"A Refreshing Promise"
November 8, 2022, 8:00 AM

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth… be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating. I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth. Isaiah 65:17-20

The hopeful words of Isaiah and the solid footsteps of St. Francis following Isaiah’s prophetic voice greet us today. There is a promise of new heavens and a new earth – a place where there is no crying, infants no longer die young, and our 100-year-old parents become young again. Is that actually true? Is that a promise we can depend upon, or was Isaiah dreaming? If this promise is actually true, when does it begin?

If you are like me, I am weary of elections and political party nonsense, dodging political messaging and emails, worrying about Covid infections and respiratory syncytial viruses (RSV), and holding back startling reflexes waiting for the next mass shooter. We wait for change. We wait and we wait. Isaiah’s promise was made over 2,700 years ago. It seems like the promises are still only a future dream, or are they?

The season of Advent is in sight. During this season, everything changes. All things are made new because God no longer comes into our life as a concept, but as a tangible, living child who touches our lives as no other entity can. God breaks into our minds. He is no longer one who flies in the ethereal skies and remains untouchable as the mythic gods of ancient Greece and Rome. This child comes as a newborn in the flesh AND also as the Christ who is the oldest form of pure love in the universe.

The love of this Christ (the chosen one) is the one who helped create all that is with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Christ made the molecules from which we are made, the energy from the sun from which we derive our source of life, and all restoration and healing. Out of love, Christ heals our eyesight and also our chronologic, linear perspective of this world. We are brought up to see things in terms of past and future. Christ is outside of all time since he created time itself.

In Christ there is no time. Everything that has been, everything that is, and everything that will be is all one. There is only the present. The present is filled only with love.

Those that long to see loved ones who have died, know that reality of presence in the present. The loved one is still experienced as being here and still loving. At times, the loved one may talk tenderly to us as we remember them. We, at times, speak back. We know that they are still here with us. Time has no meaning. Isaiah’s words become fulfilled, “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth.”

All that Isaiah promised is true today as it has been in the past. It is our perspective that keeps us from seeing the fulfilment of those promises. Those that sit in silence begin to see the truth of this miracle.

Blessings and Prayers,

Fr. John