Embracing a Common Future

Edmund Rice Christian Brothers

North America

Thursday, 09 August 2007

New Wineskins for New Wine

Edmund Rice Christian Brothers

North America

A New Beginning

Face the future

for the past is over and gone.

Live with the memories.

Learn from Experiences.

Let go of grievances.

Resolve differences.

Live in Sight of God,

in the way of God.

Be strong.

God has seen us through

good times and bad.

God will bless our future

as God had held our past.

God go with you.

Brothers, (and Sisters,)

above all, trust in the slow work of God.

We are, quite naturally, impatient in everything

to reach the end without delay.

We are impatient of being

on the way to somewhere unknown,

something new!

And yet, it is the law of all progress

that is made by passing through

some stages of instability -

and that may take a very long time!

And so, I think it is with us

our ideas mature gradually -

let them grow,

let them shape themselves

without undue haste.

Don’t try to force them on,

as though you could be today

what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances

acting on their own good will)

will make you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit

gradually forming within you will be.

Give God the benefit of believing

that God’s hand is leading you

and accept the anxiety of

feeling yourself in suspense

and incomplete!

Response: A Prayer for Pilgrims and Journeyers

A journey once taken alone, we now choose to take together.

Moving forward as one body

into a future filled with possibility,

we walk without maps, but we walk confidently,

and we walk with hope, because we have chosen

to be lights for each other, while on the way.

We travel forward along a way we have not gone before;

we travel as one who is led, arms outstretched,

as one who is called forth to life.

We travel in need, dependent on the Lord for strength,

for assurance, dependent on each other,

God’s instruments for love.

Leaving known paths behind us,

we choose to journey in faith and service.

As the journey brought us here, so now we begin it anew,

in company.

Thus says Yahweh,

who made a way through the sea,

a path in the great waters;

who put chariots and horse in the field

and a powerful army,

which lay there never to rise again,

snuffed out, put out like a wick:

No need to recall the past,

no need to think about what was done before.

See, I am doing a new deed,

even now it comes to light; can you not see it?

Yes, I am making a road in the wilderness,

paths in the wilds.