Cuando Moisés conducía al pueblo de Israel hacia la tierra prometida se halló en un momento a orilla del mar rojo acorralado por las tropas del Faraón sin tener para donde huir (Ex 14). Cuántas veces nos encontramos en situaciones similares a la de Moisés cuando problemas de salud, finanzas, desempleo, crisis familiares, rencores y problemas sociales y políticos pareciera que no tuvieran una solución posible.

According to a Jewish proverb, "God could not be everywhere, so he made mothers." This is a fine, enduring sentiment. I do think, however, that by reversing the statement, we come closer to the truth: "God could be everywhere and proved it by creating mothers." This image is consistent with the American novelist William Makepeace Thackeray’s comment that "‘Mother’ is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children."

It had been a miserable day that evolved into a miserable week and, for all I knew, it would be a miserable month. I was praying desperately that the year wouldn’t end miserably.

Part of an occasional series on living with hardship

The year was 1942, and Holland was under Nazi occupation. The elderly Casper ten Boom and his middle-aged daughters were leading quiet lives as watchmakers until Jewish neighbors began disappearing.

The Church these days continues to be especially blessed in our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, who, like his predecessor, Blessed Pope John Paul II, ranks as a world-class theologian. John Paul’s expertise was in moral theology; he is still referred to as the Ethician of Lublin (a reference to his professional status). Benedict’s academic stature stands out in doctrinal fundamentals, Biblical exegesis, sacramental theology, ecclesiology and Christology.

In the fall of 2007, I spent a week in Spain, giving lectures, meeting with Spanish Catholic leaders, and making a hair-raising climb up several hundred scaffolding stairs to the top of Antoni Gaudi’s Basilica of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona – preceded by Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, John Paul II’s longtime secretary, who was doing the trip in a cassock (after confessing to me, sotto voce, that he wasn’t too fond of heights)! Over the course of numerous conversations in those days, it became clear that the government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, in power since April 2004, was not simply secular in character but aggressively secularist.

 Q. I know that the acquisition of knowledge demands a lot of reading, and is really a lifetime project. I keep coming across names that are new to me, like Newman, Dante, Pascal, Maritain, Claudel, Thomas à Kempis, Péguy, Chesterton, Undset – where does it end? Who were these people and why are they so famous in the history of Christianity?