Fr. Frank Majka, SJ – The Bridge

A New World

Sometimes in winter a person can feel caught in an endless cycle of sameness. In January and February, cold and gloomy days succeed each other unremittingly and wear people down. It can certainly be that way in Wisconsin, where, as winter drags on, one senses in people a yearning for the sun to come out more than once every ten days, for the temperature to go up and stay there and for the ice and snow to finally melt. In Milwaukee winters, one learns to long for spring.

But a few days ago, I heard a different voice in the second letter to the Corinthians, where St. Paul wrote, “Look! Everything has become new!” (2 Corinthians 5). If that’s so, then no matter how gloomy or depressing the weather may be, the deeper truth is that a new world has come into being through Christ — a world where reconciliation, not anger, rules the day, and where the empty tomb of Easter and the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost have created a world of love and life. St. Paul tells us to open our eyes. If he’s right about this new world, then if we look long enough and hard enough we’ll see it all around us

And in this Christ-created world, faith, hope, and love take on new meanings. Faith means believing God has really made a new world, despite all appearances to the contrary. Hope means trusting that this new world will grow ever stronger and will last. And Love means living in such a world with tender and forgiving hearts. If St. Paul is telling the truth, then there’s a fresh creation to be experienced and embraced right now, no matter what the weather may be.