put those articles into a book. Gee, it was eight years since that series in the WCR concluded, and here was someone else who hadn’t forgotten it.

I went home that evening and started thinking about how I might write the darn thing. My first decision was to ignore that series of articles, to not even look at it. Then I started reading, first, some of my large collection of books on the Second Vatican Council in the basement, then the council documents themselves. I kept reading, and I started writing.

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Sometimes, I learn as much from writing as I do from reading. That’s what happened here. My central question was, What is the real core of Vatican II teaching? Many commentators maintain that the council was about re-envisioning the Church. For lots of folks, the main thing they experienced was changes to the liturgy – no more Latin, the priest facing the people, modern music and other things.

Yet the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the council fathers wanted us to focus on Jesus. Pope John Paul II certainly thought that. In his 26-year papacy, he referred hundreds of times to this statement in the council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World: “Christ the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals humanity to itself and brings to light its very high calling.” If we want to know what it means to be fully human, we should look to and follow Jesus. We need to get to know him and respond to his call. Jesus is the heart of Vatican II teaching, and that changes everything.

I start the book with a reflection on the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. The two talk for a long time, with Jesus giving his fullest attention to this woman who was an outcast in her community. After the conversation concluded, she ran back to her city and excitedly declared, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done.”

The encounter between the two is deeply personal, but such encounters can lead to relationships that challenge and humanize both our faith communities and the wider society. That was the underlying vein of new life that animated the fathers of Vatican II. They traced a path that leads the Catholic community through a deep appreciation of the paschal mystery of Christ’s life, death, resurrection and ascension to the Father. Through the paschal mystery, we desire to live like Jesus, to strive for unity among all Christians, to dialogue with those of other faiths, to live nonviolently, and to grow in solidarity with the poor and other excluded people.

Critics of Vatican II said the council made it too easy to be Catholic. My response is that those critics don’t understand the council at all. Understand conciliar teaching, and you will see how the Church must stand against the flow of consumerism, exploitation and violence. We are called to be people of love who reflect the self-giving love of the Trinity. It’s not easy at all. Our vocation is to be prophets in a dry land.

I don’t know if this article constitutes marketing, but it does give a small taste of what Jesus Christ: The Heart of Vatican II has to offer. I will write more about the book as publication day draws nearer.

I scrolled down through the ads to the reader comments, and I came upon a reflection by one “Elijah Petterson” that was posted around 1:30 pm, and included this paragraph:

“The referendum isn’t about whether Albertans love Canada. Many do. It’s about whether Ottawa’s policies have repeatedly harmed Alberta’s economy through pipeline obstruction, investment-killing regulations, emissions caps, tanker restrictions, and unequal treatment of the country’s largest export industry and our economic engine.”

About five hours later, I saw “Petterson’s” comments and decided to offer up a critique focused mainly on that paragraph.

That’s when things got interesting. Immediately upon posting my response, I noticed a note flashing beside my post indicating someone was typing a response. Three minutes later, “Petterson’s” response appeared: a well-constructed, 207-word, four-paragraph response to my post.

I was flabbergasted. The guy barely had time to read my comment, let alone write a well-considered – from his point of view – response to it.

In response, I wrote in part, “That lengthy response to my post came so quickly that I have to wonder whether it was AI generated. In fact, I don’t know if you could type that many words in three minutes, let alone arrange them into something resembling a coherent argument.”

I waited for his response. Crickets. I wondered, who is Elijah Petterson, and who is paying for AI to write his posts?

I clicked on his name in the comments section and learned that Petterson has posted 2,100 times on The Journal website and has drawn 15,309 likes for his comments. I went further and googled his name. The only reference I found to an Elijah Petterson in Alberta was in the Brooks Bulletin of June 28, 2023. This Petterson was in a group photo of a U9 lacrosse team. Not a likely suspect.

One must wonder how a person who posts close to non-stop on The Journal’s website cannot be found elsewhere on the internet.

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I did find a comment on Reddit which had presumably reposted a Don Braid column from The Calgary Herald. This poster wrote, “Someone using the handle ‘Elijah Petterson’ comments on any Postmedia article that even remotely comes close to criticizing the premier and the UCP. I’m convinced it’s a government staffer.”

