Begging the indulgence of our non-Christian readers, I found working through today’s newspaper to be such a discouraging exercise, following on weeks (months) of seeing, personally and societally, people’s economic vulnerability viciously exploited, that the second reading at today’s Mass had an especial poignancy for me, and I’d like to share it:

Brothers and sisters:
If God is for us, who can be against us?
He who did not spare his own Son
but handed him over for us all,
how will he not also give us everything else along with him?
Who will bring a charge against God’s chosen ones?
It is God who acquits us, who will condemn?
Christ Jesus it is who died—or, rather, was raised—
who also is at the right hand of God,
who indeed intercedes for us.

“It is God who acquits us, who will condemn?” If God created all — is all — then how can we not trust His strength in our lives to overcome the negative strength of bosses and politicians?
Move forward. These hard times will pass, and we’ll be judged, and judge ourselves, on the basis of how well we tended the longer threads of our lives.