Happy New Year: Can We Really Begin Again? The Answer is Yes, Through Jesus

Through the Incarnation, Saving Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus we are capacitated to live our lives differently. When we do, Jesus can make all things new!

The promise "I make all things new" addresses the heart cry of the entire human race. It answers our deepest longing. As the photos pour in from all over the world showing New Years celebrations, what is absolutely clear is that we all hope that we can begin again! We can.

P>CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) - 'For a son of God each day should be an opportunity for renewal, knowing for sure that with the help of grace he will reach the end of the road, which is Love. That is why if you begin and begin again, you are doing well. If you have a will to win, if you struggle, then with God's help you will conquer. There will be no difficulty you cannot overcome.' (St. Jose Maria Escriva, The Forge, 344)

The one who sat on the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new." (Jesus to St John, recorded in the Bible, in the Book of Revelation 21:5).

These words from the Book of Revelation or the "Apocalypse" hold out the promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all men and women in every Nation under the sun. They were spoken to the beloved disciple John on the Island of Patmos when he received a vision of the new heaven and new earth where the completion of the Redemption of Jesus Christ will be fully manifested.The quote from a contemporary saint, St Escriva, helps us to understand their daily promise and application. 

The promise "I make all things new" addresses the heart cry of the entire human race. It answers our deepest longing. As the photos pour in from all over the world showing New Years celebrations, what is absolutely clear is that we all hope that we can begin again! At this time of the year, when we end one year and begin a new one, we seem compelled to make resolutions to change our lives. How deeply we want to begin again, to be made new. The Christian claim is that there is Good News! We can!

Those words, "Behold I make all things new" took on new meaning for me several years ago when I watched a powerful scene in the Mel Gibson masterpiece, "The Passion of the Christ." In it Mary, the Mother of the Lord, runs to her wounded Son. He has fallen for the third time from the weight of the Cross. There is a flash back to an earlier day when that same son, as a child, is seen playing in the dusty streets of Nazareth and is about to fall.

With the tender love of a mother, Mary reaches out to her Son. Then the viewer sees her hand touch the wounded face of the Adult Son and Savior who looks at her, and through words addressed to her - He speaks to every human person - from the beginning of time until the end - saying: "Behold, I make all things new." That is the hunger in the heart of every human person expressed on New Year's Eve and continued on New Year's day.

As we repent for the failures of the past year, reflect on the gifts it brought and resolve to "be better" in the coming year, we are confronted with the reality of our human condition and our fratcured freedom. We know that our resolutions to change often end in failure. We are prone to making wrong choices in daily life. We sin. Classical theology speaks of this inclination as "concupiscence".

The Apostle Paul wrote about this experience to the early Christians in Rome in the seventh chapter of his letter: "For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want. Now if (I) do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me... Miserable one that I am! Who will deliver me from this mortal body Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Our freedom is a reflection of the Image of God within us. It was fractured by the effects of the first sin. Our ability to exercise it properly by choosing the good has been undermined. In the words of Blessed John Paul II ("The Splendor of Truth") "freedom itself needs to be set free." Through the Incarnation, Saving Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus we are capacitated to live our lives differently. When we do, Jesus can make all things new!

As we cross from 2011 to 2012 let us make our first resolution to behold His face, wounded by love, as his mother did. Let us choose to walk through 2012 allowing the Savior to take up residence in our hearts and in our homes.

For the Christian, time has purpose. It is a part of a loving plan of a timeless God who, in His Son, the Timeless One, came into time in order to transform it from within. We have been made a part of His ongoing redemptive plan for the entire cosmos through His Church. Time is the field in which this loving plan proceeds.

Human beings mark time by significant events. The question is not whether we will mark time but how. What message are we proclaiming in the process of our calendaring of time? The Christian understanding of time as having a redemptive purpose is why we mark time by the great events of the faith.

On the first day of the New Year we celebrate the Feast of the Mother of God. This is no liturgical accident. She who beheld the face of the Savior invites us to hear the words of Jesus Christ, "Behold I make all things new!" She is the Mother of the New Creation because the One whom she held in her womb and birthed for the whole world is the only One who can make all things new!