Maybe it is a government staffer or maybe it is evidence of foreign interference in Alberta’s separation referendum campaign. I don’t know, and I have no evidence to offer. But I am quite sure something is amok with Mr. Petterson.

For more than a year, qualified observers have been sounding the alarm about potential foreign interference in the Alberta separatism movement. In an article published in the June 25, 2025, Globe and Mail, Patrick Lennox, a former federal Liberal candidate and former federal civil servant who spent part of his career in the security and intelligence community, wrote an article headlined, “Danielle Smith has put out the welcome mat for foreign interference in Canada.”

Lennox criticized the amended Alberta Citizen Initiative Act that cut in half the number of names required on a petition to force a referendum. That provision makes it easier for potentially polarizing issues to be put to the electorate, issues that foreign or even Canadian actors who wish to sow discord and division can do much more easily than if they had to work through our elected representatives.

Lennox cited the massive Russian influence in the 2016 Brexit referendum in Great Britain that led to the UK leaving the European Union. Something similar could happen here.

A May 6 Globe story reported that a report indicated Russian interference may well be taking place in Alberta. The report by the Global Centre for Democratic Resilience traced activities ranging from covert influence campaigns run by Russia, China and other countries to foment discord inside the province to public remarks and actions by the Trump administration to encourage Alberta separatists.

“Foreign adversaries are exploiting the Alberta separatist debate to erode social cohesion, deepen domestic divisions, undermine trust in democratic institutions, and amplify perceptions of political instability that damage investor confidence in Canada,” the authors wrote in the report.

“We’re kind of sleepwalking into this referendum and we are already being targeted a lot more than people realize,” one of the authors, Dr. Brian McQuinn of the University of Regina, told The Globe.

Finally, in the June 12 Globe, Wesley Wark, a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, wrote that foreign interference will definitely take place during the referendum campaign. Wark criticized the Alberta government for seeming to be “wholly unprepared (and unwilling) to speak any evil when it comes to the separatist movement and foreign interference.”

As I said, I don’t know whether Elijah Petterson is a pseudonym for a foreign actor, a government employee or someone who has a tremendous amount of time on his hands. However, I will pass on this post to The Edmonton Journal and CSIS. Maybe one of them will find this of interest.

A question we can pull from this Sunday’s reading is how one makes sense of the disparate events of one’s life. Are the seemingly disconnected events part of a pattern, or are they random chunks of life that have no inherent connection? This is a crucial question.

If one decides that the second option best describes reality then one has concluded that life and the cosmos in general are meaningless. No glue holds things together. Life is just one damn thing after another.

Those whose life view is founded on this second option are thus liable to either succumb to a life of endlessly amusing themselves on one hand or to attempt to impose their own order on the buzzing, beeping chaos of life on the other.

However, one may instead decide that the apparent disconnection among events is only apparent and that reality is deeper and more mysterious than we comprehend. If that’s how you see things, your attitude to life will be more receptive. Not passively receptive, I hasten to add, but rather an acceptance that more than we can understand is going on. Our best choice is to go with the general flow while making positive contributions where we can.

St. Paul’s answer is stated in the first line of Sunday’s reading: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” Next week’s reading is even stronger: nothing will ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

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Not only the good times, but also the hardships, persecutions and even death itself are part of God’s plan. All those parts of our lives that make no sense to us now, even those parts we find repulsive or traumatic, are part of a mysterious order. Further, God allows us to experience hard times not to torment us but as a display of his love.

Accepting that last conclusion takes faith, a lot of it. Such acceptance does not mean we can blame God for the unfathomable evils that human beings have committed. However, it should drag us beyond the world of appearances into the realm of mystery. It is not surprising that many, probably most, people balk at accepting the untold suffering that comes from, say, natural disasters as expressions of God’s love.

Yet we need to know that we have a role in God’s “plan.” Part of that role is to prevent or alleviate suffering, to overcome the domination of one class of people by another, and to make the earth a livable space for future generations. We make choices, and it is important that we choose well. Amidst the mystery, we have enormous responsibilities.

