Today the church uses its parched tongue to cry out, “O Radix Jesse!” or “O Root of Jesse!”

The ask here is that the dead stump of a family line, scourged and ravaged by one conquering after another, eating away at the Family Tree, somehow live again.

This dead-end of a year may feel very stump-ish to you.

It’s also just true that while we may have eaten from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we have not learned its wisdom. That ancient tree is dead in our hands as we call what is evil, good, and what is good, evil.

Come quickly, Holy One.