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We’ve been talking over the last few weeks of the Easter season about living out the Resurrection. First, we talked about really believing in Christ’s Resurrection, and its message: that nothing is impossible with God. Last week, we talked about experiencing newness in our own lives. This week, how about thinking about looking for it in the lives of others. Too often we tend to pigeonhole our friends and family. We’ve known our family our whole lives of course, and we often have friends we feel like we’ve known forever. But too often our view of them is frozen in the past. So we can resist seeing them in new ways, giving them space to grow. In a sense, it’s denying them the possibility of new life.Your friends can grow and change just so you can.
With that in mind, can you allow them to be their new selves? A friend you’ve had in college, who may have been quite the partier or slacker, but who is now a stable and productive husband or wife, or business leader, or attorney, or teacher, has probably changed a great deal. He’s let go of some old habits and unhealthy ways of thinking. So can you see the new life in that person? Can you allow God, in a sense, to change him? Because God has done this, whether you like it or not! Part of embracing resurrection and new life is embracing it not only in Jesus, not only in yourself, but in those around you. Recognize in them the new life that God has given them.
I am 61, and in the fall I expect to be baptised and confirmed as a Catholic. A new life with Christ at 61! Only a year ago I considered my life at its end! Those around me would have never thought this possible of me, but it is. There truly is a God.
Congratulations, Thomas Butler! You will love being Catholic. It grows on you.