Some random reflections on yesterday:

As a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol--the legislative center of the world's superpower--I couldn't ignore the significance of the date.

For one, this was the traditional date of the Epiphany, when Christ was revealed to the nations with the coming of the Magi.

Here you have nobles traveling a long way to pay homage to a baby who was born with nothing, wrapped in rags and laid in a a feeding trough. Our God came in humility and peace.

It's also the Optional Memorial of St. André Bessette--a Quebecois, religious brother, barely five feet tall, a doorman too "lowly" to be a priest.

I knew nothing of him until Cat & I made a pilgrimage to Quebec last year. St. André spent 40 years caring for the poor and sick who came to him and performing menial tasks.

He had a great devotion to St. Joseph, collecting $ to build a small chapel to the saint on Mount Royal, overlooking Montreal. Now there stands St. Joseph's oratory, the world's largest shrine to the saint.

He would give visitors blessed oil that burned at the lamp before a statue of St. Joseph. Many cures occurred on his watch, but he always attributed them to St. Joseph.

Visit the Oratory if you can--there's tons of crutches people supposedly left there when they were miraculously cured.

Anyhow, I couldn't forget him on this day. The Church is a sign of contradiction in the world, and St. André was most certainly that sign--humble, giving credit to someone else, devoted to menial tasks, serving God and others.

As an American at the Oratory, I felt a grace about the place. Here in the States, we Catholics have so much money and perceived influence, but I can't shake the empty feeling at some shrines or cathedrals, as if all this "power" counts for nothing in God's eyes.

We are supposed to preach the Gospel to the age, to be leaven in society. As we are, so are the times. We've failed. Utterly. Instead, we've assimilated to the materialism and practical atheism of the country.

"America was secretly baptized Catholic and raised Protestant," I've heard. What it is now, I have no clue, but it certainly ain't Christian. A mob storming a power center on a baseless conspiracy theory. Riots. Mass shootings. Demonization of political opponents.

Many Catholics I know are freaked out right now, bordering on obsessive behavior. I promise you, when Our Lord comes again, He is not going to ask us how keyed in we were to the latest political outrage. He won't ask us why we send more mass political emails to family & friends.

You're upset about mass abortion? I agree, it's an abomination. And it won't actually change until hearts change--not just because pro-lifers have a political majority, although that helps.

Worship of God, the Commandments, and the works of mercy will be what we're judged by. Nothing more. Nothing less. The man in the White House won't single-handedly bring about the conversion or the damnation of the country, I can assure you.

My point: love and serve God and your neighbor. Get offline. Pray. Have silent time. Perform the corporal and spiritual acts of mercy. Remember you live with people and not enemies. These--not circulating another breathless email--will actually provide space to change hearts.