St. Francis told us to “begin again,” but first we need to rebuild the ruins in and around us.
Rebuilding: Ourselves
In one of her letters to Agnes of Prague, St. Clare used the image of a mirror as a tool for reflecting on one’s spiritual life. The image of looking inward at our own lives to discover what we are reflecting back to others seems very timely. Our society is currently under great duress and division over many things. The question is, what is our role in the search for healing? Perhaps the best place to start, as St. Clare says, is to look inward.
Now is the perfect time to reflect on how well we are living out our faith. As we begin this new year and chapter in our country, let’s stop and take a look inward. What do we see in ourselves that is not a good representation of God’s love? Where are we falling short and how do we fix that? Only by reevaluating our lives and actions and how they demonstrate God’s love can we then reflect that love back onto a society in great need of healing.—Susan Hines-Brigger
Rebuilding: Our Relationships
I’ve been in a years-long purge of items in my house that no longer serve me: clothing that doesn’t fit, books I will never read again, movies I cannot bring myself to revisit. It is liberating—like spiritual crash dieting. As the election drew closer in late summer 2024 and the vitriol on both sides of the divide went from a growing storm to a veritable tsunami, I considered “offloading” those in my circle who differed from me politically. But avoidance is too easy. Loving people despite our differences is real work.
In John 13:34, it reads: “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” Hate, as I have come to understand these past 10 or so years, doesn’t build; it obliterates. It doesn’t bind us; it tears us down. And once hatred finds a crack in our broken hearts, it will build a home there. But we cannot allow that to happen. Moving forward in this new reality, I draw peace (and, if I may, a bit of fire) from something St. Francis said to his early band of brothers: “He who has persevered to the end will be saved.” Challenge accepted.
—Christopher Heffron
Rebuilding: Our Communities
I’ve often been struck by the phrase “the American experiment.” It captures a truth at the core of our nation’s identity: that we really are a work in progress, with multiple roads to success and, yes, failure. Experiments can and do fail all the time. It has been reported that Thomas Edison failed 2,774 times before successfully inventing the lightbulb, for example. Eventually, persistence and ingenuity paid off, and the world is a different place because of it.
The same can be said about our democracy. It requires work and the ability to see through our differences while keeping our gaze locked on the common good. St. John Paul II once said, “As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.” Values critical to the American experiment, such as equality and religious freedom, must be continually worked on if we are to grow.
Whether your candidates of choice won or lost during the past election cycle, it remains that, as long as dialogue between conflicting sides continues, democracy has a future. If you’re interested in efforts to strengthen democracy in our country, consider visiting the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy’s website, ProtectDemocracy.org, to learn more about how you can get involved.—Daniel Imwalle
