E Pluribus Unum & a Message of Hope

The first-ever Eucharistic Congress of the Roman Catholic Diocese in Tulsa on Sunday was inspiring and, at least on a personal level, badly needed. So little else is upbeat these days that it becomes easy to fall into a "world is going to hell" mentality.

The truth, of course, is that the world may well be going to hell, but as individuals we do not have to slide along with it. We can choose the Way of Truth and Life for ourselves and, more importantly, we can share the good news -- or gospel -- with others so that we might all become one in Christ. However diverse and different we are as individuals, we come together in the Body of Christ as one. Spiritually, we are more closely related than we appear to be on first examination by our mere human faculties.

Or as the founding fathers of this nation perhaps unwittingly expressed it: E pluribus unum. Out of many, One.

As Father Bruce Nieli, the keynote speaker, expressed it: "No other country on earth has a motto so explicitly linked with the future of the Church."

Needless to say there is a lot of work to be done. But it is not a hopeless cause.