A Beginning And An End
On the very first day of this New Year and every New Year, we turn our thoughts to the future. For the First day of the First Month of the year represents a new beginning, a day on which we set aside the past as best we can and turn instead to the future, one which we all hope will be a better time than what already was. Past, present and future—we’ve lived through the past already, we’re currently living in the present, and the only thing left now is the future, a future which is unknown and therefore filled with hopes and fears. Will the end of 2025 see us better, happier than we are now? Or will things happen in the course of the next twelve months that will turn our lives upside down? We just don’t know, and thus, we take care to wish all around us a very Happy New Year. Then we hope for the best and try not to fear the worst, we attempt to quell those rising emotions of nervous anticipation, as we step forward over the threshold from last year to the next year.
We should take a moment in the midst of the tumultuous transition from the past into the future to put all those hopes and fears into perspective. And how do we do that? What is it that makes sense of our emotional uneasiness as we look forward into 2025? It’s actually very simple, and one very familiar to us already if we know our Christmas carols! Think of that little soundbite from O Little Town of Bethlehem, simple words that shed light on our hopes and fears and makes our prospects crystal clear. It’s very simple: “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
It’s no coincidence that New Year’s Day falls so close to Christmas. It’s no coincidence that New Year’s Day is actually the last day in the Octave of Christmas. As Christmas week officially ends, the New Year begins—it’s the same day. Past and future are met in thee tonight. In that tiny infant lying in a manger we see past and future as one single Eternity of Being. In our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, our hopes and fears become insignificant in themselves, finding a deeper meaning in the everlasting life that follows this one, when time stands still forever and becomes a single infinite moment of supreme love and union with God.
We now start to think of the transitory nature of time as we pass from one year to the in a whole different light. We learn now to think of the switch from 2024 to 2025 in terms of that Eternal Figure in the manger—we regret our past sins and imperfections and become eager to grow more Christ-like in the future, seeking the perfection of our souls and leaving our bodily and material fluctuations to the Providence of God. Setting our hopes and fears aside now, we can focus instead on doing penance for the bad things behind us and making resolutions to do better in future.
What’s important is whether we are closer to God today than we were a year ago, and how we’re going to get closer to God from now on. Past and future meet in this Present Moment, the moment in which we live. By following in the footsteps of our blessed Lord, the Eternal Present, we can learn how to take full advantage of every moment that comes and goes, moments that will gradually add up to the life we’re going to be judged on. That gradual progress along the path of perfection is what we should be examining, both in our last look back at 2024 and our look forward to the future. That path should be the basis of all our New Year’s Resolutions, and we should keep checking our progress as the days go by. Our New Year will truly be a Happy New Year if we’re able to measure that progress in positive terms. And with that in mind, I wish you all from the bottom of my heart a very, very Happy New Year!