New Year’s Eve reflection.

We are finishing the candle flame of this year. In a few hours, this year will be history. Before the twelfth stroke of the old year strikes and a new leaf begins to be written, before we toast and congratulate each other on all that is good and what we deem necessary and beneficial for the coming year, let us pause, take stock of the ending of the old year, and give thanks for all the graces, the blessings we have received from God.

John wrote to us about our God, who came among us as one like us in all things except sin: “He came into his own, and his own did not receive him. But to those who did receive him, he gave them the power to become children of God.” (Jn. 1:11-12). We could not have wished for anything more beautiful than that God had come among us, that He had lived the same life and under the same circumstances, even though it was almost two millennia ago and in Palestine. His life from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, from the manger to the cross, speaks of love and love again. Out of its fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. He has shown us the way where we should not have known the consequences of sin, which we remember today and as the year ends. Jesus Christ, the eternal Word, true God with the Father and the Holy Spirit, desires our presence in union with God for all eternity. No one and no one has ever seen God. The only-begotten Son of God, who is in the bosom of the Father, the one who brought the news of him. This tiding is not only stopping at the manger but stopping on the last day of the civil year. He, whom we call the Word and who was initially, desires that we all believe through him.

A serious part of our lives is coming to an end. How many more do we have ahead of us? None of us can be sure that a year from now, he will be among the living, that even next New Year’s Eve, we will be allowed, by this God here on earth, to give thanks and to give thanks. That is not in our hands, nor is what now ends. We can no longer wipe out, erase, erase anything of what was. We do not pull back the Word; we do not stop the deed; even the thought in our mind is known to God. What can we do if we cannot change the past and are not masters of the future? The answer is clear. To experience the present in union with God. To realize the value of the present moment. The most precious moment in life is the one we live. It doesn’t come back any more than the water in the river comes back. You can’t stop it, so don’t even worry about what the future will bring. We need to live now, and for us, that means living in the presence of God. As we will read before midnight from the Book of Ecclesiastes, “Everything has its time and its moment every effort under the heaven. It’s time to be born; it’s time to die; it’s time to plant; it’s time to pluck up seedlings… It’s time to weep; it’s time to laugh. Its time to grieve, its time to dance…” (Eccl. 3:1-4). We know an incident from the life of the great saint St. Ignatius, who once said to his professor St. Francis Xavier, “What profit is there for a man to gain the whole world, but to suffer damage to the soul?” A vain young man and professor, eager for glory, set out to seek Christ. He does it perfectly. When he finds him, he declares: “He who has once known Christ will not be able to resist, lest he is overcome. But I assure you that there is no greater cross than to crucify oneself if we want to belong to Christ.”

Therefore, the motto of the spiritual family founded by St. Ignatius and of which St. Francis Xavier became a member is: “Everything for the greater honor and glory of God!” – “Omnia ad maiorem Dei Gloriam!” When we look back on our ending year in the spirit of these words, we have much to correct, improve, and renounce. This year is coming to an end. Let us entrust it to God’s mercy, to God’s love, and to those resolutions, earnestly meant, that in this new year we want to live more seriously the teachings of our Redeemer and Savior, in living the present moments, all to the more incredible honor and glory of God! This is lived out daily from waking up until the final realization on the bedside tonight that nothing that is not connected to God is meaningless and can only serve to our shame and damnation one day.

Before the candle of the ending year is extinguished, before the last stroke of the twelfth-hour strikes, let us take stock of our parish year, how we have fulfilled our duties… Let us remember that these numbers do not tell the whole story. Statistics can tell us a lot, but what is decisive is our inferiority, our relationship with God, our parish fulfillment of the duties that God asks of us, and the Church requires us.