Happy New Year! This is the greeting we offer to everyone we meet today! They wish the same to us and we thank them. But, what do most people mean by “Happy New Year?” Certainly they mean a year free from illness, pain, trouble or worry; that everyone may smile on you, that you prosper, that you make plenty of money, that the taxman doesn’t get you, that to get a raise in salary, that prices fall, that the news is good every morning.
These are good things to wish for ourselves and others. But as we gather in the Lord’s House on this first day of the year, we must also remember that our lives, our future, with its share of joys and sorrows, with all its ups and downs, must always have a spiritual dimension.
For a Christian, a good year is one in which we have served God and our neighbor better. Any year can be the best year if we strengthen our friendship with the Lord, if we deepen our knowledge, love and service of the Lord; if we respond generously to the graces that God keeps in store for us! This is what sustains us on the year’s journey!
Today’s great solemnity reminds us that we are not alone on the journey. Mary, the Mother of the Lord accompanies us. Today we fix our gaze upon her, the creature who more than any other, can show us to the way that leads to the Lord. That way involves being rooted in a deep trust in God and being attuned to his word. This enabled her entire life to be a continual “Yes” to all that God desired of her.
At the beginning of every new year, I turn to a prayer composed by Sr. Carmela of the Holy Ghost. It expresses well this desire to offer everyday of the year as a “yes” to the Lord:
“O Jesus, I see this new year as a blank page that your Father is giving me, upon which he will write day by day what he has arranged for me in his divine pleasure. With full confidence, I am writing at the top of the page from now on: Lord, do with me what you will. And at the bottom I have already put my ‘amen’: to every disposition of your divine will. Yes, Lord, I say ‘yes’ to all the joys, to all the sorrows, to all the graces, to all the hardships that you have prepared for me and which you will be revealing to me day by day. Let my ‘amen’ be always followed by alleluia, uttered with all my heart in the joy of perfect giving. Give me your love and your grace, and I shall be rich enough.”
May Our Lady who knows fully the love of God and who is full of grace accompany us and help us know what it means to have a “happy new year.”