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(You may see a suggestion below that someday you may have to pay for a subscription to Epiphany. If so, I didn’t put it there. Please subscribe if you wish to receive Epiphany regularly, but I hope the subscriptions will always be free.)

Since 2000, labour productivity in the U.S. has grown 15 per cent more than in Canada. However, a survey by Gallup and Leger found that 33 per cent of Canadians are satisfied with the state of the national economy while only 16 per cent of Americans feel the same about theirs. Are Canadians more easily satisfied than Americans, or is something else afoot?

Paul Beaudry and David Green of UBC posted the results of their study in the July 20 Globe and Mail. They found a simple explanation for the discrepancy in attitudes. For most Canadians, wages have grown faster than have wages for Americans. It is wealthy Americans who have most benefitted from their economy’s increased productivity.

Wages for the top 10 per cent of Americans have grown by almost 51 per cent over the last 25 years; those of the richest Canadians have grown by “only” 29 per cent. In both countries, the rich are getting richer much faster than the rest of the population, but in the U.S., the growth in inequality is greater.

People in the lower 90 per cent of income ranges are better off in Canada than in the United States. Moreover, a larger percentage of Canadians are part of the workforce, whereas more Americans have given up looking for a job. For such reasons, Canadians are happier with their economy.

Of course, money alone does not buy happiness; it only helps. That is why many economists now disparage narrow measurements such as gross domestic product (GDP) and stock prices. These measures ignore the variety of factors that contribute to happiness or the lack of happiness – crime rates, life expectancy, environmental quality, educational attainment, divorce rates, suicide rates, personal debt, problem gambling, and time spent with family and friends.

Edmonton economist Mark Anielski, in his 2007 book The Economics of Happiness, devised an index he calls Genuine Wealth that accounts for these and other aspects of life that are not easily measurable. Using a similar index called Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), he found that overall happiness in the United States began falling in 1973 and had not recovered.

In Alberta, Anielski found that the GPI was virtually stagnant in the 1980s and 1990s while GDP grew rapidly.

He also visited northern Inuit communities that have maintained their quality of life although the average income is low by Canadian standards. Anielski learned that Inuit elders stress a balance of mental, spiritual, emotional and physical aspects in people’s lives. As well, the family is the basic unit of economic activity in traditional societies, and the community works together by sharing knowledge, skills, wisdom and culture.

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GDP does not even measure economic progress accurately. An oil spill or a train wreck will contribute far more to the GDP than the uneventful delivery of oil to its destination. Car crashes and widespread gambling boost the GDP, but do we really believe they contribute to Canadians’ well-being?

The problem, as I see it, is that Western society wants to measure everything. If we cannot put a number on our achievements, how will we know whether we have met our goals? By our reckoning, if we cannot quantify the amount of happiness, we won’t know whether we’re happier than before. So, every day the media are full of mindless reports on the stock market.

The statisticians are content with comparing health care spending from one year to the next. But what does that say about the general health of the people? Even growing life expectancy is no guarantee of physical or mental health given the technology that keeps people alive but not necessarily happy.

We want to make good decisions as individuals and as a society, but quantifiable projections about the foreseeable results of those decisions should be only one part of our judgments. Much more do we need a wisdom that goes deeper than numbers.

At the end of his book, Anielski offered a quote from a 2003 talk by Pope John Paul II: “Recognition of the spiritual nature of the human person and a renewed appreciation of the moral character of social and economic development must be acknowledged as prerequisites for the transformation of society into a true civilization of love.”

It’s time for lovers of wisdom to gain equal footing with economists in charting society’s way forward.

Two weeks ago, we had a slightly longer chat, although it couldn’t carry on too long because a line of people who also wanted lunch stood behind him. I hoped we might have a longer discussion in future weeks.

However, that was the last I saw of Chad. At last week’s service, it was announced that Chad had died. I later learned that his death was due to drug poisoning and that he had suffered from schizophrenia. Chad was not technically homeless. He and the Missus had a roof over their heads. However, he had lived in Edmonton’s poorer neighbourhoods for many years, and he associated with those who sleep rough.

About 15 years ago, I attended a Catholic media convention in New Orleans. One evening I strolled through an area of the city a few blocks from touristy Bourbon Street with two other journalists, one of whom was a Vietnam War veteran. Occasionally, the war vet would single out one or two of the numerous homeless people on the street and salute them. They would salute back, a sign of the solidarity among old soldiers who had had the shared experience of military combat.

