The Anchoress: Amidst Our Apocalypse, Advent Asks Us to Stay

The Anchoress (Elizabeth Scalia) at Word on Fire blog makes a heartfelt plea to those who are heartsick, leaving the Church, "taking a break" from Catholicism. What is below is just a bit. Do go read it all.

And so this is what I want to say to my friends who have left, or who are struggling; those who are halfway out the doors, or think they soon will be:

My dear sisters and brothers, Hold on! Hold fast, and don’t run at the revelation!

Don't try to run through the fearsome darkness!

Stay for Advent and stand the watch with me, with your family, with all of us, including the saints.

Be willing, for now, to keep company with Christ, so deeply wounded by his own Bride.

Consent, for now, to share in the hard times before us (they will yet get harder, the darkness will grow deeper, still) and help us to hold, to hold fast!

Because the light is coming; the darkness will never overcome it.

Remember that Isra-el means “struggle with God.” We are all little Isra-els right now, wrestling, wrestling within his house and seeking our Jerusalem, our Abode of Peace.

Hold on! Hold fast!

Because an Advent promise has been made to us, and God is ever-faithful, so we may trust in it: Your light will come Jerusalem; the Lord will dawn on you in radiant beauty.

This is for all of us. It is for you, and for me. It's for every little Isra-el struggling.

Your light will come. Just hold fast.

And, maybe, based on a conversation that my daughter Rose and I had yesterday, we need to read Hosea. It is short but shocking as Hosea grapples with a wife who is a prostitute and children who I always wondered if they were his own. God does not forget Israel even they seem to embrace self-destruction, and teaches us that love is the strongest force of all, even when the sin seems unforgivable.