David: François, you offer us your wishes for this new year.
François: Dear RCF listeners, all my best wishes for this new year. As usual, wishes for good health come first, and this wish can be expressed with particular insistence, Covid obliges. We would like 2021 not to make too many waves, nor a third wave, nor any more waves at all. We would like to be permanently free from the chains, confinement, curfew and masks that marked 2020. We would like to relive the uncovered face. We want our economic, medical, educational, cultural and other worlds to be freed from the barriers, confinement, curfews and masks that marked 2020. to return to a normal life. We would like to forget all the obstacles, the trials, the terrible sufferings that endanger life itself. But beware, the end of the crisis will not be a return to the past, as if nothing had happened.
David: Do you want to tell François that the Covid would be a privileged moment to change?
François: Yes, of course, we can only wish to get out of this crisis as quickly as possible, but to this wish, I immediately add another: the wish to come out of this crisis better.
I make this wish after reading "Let's dream: the way to a better future", the latest book by Pope Francis. This is the book I received as my first Christmas present.
And in fact, to help us get out of this crisis better, Pope Francis uses a good formula that structures the three parts of his book: it is the triptych "to see, to judge, to act", dear to the social thought of the Church. According to the pope, to better emerge from this crisis, "we must see clearly, choose well and act correctly". Each page of this book offers a simple and concrete presentation of such a horizon that attracts us and pushes us to change, now. Such a change is both difficult and exhilarating, because it is a call to the radicalism of a conversion carried by kindness and love of neighbour. With the Pope, we can be touched by the testimony of all the good Samaritans who are overflowing with attention and care in Covid times.
The crisis is an opportunity to cultivate our relationship with the Creator, with Creation, with our fellow human beings, with other creatures. As Pope Francis wrote: "Covid is the time of our Noah. Let's not waste it”, “the good news is that an Ark is waiting to lead us to a new future”, “the Ark of the bonds that bind us together”.
David: Thank you, Francis, for your good wishes nourished by this meditation from the work of Pope Francis.
With Dreaming: The Path to a Brighter Future , 2021 opens up hope.
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