JOYCE CORONEL

So there I was, reporting for a hometown newspaper, sitting in the modest home of a grandmother who’d become a mentor to young moms in her neighborhood. The widow of a Baptist preacher, she wasted no time in getting down to business.

When you get right down to it, the message of Easter is one of hope. Jesus is victorious over sin and death and offers each of us the gift of new life.

If there’s one thing this rancorous political season has revealed, it’s that America is in a battle for its soul. Who are we and what do we stand for?

It’s what’s missing from mainstream media news coverage that explains a lot about the mindset of those who wield power in America’s newsrooms and the growing number of people who shun traditional news sources.

Tonight as I write these words, I can hear the bells tolling from the Church of the Dormition in Jerusalem. I’ve traveled here to the Holy Land along with three other journalists to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, Mary and the Apostles. I really can’t think of a better place to ponder the meaning of Advent.

With just days to go until Pope Francis arrives in the U.S., Catholics from around the globe — including two journalist-catechist moms from The Catholic Sun — are preparing to join him at the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia where they’ll unite around the theme “Love is our Mission.”

Our enemy wants to fill us with fear and anxiety. Staying grounded in the sacraments, prayer and Scripture helps us to see with the eyes of faith.

“You’ve got to wake them up!” These are the words spoken to me by priests from the Middle East, men who have held fast to faith in Jesus Christ in spite of great danger and suffering. They warn us of a murderous ideology bent on stamping out Christianity and dominating the world. “By the time America wakes up,” one priest told me, “it will be too late.”

With Christmas just days away, we turn our hearts toward the humble stable in Bethlehem where the Savior of the world was born. In the midst of the clamor of the world and the unrelenting violence around us, this conscious decision to focus on Jesus Christ, Ruler of the Universe, girds us with the truth: the Child born in the silence and stillness of the night was sent to redeem us and heal our broken world.

Two centuries ago, British philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke famously warned that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.