Mark Whittall

There was a time when I used to travel to Cuba a lot, on business. My Cuban counterpart in those days was the director of the government department with which we were doing business. He was also a general in the Cuban military, which wasn’t unusual. When we weren’t talking business, he liked to tell me stories about the Cuban revolution. As a teenager, he had fled his home in the city and escaped to the hill country in the southwest of the island. He became part of the r

My high school English teacher once told me that one of the secrets to great writing is to have a good opening sentence, because it sets the stage for everything that follows. Today, after the preamble of the first two chapters, we find ourselves at the beginning of the Gospel of Luke. And the opening sentence goes like this: In the 15th year of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Phili

This season of Advent is a time for us to get ready for Jesus to come into our lives. Advent is also a drama, one that deliberately messes with our sense of time. We begin with the end, this apocalyptic vision of the last days, and then we make our way backwards in time week by week, back to the time of John the Baptist, back still further to the time of an expectant Mary. In a culture afflicted by complacency, Advent invites us into a drama meant to shake us out of our co