creation, and visual images such as“ vision” help us illumine the way. At other times, images of hearing are more helpful: we are being“ called” to blend“ voices” or create a“ symphony” of gifts.
No one has given a definition of just what the New Creation is, other than appealing to 2 Cor 5:17:“ If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.” We know that the experience of reconciliation brings us to a new place, not a return to some previous one. A few thoughts about the New Creation might be helpful here.
This New Creation is not something we construct ourselves. Rather, it is the experience of what God is doing within us and among us. Romans 8:18-27 captures best this experience of a New Creation emerging within us— creation longing for the revelation of the freedom of the children of God, groaning as if in childbirth, helping us in our weakness,“ for we do not know how to pray as we ought.”
Creation in the Bible is not just something that happened. It is God’ s deliberate work. The first creation story, in Genesis 1-2, was composed after the Israelites returned from the trauma of exile. It presents God’ s work not as haphazard, but a deliberate set of acts, each performed carefully and each affirmed as being good. Such a sense of a new order was received gladly by those who had returned from the chaos of displacement and loss.( We might think of the situation of immigrants today.) Paul has this experience of being a New Creation, brought about by the reconciling mercy of God in his own life, and becomes the“ Gospel of Reconciliation” that he proclaims to the Gentiles.
spirituality— is what attunes us to what God is leading us to in the New Creation.
Assembling Our Resources / Checking Our Provisions
We do not embark on this journey empty-handed or without resources. We have a host of provisions for the journey. In his early attempts to convince Pharaoh to allow the Israelites to depart, he requested that they might bring their cattle and provisions with them. Esau brought his entire family and livestock with him to meet Jacob.
We need to reflect on what we bring to the New Creation process. We do not arrive with nothing, but rather have a fifty-year story, and what we have learned along the way in that journey. Some of it parallels what the Cincinnati Province is bringing, but much of it is distinctive. This will not be set aside in the New Creation, but will enhance a common future. Three sets of resources will provide provisions for the journey and gifts for the arrival:
First, the experience of living out the three pillars of the c. pp. s. as a Society of Apostolic Life: mission, community, and spirituality. The Kansas City Province has made distinctive contributions to all three. Just to mention a few of these: mission to the margins( Hispanic ministries, lgbt ministry); the Member- Companion relationships as an embodiment of community; the ministry of reconciliation as Precious Blood spirituality.
Second, the Kansas City Province’ s living out of a Precious Blood spirituality both as a Cry of the Blood and the Call of the Blood, under the four symbols of covenant, cross, cup and reconciliation.( The April 2018 issue of The Cup of the New Covenant on continued on page 14
Our experience of reconciliation in the ministry of reconciliation— so central to Precious Blood
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