“Lo, I am about to create new heavens and a new earth.” — Isaiah 65:17
When will the warmth of spring ever come? Will our nation and the other nations of the world ever find peace and social justice? Will I have the discipline to maintain my Lenten vows as I strive to deepen my loving relationship with God this Lent?
These questions jostle and distract me as I try to focus my mind on the daily readings for the last day of March 2025. As I pray quietly, trying to get out of my own way so that the Holy Spirit might move me, possible answers to these consequential and minute concerns nudge forward. I begin to imagine some of the actual steps needed for me—and for all of us—to follow in remaking our world in God’s divine image, as so boldly proclaimed in Isaiah’s breathtaking vision of a world made new in our first reading.
With Psalm 30, I find myself exhorted to gratitude for God’s healing presence in my experience of delight, loss, and fear in recent weeks and months. At this, I begin to remember the need to be undaunted in hope, despite troubling times and looming end-of-semester deadlines. I also recall the equally insistent need to recognize and celebrate the remarkable gifts I have been given: by Yale, where I am blessed to be studying for a Master of Divinity degree; by my husband, now three hundred miles south of me, who has selflessly supported my taking on this challenging and transformative opportunity; and by STM, a beloved spiritual home for me and so many other Catholics who are nourished by our vibrant faith community.
Amos draws me back to the importance of seeking goodness in deepening my friendship with God. The last reading, from the Gospel of John, reminds me most urgently of that which is essential: the paragon of Christ in healing the world through material and immaterial means. By his example here, Christ illustrates the need for inclusion and reconciliation by curing the dying child of an occupying Roman soldier in Galilee. John’s account also asserts the need for abiding faith in even the most trying times. Finally, this passage further evokes both Christ’s earlier work in welcoming the marginalized in Samaria and his demonstration of the importance of fostering joy and fellowship in his first miracle at Cana.
In this fourth week of Lent, as we approach the advent of Holy Week, I pray that God may show me—and all of us—how to better follow Christ, that we might remake ourselves and our earth anew.
