In the Cold, a Call to One Another

by The Reverend Molly O'Neil Frank on January 29, 2026

Baby, it’s cold outside! January 2026 has been one of the coldest in nearly 40 years. When it is this cold, our tendency is to pull up the blankets and curl inward with a book or a good show. There is something to be learned from the chilly season and its invitation to introspection (and hot soup). However, the cold weather can also reinforce our isolationist tendencies. We live in a time when most goods and services can be purchased with a click of a button and where advice can be dispensed by AI in the form of a friend (one such form is a necklace that you can have a conversation with all day long). There are a growing number of social scientists and mental health professionals who wonder about the cost of living in a “frictionless” society. David Brooks recently noted that “online life is so delicious because it is socializing with almost no friction.” We live without having to converse with those whom only a generation ago, we would have had to negotiate any number of commercial transactions. We know that these “incidental” encounters with strangers have been shown to be beneficial to our mood. We are lifted by the brief conversations that we have in the elevator or in the bus as we tacitly acknowledge our common humanity.

On Sunday, we will read the Beatitudes from Matthew’s Gospel. Some may know that in 2016, the late Pope Frances proposed adding six "Modern Beatitudes" during an outdoor Mass in Malmo, Sweden on a very chilly All Saints Day.

Blessed are those who remain faithful while enduring evils inflicted on them by others and forgive them from their heart.
Blessed are those who look into the eyes of the abandoned and marginalized and show them their closeness.
Blessed are those who see God in every person and strive to make others also discover Him.
Blessed are those who protect and care for our common home.
Blessed are those who renounce their own comfort in order to help others.
Blessed are those who pray and work for full communion between Christians.

Francis’s additions take Jesus’s words into the world to acknowledge the stranger as ourselves. This cannot be done virtually. This is a kinetic practice. Besides promoting a better outcome for our world, we now know that the more care we show one another, the less anxious and, dare I say, happier we will feel.

The Reverend Molly O'Neil Frank

About the Author

The Reverend Molly O'Neil Frank

The Reverend Molly O’Neil Frank is the staff palliative care chaplain at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and serves on the ethics committees at both Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center. She completed her clinical pastoral education at Weill-Cornell Medical Center and was ordained a priest in September 2023. Molly holds a BA in English and Religion from Wesleyan University in Connecticut and a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary and a MA in Ministry from General Theological Seminary in New York City. After graduating from college, she worked as a theater producer in New York City. While raising her children, she served on the boards and executive committees of Playwrights in Action, Diller-Quaile Music School, The Allen- Stevenson School, and The Keewaydin Foundation. She retired as President of the board of Signature Theatre Company in 2010 and recently retired from the executive committee of the board of Rider University/Westminster Choir college. She is a founding member of The Lighthouse Works, a residential artist’s fellowship program on Fishers Island, New York. She is currently on the executive committee of the Jed Foundation, whose mission is to promote mental health and prevent suicide in colleges and high schools. She serves as an assisting priest at Grace Church in Millbrook, New York. Molly lives in New York City with her husband Linc with whom she has four adult children.