Dear Friends in Christ,

When I was young, I had a paper route. I had to get up early, around 5:00am, before boxing practice at 6:30, and get out to deliver newspapers. I don’t know if you’ve been in northern Indiana in the winter, but at 5:00am, it is cold!

I’d be exhausted and freezing.

I’d get home, get ready to head back out the door to practice and I’d say to my dad, “I’m so tired!” His response was always, “Then do it tired.”

If I was cold, he’d say “do it cold.”

He’d say the difference between winners and losers was that winners could do what they needed to do whether they were tired, cold, hungry, or whatever.

That came to mind this week after the election. There are a lot of people who are exhausted—including me. A lot of people are worn down emotionally and spiritually. A lot of people are just tired.

We’ll have to do it tired.

What exactly is “it” now?

It is going to mean ensuring that those who most need to hear it hear the Gospel through us and our actions.

It is going to mean ensuring that the divisions of the day aren’t enough to break our spirits, our hearts, or our trust in God.

It is going to mean ensuring that those who now fear they will be rounded up and deported without dignity or due process know the church has always and will continue to offer sanctuary.

It is going to mean standing up for the dignity of all people in the face of a constant pressure to dehumanize and denigrate them.

It is going to mean being a voice for justice and a defender of freedom.

It is going to mean not being political for the sake of making a point. It is going to mean speaking to the cruelties of our politics with the love of the Gospel.

And we’ll just have to do it tired.

I have zero interest in being another bit player in the partisan dramas of the day. However, the Church has always, in its best hours, been an ally of those who have found themselves victimized by the power of the state.

So many of the stories of the saints aren’t about how privately pious the saints all were. So many and more of them are saints because they heard the call of Christ to stand between the powers of this world and the poor, the innocent, the hungry, and the oppressed.

The Church may need to put itself between the oppressed and the state once again. We may need to lift our voices on behalf of those who fear theirs won’t be heard.

We may need to respond to the human needs that the power plays of national politics create.

We also need to be ready to be a healing force in these divided times as we model for the world how to be a people united in Christ across our differences.

I don’t know what the need will be. None of us do. We can’t predict the future but we can learn from the past. In times of fierce division, everyday people are often the collateral damage. We are the ambulance service of our national life.

We are here to carry the wounded and heal the broken as Christ’s hands and feet in the world.

We’ve been here before. The saints have shown us what to do.

We’re tired.

But we’ll have to do it tired.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert