My prolonged absence from the Ink Desk has been due to an intensive travel schedule, which has seen me on the road more often than I’ve been at home over the past few months. It is, therefore, with a great sense of pleasurable relief that I find myself at my desk in my home office with the sound of the children downstairs as a cacophanous backdrop to my musings.
 
Since the start of this month I’ve been in New Hampshire teaching at Thomas More College, in Colorado speaking on Oscar Wilde at Colorado State University, in Texas leading a C. S. Lewis Retreat, and, most recently, in the wilds of northern Alabama filming a new Tolkien special for EWTN. Life is exciting, exhilarating – and exhausting!
 
All of the foregoing serves, I hope, as an excuse for my protracted absence from this site but also as a preamble for some thoughts on what it means to be a Christian in today’s secular fundamentalist environment. The fact is that we are in danger of being sucked into the political cares and snares of the world to the detriment of our life of faith and the serenity it brings.
 
It is not surprising that many Catholics became very anxious in the build-up to the recent election, especially considering what was at stake, and it’s hardly less surprising that many were distraught by the election’s outcome. The danger of such angst-ridden involvement in the world is easy to discern. Post-election despondency is only one short step from despair – and despair is a serious sin, the prideful loss of hope in God’s goodness and Providence. If placing our hope in worldly success, in politics as in anything else, leads us further from God and further from the peace that resides in Him alone, our very souls are endangered. We need to be as skeptical about the false promises of politics as we are about the false promises of politicians.
 
Ultimately, if we want to change the world, we have to begin by changing ourselves. With this in mind, we should remind ourselves of the words of the great G. K. Chesterton. When asked what’s wrong with the world, he answered that “I am”. The problem is that we are the problem. If we want the world to be a better place we have to begin by becoming better people. The more that we grow in holiness the more the world will be civilized. The more that we are dragged down to the world’s level the more that we will be accessories to the culture’s descent into barbarism.
 
It’s time to become realistic. We cannot vanquish evil from the world. It will be here until the Lord of History brings down the Final Curtain and separates the sheep from the goats. Until then the goats, and the wolves in sheep’s clothing, will be with us always. In the face of this grim reality, which has not changed throughout the whole of history, we need to be as lambs and, if necessary, as lambs to the slaughter. The Blood of the Lamb will sanctify the blood of his lambs. His Cross, united to our crosses, will set us free. The world, however, will remain enslaved to sin. It will continue to have the blood of the lambs on its hands. It has ever been so. It will ever be so.
 
We need to stop seeking Utopia and start seeking Heaven.
 

As we approach Thanksgiving, let’s give thanks for the joys and sorrows of this life and the promised glory of Everlasting Life!