28 May 2018
Monday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
In Christianity, according to St. Peter, there is “a new birth to a living hope” (1 Pet 1:3). Our hope is living because our redeemer lives. Jesus is alive; therefore, our hope is alive.
The average person, on the contrary, has vague hopes: to have a life marked more by success than failure, to experience more happiness than unhappiness, to be established and respected, to enjoy good health, to have a comfortable financial arrangement, etc., and the same things for their children and grandchildren. Such hopes, I am afraid, are dead inside. Spend enough time in hospitals, nursing homes, funeral homes and graveyards and you will realize where such hopes lead.
A new birth is needed in order to let go of the natural hopes that we were first born with, and to replace them with living hope. This is the new birth of divine grace that we experience at baptism and also at other key moments in our prayer lives. Absent that new birth, we cannot accept the first principle and foundation of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola (SpEx 23), neither can we accept what St. Peter tells us is in store for us: an “inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you” (1 Pet 1:4).