Those are but two faces of homelessness. There are many. People lack adequate housing due to a vast array of causes, including domestic and gender-based violence, substance abuse, homophobia, unemployment, poor health care, racial and gender discrimination, urban violence and having to escape war zones. Twenty per cent of homeless people in the United States are war veterans; 40 per cent identify as LGBTQ.

Those in the latter group, it should be noted, have often been driven from their homes due to “religious rejection.” Their parents reject them because they believe their children are sinners undeserving of acceptance or mercy. LGBTQ youth are eight times more likely to attempt suicide if they have been rejected by their families than those whose parents accept them.

Today, Andy Burnham became prime minister of Great Britain, saying his first priority will be to end “rough sleeping” in the country. That’s a surprising top priority for a politician. Few votes will come from it, even if his government is successful. Government leaders are more prone to pledge prosperity for everyone or increasing affordability in a bid to catch the attention of the greatest number of the voting populace.

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I was at first skeptical of Burnham being a force for positive social change. Like Canada’s Mark Carney, Burnham is a serious Catholic well-schooled in Catholic social teaching. Carney made a big show – not of being Catholic – but of trumpeting the values associated with the Church’s social doctrine. Yet once in power, Carney made the same old, same-old economics of megaprojects and financial support for the rich his lodestone.

Would Burnham do the same? At first glance, it appears not. Both prime ministers come from relatively humble backgrounds. Carney, however, has spent his adult life walking in the corridors of economic power; Burnham has served as mayor of an English city with a high rate of poverty. So often, where you stand determines what you see. If you stand amidst the wealthy and powerful, you will be attuned to their voices. But if your time has been devoted to listening to the concerns of poor constituents, you may remember those concerns when you rise to greater power. Time will tell.

Burnham’s desire to eradicate “sleeping rough” will not be easily achieved. As I noted above, people become homeless for a variety of reasons. The first thing Burnham should do is to provide affordable housing with proper supports for those who lack adequate housing. With sufficient funding, that will go a long way to getting people off the street and moving toward a better life.

However, it won’t necessarily prevent others from becoming homeless. How does one eliminate the domestic violence, unemployment, parental rejection of their transgender children, the trauma caused by violence, and racial discrimination that drive so many people to live on the street?

Eliminating those forces calls for more than a mere politician can accomplish. What is needed is cultural change, a revolution in attitudes from the desire for material acquisition to a commitment to the human dignity of all. This is the place where religion must play a leading role by promoting a shift from a this-worldly materialism to a recognition of the transcendent dignity of the human person.

Pope Leo is providing such leadership. But where are the voices in local pulpits that amplify his words and actions, calling us to contribute to God’s kingdom? Those voices are needed to change the cultural climate.

Mom, however, was afflicted with a lifelong addiction to cigarettes, an addiction, which, try as she might, she could not overcome. In 1997, while I was at a convention in Denver, I got word that Mom had been admitted to the hospital. I was shocked and went immediately to a nearby church to pray. Over the next eight years, her health steadily declined until she died on Sept. 13, 2005.

She suffered all those years with emphysema – pneumonia always a near possibility, and her lungs grew progressively weaker. She was also afflicted with chronic pain. Her final years were tough as were her early years.

Mom didn’t talk much about her childhood in Nokomis. I sensed there were some bad memories, perhaps religious prejudice that stemmed from growing up Catholic in a largely Protestant town. If so, it did a few things for her.

First, it gave her a loving heart for those who suffer any form of discrimination. She welcomed many people to the table at our home in Regina, including some whose political views were much narrower than her own.

Second, it made her a stronger Catholic, not in an exclusive way, but in a way that led her to rely more on the Creator and to focus her life on God. She was never pushy about religion, but she was quite devout.

Third, it led her delve deeply into her genealogy, tracing it all the way back to her ancestors who came from Ireland in the 1820s, settling in the Saint John region of New Brunswick, with some of the clan moving to Saskatchewan in the early 20th century.

