"Come, Christians, Join to Sing"

I just read this week a piece by Dr. Anthony Esolen, professor at Providence College, entitled "Come Christians, Join to Sing!" It's worth reading the whole article. Last paragraph: "How sorry such a life [without a culture in which to celebrate] would be! Which makes me think--or I should say, makes me insist--that long before we Christians take to the streets in protest, we should take to the streets in song. Let our merriment abash our opponents, before our indignation steels their resolve. Let's take them by a storm of celebration. I have no idea what is stopping us. Surely it can not be our knowledge that we'd probably celebrate with lousy music. Our opponents have lousy music too. They invented most of it, after all, and we picked it up from them. Let's go for the celebration. Not to proselytize; just to pray and sing and be together, outdoors, with people to look on and laugh at us for being the fools that we are. Let them. We keep it up, and they'll be fools alongside us too."

Let them not, then hide this hope

"They [the laity] show themselves to be children of the promise, if, strong in faith and in hope, they make the most of the present time (cf. Eph. 5:16; Col. 4:5), and with patience await the glory that is to come (cf. Rom. 8:25). Let them not, then hide this hope in the depths of their hearts, but even in the framework of secular life let them express it by a continual turning toward God and by wrestling 'against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness' (Eph. 6:12)." (from Lumen Gentium 34)