Opinion by E.J. Dionne Jr.: The wise men who helped me understand Christmas
“Christmas hope may well fall in the psychological category of wish fulfillment,” he wrote, unflinchingly acknowledging the power of the skeptic’s case upfront. “But that does not disprove the possibility of actually fulfilled wishes. On Christmas, we consider the disorienting, vivid evidence that hope wins. If true, it is a story that can reorient every human story. It means that God is with us, even in suffering.
Gerson, facing death, did not pretend that hope was easy, only that it was possible and intellectually defensible. It is not a feeling but a virtue that requires discipline and determination., the wise and wisecracking political commentator. He taught an essential lesson by asserting that religious and political people alike were divided between those who hunted for heretics and those who sought converts.
Shields remained resolutely a convert-seeker in a heretic-hunting time. He was an egalitarian not just in words but in how he treated everyone, anywhere, at any level, on any hierarchy. Christians preach the equal dignity of everyone as a child of God. Mark acted that way. He would have spent more time with the shepherds than the Magi.
Both of them lived what others mainly preach — hope, even in unbearable circumstances; the possibility of dialogue and conversion, even among the fiercest adversaries; and a calling to the decency and equal dignity that leads us to side with the poor child in the manger against an earthly king who, Matthew recounts, tried to kill him.
Remember: At the end of the story, even Scrooge overcomes his greed, even the Grinch finds his heart, and a baby born surrounded by livestock is revered still.
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