Every New Year we read numerous articles about the efficacy of New Year's Resolutions. However, the fact remains, we all make them. The experience is nearly universal. The question is why? I suggest that they reveal something of our universal longing. So too do our calendars. Some Nations use different calendars, but the passing of one year to another is marked by a deliberate period of reflection over the past year and a pledge to begin anew, to change, in the year to come. This is because we all hunger to be made new!

GK Chesterton wrote: "The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards. Unless a man be born again, he shall by no means enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."

We all want to change, to be better, to live our lives more fully and love one another more selflessly. As we end one year and look to a new one, we pause and take inventory. In a rare moment of near universal reflection and honest self assessment, we admit our failures. We pledge to learn from them and move toward a better future. In Little Gidding written by T.S. Eliott we find these often quoted words: "For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice. What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning."

Over the years I have realized that every end really can become a beginning, for the man or woman who has faith in the God who invites us to begin again, again and again. He alone makes it possible by sharing His very Life with us. This gift is called grace and through receiving it we become what the Apostle Peter called "Partakers of the Divine Nature".(2 Peter 1:4)

Millions will utter these words, or similar ones,  this New Years Eve and Day, "I firmly resolve." Lists will be compiled - and promises made - to oneself, to others and to God. Sadly, many will not be kept. These words attributed to Mark Twain too often ring true "New Year's Day - now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual."

When I was a young man, I would write my New Years goal list before a period of protracted prayer. I use to make the list and then, in a fit of self generated enthusiasm, ask the Lord to bless it! I know better now. I need the light of the Holy Spirit to even comprehend what is needed if I ever hope to change. I pray first and then, my list has become so simple. Mary's Fiat has become my prayer, "be it done unto me according to your word."

I am ever grateful for the opportunity to attend Holy Mass on New Year's Day and celebrate the great Feast of Mary, the Mother of God. She is the first disciple, the prototype, the symbol of the whole Church. We who are members of the Church are invited to emulate her "Yes" to the invitation of God and make it our own. We are to make a place for Him within us and become bearers of Christ to the world.

There at Holy Mass, at the Altar of Sacrifice where heaven meets earth, if we listen with our spiritual ears, we can hear the Angels sing. We hear the living Word of God proclaimed, equipping us with wisdom from above to help inform our lives below. We approach the Altar of Calvary and receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, the source of all grace. Without grace we simply cannot keep these New Year's resolutions. But with grace - which is a participation in the very life of God - we really can.

I awakened this morning with a prayer in my heart. It is one which Roman Catholics over fifty years old recall well,called "An Act of Contrition". The older form begins with these words, "O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven, and the pains of hell; but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen."

The prayer has gone through several revisions, maintaining the necessary elements of honest confession, repentance and resolution reliant upon grace. The preliminary line strikes me as significant for our New Year's Celebration, "I firmly resolve." 

However, it is incomplete without the words which follow "with the help of Thy grace". That second part, "with the help of Thy Grace" holds the key to answering the question of whether New Year's Resolutions can work or whether the New years refelction will bear fruit. Yes, if they are inspired by the Holy Spirit and aided by God's grace.

I pray that in the Year of Our Lord, 2012, we may all find the fullness of grace which comes through a living relationship with the One who makes all things new  (Rev 21), Jesus Christ.  There is a universal longing in every human heart to be made new, to begin again, because the Holy Spirit prompts it in every human heart.

In and through Jesus Christ, there is also a way to be made new. That is the heart of the Gospel, the Good News! We truly can! St. Paul reminded the Christians in the City of Corinth - and reminds every one of us "whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come." (2 Cor. 5:17)

New Years Eve is a great existential moment, ripe with expectations. It invites a spiritually cathartic time of reflection, offers hope for change and invites us to make choices. In reality, our choices will make us. Let us choose in the year 2012 to live our lives in Jesus Christ and find the way to turn resolutions into reality. Happy New Year!

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