A New Chapter in Life

In speaking to prisoners this week at a mass at St Peter's, Pope Francis said:
"By learning from past mistakes, you can open a new chapter of your lives."
Never lose hope was the message.
This would seem a timely statement in our world, and not just for prisoners. 

I say this on the week that sees both the US election and celebrations closing the Holy Year of Mercy. 

The US election needs no introduction.  Many of my friends - American, Australian, English, Irish, Thai, Burmese - were all following the election count with great interest or disbelief.  Whoever wins, this would seem to be a watershed election due to the nastiness of the campaign and all the negative themes that it has opened up in the public forum.  I see this as touching upon reality and reality can be frightening.  As a good American friend tells me, the new norm in our world is chaos.

Well, Trump won and my American friends who are good western liberals like me are sharing common post-Trump victory symptoms- nausea, depression, sadness.  We are in shock mode.  One may reassess that this was an inevitable outcome sooner or later.  Looking beyond shock, the harshness of a divided and chaotic reality is hitting us in the face.  The message is to do something about it and not just keep doing the same thing, following the same old track.  As when we were doing pastoral planning as a Province, the guiding principle was to act to choose our future or else our future would be determined for us and grab us whether we liked it or not.  We might not have done so well at choosing our future but we tried and we did our best at the time.     

In contrast, this past year in the Catholic Church there has been seen a calming effect within a chaotic world with a Jubilee Year celebrating a God of mercy and compassion.  The Church has its own chaos with too often the God being presented into our lives and world by institutional religion being the God of control and judgement.  This is not the God of the Jesus of the Gospels but the God of man brought out to tell us what to do and if we don't do it, watch out.  Primarily, while we know our basic human instincts and where they can lead, the Gospels keep presenting us a God who offers us life and opportunity for true greatness and happiness through ever being a God with us, a God offering us mercy an compassion.  We are being offered so much more than what our basic instincts can ever imagine. 

As Obama said, whatever the election outcome. a new day would dawn and it has.  With a new day comes yet another opportunity to open a new chapter in life.