Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
James Martin, S.J.May 24, 2019
Digital illustration by Ciaran Freeman based on a late 14th–early 15th century Amhara peoples Illuminated Gospel illustration (Met Museum). 

Subscribe to “The Examen” for free on Apple Podcasts

Subscribe to “The Examen” for free on Google Play

Join our Patreon Community

We’ve been talking over the last few weeks of the Easter season about living out the Resurrection. First, we talked about really believing in Christ’s Resurrection, and its message: that nothing is impossible with God. Last week, we talked about experiencing newness in our own lives. This week, how about thinking about looking for it in the lives of others. Too often we tend to pigeonhole our friends and family. We’ve known our family our whole lives of course, and we often have friends we feel like we’ve known forever. But too often our view of them is frozen in the past. So we can resist seeing them in new ways, giving them space to grow. In a sense, it’s denying them the possibility of new life.Your friends can grow and change just so you can.

With that in mind, can you allow them to be their new selves? A friend you’ve had in college, who may have been quite the partier or slacker, but who is now a stable and productive husband or wife, or business leader, or attorney, or teacher, has probably changed a great deal. He’s let go of some old habits and unhealthy ways of thinking. So can you see the new life in that person? Can you allow God, in a sense, to change him? Because God has done this, whether you like it or not! Part of embracing resurrection and new life is embracing it not only in Jesus, not only in yourself, but in those around you. Recognize in them the new life that God has given them.

[Don’t miss any of the latest writings, podcasts and videos from Father Martin. Sign up for his newsletter.]

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
Thomas Butler
6 years 1 month ago

I am 61, and in the fall I expect to be baptised and confirmed as a Catholic. A new life with Christ at 61! Only a year ago I considered my life at its end! Those around me would have never thought this possible of me, but it is. There truly is a God.

Michele Mattea
6 years 1 month ago

Congratulations, Thomas Butler! You will love being Catholic. It grows on you.

The latest from america

A community gathers in resistance. Photo by Dany Díaz Mejía. Photo courtesy of Rene Aleman Resistance Camp.
“We are alive only through the grace of God. At one point, I got messages saying someone had offered 1 million lempiras [$38,000] to have me killed.”
Dany Díaz MejíaJuly 02, 2025
Workers unload food commodities from Catholic Relief Services and USAID in the village of Behera, near Tulear, Madagascar, Oct. 22, 2016. (OSV News Photo/Nancy McNally, Catholic Relief Services)
The end of U.S.A.I.D. will result in the loss of a “staggering” 14 million lives by 2030, including the deaths of 4.5 million children under age 5.
Kevin ClarkeJuly 02, 2025
Homily for the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, by Father Terrance Klein
Terrance KleinJuly 02, 2025