JOYCE CORONEL

“What came to be through Him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” This quote from the beginning of the Gospel of John points us to the reality of Christ as the light of the world.

Ah, January. From sales on treadmills and exercise equipment to late-night commercials hawking weight-loss schemes, the country, it seems, is determined to get in shape after indulging in too many Christmas cookies.

Today, nearly 2,000 years later, we’re still living in the glow of that glorious moment when the Holy Spirit rushed upon the Apostles, emboldening them to carry the Gospel to all nations.

Standing there before the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, we waited to pass through a small, very low entryway known as “the Humble Door.”

I was still coming down off the high of the papal visit and engrossed in Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted’s exhortation to men when the news broke of yet another school shooting. This time, it was at a community college in a small town in Oregon where Chris Harper-Mercer, 26, killed nine people and wounded nine others.

Standing there in front of the bank of flickering candles, we closed our eyes and silently whispered a prayer, the days and years and lifetimes leading up to that moment behind us and yet somehow within us.

The voice on the other end of the line was choked with emotion. Years of bad decisions and poor choices had finally caught up with her and she felt trapped by her past. “I feel so empty inside. I’ve made so many dumb mistakes and now I’m paying for them!”

Sitting there in front of my computer, my hands were shaking as I watched a technician cavalierly examine a container of body parts taken from aborted babies.

Years ago, a wise friend offered up this little nugget: “I want my kids to experience disappointment. They might as well learn now while they’re young!”

There’s a change in the air and I’m not talking about those sub-112-degree temps as we head into fall.