Weaving the New Year…
Thérèse-Marie Potelle, rscm
Unité France
On the threshold of a new year, so many thoughts and questions are running through my head. First of all, there is a certain anxiety that the beautiful celebration of Christmas could not totally hide. In these troubled times marked by health, economic and ecological crises and in the Church, what will tomorrow be like for our common home and each of us? I realise that I have less and less control over the course of events. The unexpected, the unforeseen, a different perspective from the one I had envisaged are at my door. But the worry does not remove the confidence that I have in myself.
It is certainly there that the water from the living source can seep in and make the earth of my existence, which so often hardens, bloom again. Even if my step in the new year is uneasy, hesitant or even tired, it will bring me across a threshold of rebirth. And the one who guides my steps is not God himself? The first day of the year always reminds me of the first day of the week, as reported unanimously by the evangelists, when the disciples experience the resurrection. In the full light of Christmas it is the message of Easter that is proclaimed, it is God who reminds us that He is coming into our world to bring about a new day and to go on to weave our life with us. Every year the future seems to shrink before us, but it is never so rich in inner promise. The quality of our life is not necessarily measured in its length, but in the capacity to reflect the infinite vision of hope, of inner joy, of spiritual resilience that our hearts hold. The year will be what we make of it. I believe that there are some things whose course is beyond our control, but there are many more that depend on our freedom to love. We are encouraged to “dare, dream, do” (Sr. Patricia Murray at CEGI) to enter further into a synodal way of life.
A Child has been born to us! May it enlighten the walk of all of us, inserted in the world and in the Church throughout the year 2022.
Tapestries by Don Robert (Museum of Sorrèze-Tarn)
