"In our time, what is lacking is not so much the courage to ask this question as the courage to expect an answer…We may at times be able to show the world Christ in moments when all can clearly discern in history, some confirmation of the Christian message. But the fact remains that our task is to seek and find Christ in our world as it is, and not as it might be. The fact that the world is other than it might be does not alter the truth that Christ is present in it and that His plan has been neither frustrated nor changed: indeed, all will be done according to His will. Our Advent is a celebration of this hope." (Thomas Merton) This hope is Christ has come and will come again. Our hope is that in the words of John the Baptist: "There is one among you whose sandals I am not worthy to untie."

Our challenge as disciples of Jesus is to see these signs of his presence  in our midst, in the messiness of the stable, in the killing of the innocent children by Herod, in the midst of the corruption in our country, in the midst of the drug culture, etc. Sometimes we allow the fog to obscure the reality within.  Like Michelangelo we need to have the inner capacity to see the statue of David in the flawed marble slab that others discarded. In doing this, we will see the Christ when others only saw a crying baby.