My grandfather, William White, died suddenly in 1940. He left my grandmother and six children. My Uncle Al went to work at a local bank, but the family was thrown into poverty.

As near as I can figure, Mom left Nokomis shortly after her graduation from Grade 12 where she got an office job with the Saskatchewan Co-op Creamery in Regina. In 1947, she went to a dance at the Trianon Ballroom and met my dad, Bill Argan. They say opposites attract, and Mom and Dad were very different people.

Dad was an extreme extrovert, often irascible, while Mom was cool, calm and collected. She helped to calm his tempestuous nature, although nowhere near enough for my taste. However, they rarely argued, but Mom knew how to stand her ground. She never criticized Dad behind his back, something that amazed me. She was always supportive of his many ventures.

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I was the oldest of three children and probably took the worst of Dad’s fury and high expectations. If it were not for Mom’s steadfast love, I probably would have been a basket case as an adult. But love she did, and all three of us grew up to be high achievers as adults. I’m not bragging, that’s just the way it was.

During my teenage years, I found an ugly, tan-coloured coat in the basement that Dad had probably worn during the war years. I started wearing it despite a large rip under one of the pockets. Mom could have told me to ditch that beastly thing, but instead she sewed up the rip.

When it became clear that the coat was not warm enough for a Saskatchewan winter, she made a wool liner and buttoned it inside the coat so that it became a three-season garment. I wore that thing through my university years, and Mom never complained about it or criticized me for wearing it. She just went with the flow.

Mom had a strong social conscience. She was not one to join in movements or marches. But she had a clear sense of what was right and wrong in world and national affairs. She was involved in politics for several years but eventually withdrew in disgust at the backroom manoeuvrings and back-stabbing in the party she had supported.

However, her social conscience never died. That conscience was not rooted in an ideology, but in her own kindness. Her kindness, in turn, was rooted in her faith in God.

When I was very young, Regina was a lily-white city. Virtually everyone was Caucasian. One day when I was four or five, I encountered a black boy on the street. Having never seen anyone of another race, I ran home frightened. Mom gently told me that people of different races are people just like us. We should be kind to them and treat them with respect. Mom taught me something that day that changed my attitude for the rest of my life.

When my own social conscience grew stronger and began to resemble hers, I played Bob Dylan’s protest songs on our aging record player day after day. Mom was quiet. After a period, she announced to me that she really liked Dylan’s songs . . . even his singing.

She kept the lines of communication open with her son during his teenage rebellion.

Much later, when I was lost and confused after breaking up with a girlfriend, she consoled me by saying what I needed to hear – that all our sufferings in this life are of little consequence when compared with eternal life with Christ.

I don’t remember an occasion when I didn’t trust her or when I felt she let me down. Mom gave me biological life, but she also was the chief intermediary for my life in Christ. She taught me to pray at an early age. I have fond memories of attending early morning Mass as a child with her during Lent, walking home and chattering to her while jumping on the thin film of ice that formed overnight on the spring puddles.

Dad was an artist, but Mom taught me about beauty. Her flower garden grew more impressive with each passing year, an organized riot of colour in our front yard. She was also skilled in luring hummingbirds and other songbirds into the back yard. Her ability as a seamstress was so advanced that she made suits for both Dad and me. His tastes tended to be gaudy, while mine were more conservative, but Mom obliged us both.

As the end of her life drew near, Mom made special efforts to prepare herself for eternity. She made a long and presumably detailed general confession to her confessor. Before the funeral, the priest told me that Mom was exceptionally well prepared to meet the Lord.

When Mom went into the hospital, perhaps knowing it would be her final trip there, she left a note to Dad among her clothes. We kids found it when we were going through her belongings after the funeral. The note spoke of her undying love for my father, a tender last gift to the man to whom she had already given so much.

After the funeral, a long-time family friend said Mom was the kindest person he had ever met. A childhood friend later remarked on her kindness and her ready sense of humour.

It wasn’t that Mom never got angry. But even when she was angry, she managed to be fair. I cannot recall a single instance of harsh or unfair criticism passing her lips.

While Mom died when she was 79, it sometimes feels like she is nearby. I don’t hear her whispering over my shoulder, but I do feel her encouraging presence. The love she gave lives on; it has never died. Thank God, she was my mother. I was so blessed.

