A New Season of Grace
Sister Barbara DeStefano penned this beautiful reflection as a special message to her Sisters in community. She also shares it with you and your families as you, too, navigate your own "communities" large and small.
To everything there is a season: A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time for harvest. At this point in time, we find ourselves in a new and different “season" -- a time for “social distancing,” they say … even as we share a meal.
Yes, this distancing seems strange to us who live in community, who, for decades, have worked hard at living together, at praying together, at worshiping together, and even at playing together.
However, does not this “distancing” have a more positive, rewarding side to it? More of an invitation … more of a challenge? A challenge to grow together in new ways … to grow in the ways so very evident, so crucial, so visible in the life of St. Francis and the early friars? In Deuteronomy, we hear the most in-depth, life-changing invitation in the Scriptures: “I set before you life and death. Choose life!”
My Sisters, let us not hang onto the past. Rather, let us commit ourselves to the graces of the present. Let us not keep wishing that things would be different. Let us, rather, make a deeper commitment to live life fully where we are
now
.
Like Peter, James and John; like Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles; like Mary, the mother of Jesus; like Mary of Magdal, let us follow Jesus wherever He leads us during this time of separation.
Yes, let us
choose life
every day, and believe that the Risen Jesus will show Himself to us and be with us as, step-by-step, we continue along our way.
