Let’s face it: there is a reason we call winter “dead.” Lifeless. The Big Chill. In mid-January in North America, we are far from the Magi’s Star, the cozy eggnog fellowship in parish or home with festive warmth. We must smile ever so broadly just to pierce the black ice of the morning sky. And our grumpiness.
Yet somewhere a voice is proclaiming the very beginning of the letter to the Hebrews, “He spoke to us through his Son.” Somewhere, someone is singing the entrance antiphon for this bleak Monday, “Behold him, the name of whose empire is eternal.” Somewhere, a congregation hears Mark’s Gospel that the time of fulfillment is now: “The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the Gospel.”
That Kingdom proclaimed by Christ is here and for the entire planet. A good portion of our horizon may be frozen, snowbound, and encased in arctic air, but the Word of the Lord has announced a summer global fishing expedition for redemption—the Lord has set sail in human flesh, an Incarnation making us his companions, his disciples, and granting us a love beyond the angels and the eternity of the sea.
Somewhere beyond our knowing, hummingbirds hum our baptismal names, Canada geese gather like an assembly of the faithful, and a lava cactus on Bartolome Island in the Galapagos blooms at dawning. These voices remind us that somewhere is actually here in the spring of divine love, in the Kingdom with Christ who proclaims the equinox of God’s great mercy.
