Will 2007 'A Year of Our Lord'?

Another year in the history of our world has passed; another year in the life of each person. None of us can halt time. The most we can do as a year ends is to reflect on how we have lived that year.

The transition from the old year to the new year is a happy and hopeful one for Catholics and other believers. It occurs in the Christmas Season, the Coming our Saviour into time and as one of us to united the human with the divine and time with eternity.

In the Christmas Season we celebrate the FIRST ‘Year of Our Lord’. It is the pattern and way for all the subsequent years to be ‘Years of Our Lord’. For countless people there have been 2,000 ‘Years of Our Lord’. Now a new year 2007 is at our disposal to become another ‘Year of Our Lord’.

How frequently we hear at this special time of Christmas and New Year: “AFTER Christmas, everything goes on as before”. Yes and No! In one way it’s true, but in a most important way, we humans with free will can choose to change and continue our journey with everything ‘as before’ in a new way. We do not need to be captives who are dragged along in a helpless way that leaves us empty and unhappy.

For some ‘After Christmas everything goes on as before’ in both ways. When Christmas is merely another ‘secular holiday’, that past holiday is after called the ‘blahs’. Some in this ‘letdown’ are in the dumps with disappointment and disillusion. Yes the world and our world goes on, but the player on this stage gets stale. The danger is to become a skeptic and even a cynic.

How sad that any year passed in a mediocre way, perhaps like the year before. Worse yet is to resign ourselves to more or less of the SAME in a New Year. The old saying rings true: “The only difference between the rut and the grave are the dimensions”.

The first Year of Our Lord opens the blessed and happy way for us to a lifetime of ever more good years.

After encountering and welcoming Christ, ‘Everything’ NO! Some things went on as before. Joseph and Mary returned to Nazareth to the Carpenter’s Shop. Shepherds tended their flocks.

The Magi continued their studies of the universe. But they were not the same. St. Luke notes the difference Christ made in the Shepherds. St. Matthew does the same with the Magi (please reflect on Luke 2, 8-20). Verse 20 tells how the shepherds entered the ‘Year of Our Lord’: “The Shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, in accord with what had been told them”.

Please reflect on Matthew 2, 1-12. The concluding verse speaks of the change in the Magi: “They received a message in a dream not to return to Herod, so they went back to their own country by another route”.

Early Fathers of the Church share their profound insights about the Magi - St. Ambrose (+397): “The Magi came by one way and returned by another. For they who had seen Christ, had came to know Christ; and they returned more truly believing than they came. The way is twofold: one leads to destruction, the other leads to the Kingdom. There is the way of sinners that lead to Herod. This way the Magi takes is Christ by which return to our true country”.

St. John Chrysostoma (+407): “The Magi went back another way to their country. They give us an example of virtue and faith, so that we too, having known and adored Christ our King, and forsaking the road we formerly traveled; they way of our past, and traveling now another road with Christ as Guide, may return to our true country, which is paradise”.

For us too, the future can come like all time to become the stuff of eternity. In all our times, especially this decisive year of 2007 in all it’s hours, our believing, hoping and loving in Christ will be a ‘Year of Our Lord’.

A final word from St. Francis de Sales (+1622): TRUST - Do not look forward to what may happen tomorrow; the same everlasting Father who cares for you today will take care of you tomorrow and every day. Either He will shield you from suffering, or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it. Be at peace, then, put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations, and say continually; “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart has trusted in Him and I am helped.. He is not only with me but in me and I in Him”.