An important New Year reminder

Every time we celebrate New Year that liturgically coincides with the Solemnity of the divine maternity of our Lady, we should be reminded that we have to make ourselves new again spiritually and morally.

Every New Year, of course, makes us a year older, but spiritually and morally, it should make us younger until we reach that point that we will forever be new and young, as we head toward our goal of eternity, where everything is new, where there will be no more past nor future. That’s where time is swallowed up by eternity.

We then need to revise our understanding of what is to be new. When we usually say something is new, we normally mean that in time it will get old. The ‘newness’ referred to here has nothing to do with ‘oldness.’ It’s a newness that has nothing to do with death. Everything is life in the present.

This is only possible if spiritually and morally we conform ourselves to God in whose image and likeness we have been created and whose children we all are through Christ in the Holy Spirit.

In the Book of Revelation, we learn this truth of our faith: “He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’” (21,5) We should have no doubt as to where to get this everlasting newness meant for us.

On our part, we just have to make sure that we take care of our spiritual and moral life since it is through them that we are enabled to receive God’s grace that is the sole principle of eternity. Everything else in our life should get its life and purpose from our spiritual and moral dimensions of our life.

We need to deepen our faith in God’s love for us, which should be shown in deeds. It’s in this way that we can participate in Christ’s victory over sin and death with his resurrection to eternal life. That victory will always make us new as St. Paul once affirmed:

“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has passed away. Behold, all things are made new.” (2 Cor 5,17) In another passage, St. Paul said: “For we are buried together with him by baptism into death, that as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in the newness of life.” (Rom 6,4)

We need to learn the ways of this “newness of life” offered by Christ through his passion, death and resurrection or the Paschal mystery that summarizes everything that he did and said to save us, to re-create us from our sinful selves to bring us back and to enrich our original dignity as God’s image and likeness, as God’s children.

And this means that we have to wage a lifelong spiritual struggle against temptations and sin that are causes of our death. As long as we struggle interiorly, there is spiritual life, the very wellspring that produces the living water for our river of life. As long as we struggle spiritually and morally, we will be approximating that newness of life meant for us.

We need not only to purify our thoughts and intentions from any stain of pride, vanity, lust, envy, sloth, gluttony, anger, etc. We need also to fill them and rev them up with true love and wisdom.

The ideal situation should be that we are always in awe at the presence of God in our life, making him the principle and objective of all our thoughts, words and deeds. We have to be spiritually fit before we can be fit anywhere else—family-wise, professionally, socially, politically, etc.

That’s why we have to see to it that our thoughts and desires are properly engaged with God who is their true foundation and end, for outside of him, we will just expose ourselves to all sorts of random and usually dangerous possibilities.

This task of conforming our thoughts and desires to him is getting to be very exciting, because these days many are the earthly things that dare to be alternatives to God. Today’s world is so immersed in worldly values that any reference to God is at best a mere formalism, an ornamental item only, a lip service to tradition that is already emptied of its true substance.

We have to wage an abiding interior struggle to keep ourselves new and young in our spiritual and moral life. This is what the New Year should remind us of.