Every year at this time the wisdom of the church invites us to consider the Apocalypse. We can be forgiven our reluctance to take up the topic, as preachers or parishioners. The end of the world is a hazy unreality in the best of times.

A tragedy is unfolding in my neighborhood—and perhaps in many others as well. A woman is about to leave her husband of 10 years. They are a loving couple, well suited to each other in terms of temperament, wits, interests, and abilities. What they don’t share—and these have become the deal-breakers—are values and goals.

We like Zacchaeus. Doggone it, we do. He’s the American brand of hero: small, unexpected, and unpromising at the start. He’s the scrappy little player who’s going to make it by the skin of his teeth. And we’ll be rooting for him every step of the way.

Unless you are the chaplain at a federal penitentiary, chances are you face very few murderers in your average Sunday assembly. But even the prison chaplain can anticipate a bit of righteous one-upmanship within his community, as most human beings hold certain crimes as unthinkable even when others have proven quite tempting.

Undocumented persons are having a hard time in this country of late. But in every age and culture, people who don’t technically exist have had to live on the edge of their wits and their nerves.

Years ago, a priest told his Sunday assembly: “Two things keep you Catholic: Mary and the pope.” What I suspect he meant was that Catholicism is distinguishable from Protestantism—or any other system for that matter—by its allegiances and authorities.

If something is good, then more is obviously better. This notion is elevated to an axiom in our consumer culture, and it works just as well for food (have another helping), sweaters (I’ll take one in every color), entertainment (what this country needs is one more cop show), and stuff in general (Q: How many vehicles can the average American fit in the average garage? A: None! That’s where the house overflow is stored!).

Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Rambo, Wonder Woman, The Incredibles, Harry Potter, Frodo—and add your own favorites to this list—all have something in common. They do for the human race what the rest of us normally fail to do, which is to save it from some dreadful malignancy.

Money is the root of all evil homilies, at least in the minds of many Catholics. Of the themes people most detest hearing about from the ambo, preaching that fingers the wallet rankles right up there with social justice and anything else that smacks of “politics in church.”

A scene in the movie Schindler’s List haunts the viewer. Businessman-turned-brother’s keeper Oskar Schindler is trying to cultivate the confidence of a powerful but sadistic prison camp official. Schindler needs this officer in order to ensure the safety of his Jewish workers. But it’s hard to keep company with a man willing to gun down a human being simply for crossing his line of vision.