I’ve just arrived back in Rome after a weekend in France. It was great to be out for a bit – Rome can be stifling – but I am happy to be back.

There are really some terrible problems going on in the Church right now. I have tried on these pages to contextualize that a bit throughout the years, in various ways… It is important that we not forget about all the other awful times in which the Church has found Herself across the centuries. And it is important to remember that we are always doing better than Good Friday, when God was killed and everyone ran away.

Many of the worst things going on are happening in Rome. Some of it is actually more boring than you might think – a kind of Hannah Arendt “banality of evil” sort of situation – but there is also more openly twisted stuff. And we read about it, hear about it, talk about it all the time. Good people who are here are often hurt by it, and they often try to just stay away or get out – or they succumb to despair. Sometimes, they even become evil themselves through the corruption of those they are set against.

This series, which I will endeavor to add to each Sunday indefinitely, will do one very simple thing: remind people that actually there is good stuff happening too. There are signs of life, signs of hope, signs of God’s love working upon the Earth – yes, even here in the Eternal City. It will often just be a picture or two with a short description of something happening that week. It could be things in the news already, or, ideally, it will be stuff that I am somehow personally a part of.

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” -John 16:33