It’s not that something is deficient with verbal prayer. In any relationship with friends, you converse using words. How can you get to know someone without using words? It’s difficult. Yet when one becomes comfortable with a friend, you don’t need to fill all your time together with chatter. Sometimes, it’s okay just to “be.” To be together.

So it is with God. Especially with God. God is so vast, so infinitely knowing and loving, that our words always fall short of what we seek to express and what God “says” to us. We can meet God just by being still and experiencing the divine in the silence. One can meditate on some biblical event or phrase in Scripture by sitting next to that scene or those words and letting all else fall aside. Just see what comes of it.

Or one can engage in centering prayer. Pick a word and set the timer for 20 minutes. Then still yourself and let all thoughts fall away. When thoughts emerge, use the word to gently let those thoughts drift away. When the 20 minutes are up, spend a minute or two praying the Our Father or reading a brief Scripture passage.

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Don’t be concerned if you don’t have any awesome revelations. That’s not what this is about. The prayer itself is not to be judged.

The brief Second Reading for Sunday, July 19 (Romans 8.26-27) says, “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that the Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”

The faithful practice of such forms of prayer awakens us to the presence of God throughout the day. The Lord is present in all things. We are blessed when we sense God’s presence.

It is good to ask God for the things we need or desire. However, the silent, contemplative times of prayer are expressions of gratitude. One sits on a rock in the forest and is overwhelmed by an appreciation of God’s handiwork. Another looks into the eyes of a smiling baby and glows with a realization of the mystery of human life.

To our modern minds, contemplative prayer is useless because nothing is getting done. Where are the results? The result is that we are drawing closer to God even though we don’t necessarily detect it. The Holy Spirit is always there, helping us to be attentive to the depths of existence. That closeness to God is what we are made for.

At the gym I frequent, I often see a young guy posing unselfconsciously with his shirt off in front of the mirror in the locker room. He flexes his muscles and admires his chest before putting on a t-shirt and heading off to the gym floor. He is probably about 20 and hasn’t yet reached the peak of his physical power.

In a few weeks, I will turn 74. My posture is stooped when I walk, and I have never had big muscles. Extra pounds hang from my waist, despite my thin appearance while fully clothed. I hope I have another 20 years in me, but who knows? Then there is the mental deterioration. When I see old photos from my youth, I know I am the same man, but my appearance is less robust now.

When St. Paul speaks of “the bondage to decay” in the Second Reading for Sunday, July 12 (Romans 8.18-23), he is addressing not only our physical corruption but also the reign of sin and death. Sin too is a form of decay; it turns the natural goodness of creation into something less than it should be. Moreover, sin is both personal and cosmic. Because of this spiritual corruption, death is inevitable.

But Paul goes on to write, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” After we are freed from the bondage to decay, we will experience “the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” What a marvellous phrase!

The best description of this phrase I have found is in Gaudium et Spes 39, the Second Vatican Council’s document on The Church in the Modern World. There, the council spoke of the world’s transformation where “what was sown in weakness and dishonour will become incorruptible; charity and its works will remain and all of creation, which God made for humanity, will be set free from its bondage to decay.”

This transformation will be not only of individual “souls” but also of material creation itself.

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Gaudium et Spes goes on to emphasize that our longing to reach the heavenly courts does not absolve us of responsibility to care for this world and our brothers and sisters. “Far from diminishing our concern to develop this world, the expectation of a new earth should spur us on, for it is here that the body of a new human family grows, foreshadowing in some way the age which is to come.” Our call is to bring, as much as we can, heaven to earth.

Christian faith offers this amazing “freedom of the glory of the children of God.” We are not merely God’s creatures; we are his co-workers who will one day share fully in God’s glory. Take a moment to pause and ponder what the freedom of God’s children will be like. Then, take a deep breath and ask the Lord to give you a share of God’s glory now and when your day is done. It will be a great ride.

Sanctuary of Peace will be one of the beneficiaries of the concert. All profits will be divided among Sanctuary, the Bissell Centre and the Edmonton Food Bank. Those organizing the concert not only want to support a united Canada but also to bear witness to the sort of Canada they desire. That Canada is one that respects people who are marginalized, those who too often live outside mainstream life in Canada. They, and I, want a Canada that honours diversity and treats all people with dignity.

