On the Founder of the Christophers

A group in which I have a personal interest. They do some cool work--raising hope, causing prayer, aiding the needy--give college students money for good videos.  This is a pretty good exposition of some key aspects of their charism:

In this time of world crisis brought on by advancing inroads of materialism and godlessness, first-line Christophers have it in their power to snatch faith from disaster if they can be found in sufficiently large numbers to carry Christ into the marketplace.

Father James Keller, M.M. who founded The Christophers sixty-five years ago wrote those words then, but their relevance holds true today...

Another pivotal moment for Father Keller came during a meeting at New York's Metropolitan Opera House during which he entered the completely darkened auditorium and couldn't see a thing. The person he was with lit a match and set off to find the light switch. Father Keller recalled, "The sight of that tiny flame made an indelible impression on me. Insignificant as it was, it was greater than the darkness. All that was needed to banish the darkness completely was to multiply that flicker of light."

That's exactly what Father Keller set out to do when he founded the Christopher movement in 1945. He chose the name The Christophers because it means "Christ-bearer" in Greek, and adopted as the movement's motto the old Chinese proverb, "It's better to light one candle than to curse the darkness..."

Father Keller realized this wouldn't be an easy task. He wrote, "To be a Christ-bearer must mean sacrifice, loss of time, inconvenience, suffering, misunderstanding, and countless disappointments that truly try men's souls. Still, the answer is in our hands...."

Father Keller likely never envisioned that he would someday share the screen with celebrities like Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Jack Benny, Loretta Young, and Ann Blyth but such was the case with the film You Can Change the World, which was based on his best-selling book...

Considering the current drift from God and traditional values, his ideas remain as relevant now as they were sixty-five years ago. Yet Father Keller was never one to indulge in complaining about what was wrong with the world. Instead, he encouraged others to focus on the good that could be accomplished.

As he wrote, "The leavening of the multitude with Christian ideals can be done in the same simple way it was by the early Christians of the catacombs -- (through) their consuming love for all men, even their worst enemies, in each of whom they saw the image of Christ Himself. It is a power which the least of us can have. It is the cure for which mankind longs."