Charles Lewis

In 2006 I was home for about a month recovering from back surgery. It was the first time in my life I was so confined. I was literally staring at all four walls … and what I saw was not pretty.

We all feel the uncertainty in the air; we all hear that low-grade anxiety buzzing in the background.

Every crisis can teach us something about ourselves. Each is a chance to revise the way we live and the way we think about what is important and which people in society deserve our respect and admiration.

As you read this we will be in the last few weeks of our Lenten promises. If you are like me you have probably slipped once or twice.

For many years I was certain Jean Vanier was a saint. 

How does tyranny arrive? And what does it look like once it has? At times it comes like a bomb that overturns all existing norms. Think of a military junta or the sudden collapse of order following massive protests and riots.

We Catholics are at times indifferent about those things that should deeply concern us but obsessed by those things that should be water off our backs. 

I write a lot about euthanasia and associated issues. I will not dispute this nor will I apologize. What I think drives me is not only the abhorrence of such an evil practice but that there are ways to safeguard ourselves and our friends and family from this evil. However, to a large extent we are failing to do so. We need to wake up.

I am writing this column late in December, thinking of the annual ritual of making resolutions. I do not think in my life I ever followed through on a New Year’s resolution — but I have made resolutions at other times of the year that I have stuck to like glue. 

The two young people sitting in front of me were deeply in love. They stared into each other’s eyes as if they were the only two people in the world — which, come to think of it, is the very definition of being deeply in love. They did not speak at all. Just with their eyes. I watched them for a full hour.