My own Canadian journey has taken me through four provinces, all of which have shaped me in important ways. I was born in Winnipeg and raised in Regina where I lived until I was 25, with two important years in Fredericton tucked in there.

I went to New Brunswick to do graduate studies in philosophy, but I learned more from the people I met than I did in the classroom and study hall. It was an experience of Fredericton, a beautiful city, but also an introduction to the Maritime provinces. My roommate was from Bathurst on the north shore, and he showed me a culture of which I had been completely unaware.

After two years teaching at the University of Regina, I found my true vocation as a journalist with my first job at The Red Deer Advocate. Fellow reporter Rick Zemanek, my roommate and lifelong friend, showed me the back roads and lakes of Central Alberta. Rick has a mystical connection to the land there. Through him, I grew in understanding of the positive spirituality of Alberta.

After three years, it was off to Edmonton, which has been my home for 40 of the last 45 years. I was editor of the Western Catholic Reporter, met my wife Nora here, and we raised four daughters, three of whom currently live on Vancouver Island. Before meeting Nora, I moved to Winnipeg for more than four years, spending most of my time there as editor of Inner City Voice, a newspaper cum community development project that immersed me in the gritty life of the city’s core area.

All of that moving about gave me a deep love for several regions of Canada, an appreciation of its diversity and a yearning for our people to do great things together. Dividing this country would be a tragedy of global proportions. Canada has proved that diverse people can live together in harmony. We are just getting started in showing the world that there is a better way than conquest and division.

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Sanctuary of Peace is a small, but significant sign of the better Canada that is being built. Every Sunday morning, 50 or so people, some unhoused and others eking out a living, gather for Christian worship at the Bissell Centre. Indigenous spirituality is honoured, and the music ministry is great. Coffee is the drink of choice, and after the service, lunches contributed by churches, synagogues and other organizations are distributed to worshipers and others who come to the front door. Sanctuary’s ministry continues in other ways throughout the week.

The July 22 Concert for Canada will feature music by local jazz saxophonist PJ Perry and his quintet along with Mallory Chipman. Other acts include The McDades, The Porch Dogs, Secondhand Dreamcar, the Mbira Renaissance Band and The Gift who will play an anthology of Ian Tyson songs.

The music will range from folk through jazz and the blues to Gaelic sounds and Afro-fusion music. There will be something for everyone.

Tickets are $57.31 (including tax and fees) and are available from Eventbrite.

What then is the Spirit? According to Sunday’s Second Reading (Romans 8.9, 11-13) – the first of five excerpts from Romans 8 – it is the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of the one true God who took on human flesh to redeem us. Jesus was not a ghost, but a man who walked, talked, ate, drank, slept and prayed. All of those are bodily events that Jesus performed in the Spirit. That is, his heart was set on union with the Father and his life oriented away from those activities that destroy such union.

“Flesh” refers to slavery to desires and activities that may not be sinful in themselves, but which turn our hearts away from God. It is not sinful to watch football or to play card games. However, if we develop a passion for these things that blocks out our attentiveness to the divine then we live in the flesh. We can be enslaved by idolatry.

One of the earliest heresies in the Church was docetism, the belief that Jesus merely appeared to be a human being and, in fact, had only a “spiritual” existence. Docetists believed that matter was inferior to spirit and that God could never be “corrupted” by matter.

Instead, Paul and the Church want us to engage the world, not flee from it. Matter and spirit are not separate substances that never intersect. When the Spirit enters matter, it brings life just as Holy Communion brings eternal life to those who receive it. The flesh, however, is the absence of Spirit, and it brings slavery and death.

In Deuteronomy 30, Moses urges the people of Israel, “Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him and holding fast to him.” Moses did not know of the Holy Spirit or of the resurrection. Romans 8 contains a similar urging, one that will lead not so much to prosperity for our descendants but to eternal life for all who choose the Spirit.

(This article is the eighth in a series on the Second Readings for the approaching Sunday liturgy. The series is intended to highlight those parts of the Lectionary that receive less attention from homilists.)