A very Happy New Year to everyone
this morning. We’re all very aware today
that at midnight last night we passed through the doorway from one year to
another. Many of us did so with great ceremony,
the drinking of champagne, the singing of Auld
lang syne, and a big glass ball dropping a few feet in Time Square. What great importance we attach to the simple
fact that as of today, we have to write 2018 on our checks instead of 2017. Surely there must be something more
significant to the New Year than that?
Let’s examine that doorway we passed through at midnight. Like all doorways, there is something in
front of the door, and something behind it.
Often it’s two separate rooms, containing totally separate furniture,
and for totally separate functions. The
door might separate a bedroom from a bathroom for example, or the inside of the
house from the garden. Our door last night
separates an old year from a new one. It
is our annual reminder that the past is separated from the future. Two totally separate periods of time, one
that was, and one that will be.
At any instant of our life, we
could make this separation between past and future. The doorway we pass through to get from one
to the other is called the present. And
the present is the most important of all.
The New Year is a time when we stand at that doorway from past to
future, with our hand on the doorknob, baggage in hand, closing the door behind
us on 2017, and looking out into 2018. Now
it’s up to each of us what we want to pack and take with us in our baggage from
one side of that door to the other. Some
things are best left behind. Let us
leave behind those memories best forgotten, those grudges we hold towards
certain people, those sins we committed, and most importantly our attachments
to anything that takes us away from God.
But let’s make sure we have packed those virtues we have been
cultivating, those good habits that draw us ever closer to a greater love from
our divine Saviour who on this day of his Circumcision shed his very first drop
of Blood for us.
There’s really not much more we
need to pack. Perhaps a few good
memories we want to cherish, certainly the lessons we learned about avoiding
temptations and occasions of sin. But our
bags don’t have to be all that full, and in most cases we can resolve to start
over again from scratch. We can begin
our new year with some firm resolutions, promising ourselves to be better in
one way or another. We can start by
making resolutions on the natural
level, whether it be studying harder, stopping smoking, losing weight, gaining
weight, whatever it might be. By all
means make these promises to yourself, try to keep them, use this New Year as a
time to say goodbye to the old You of 2017, and welcome in the new, improved
You of 2018. Whether you will succeed or
fail, God only knows, but whatever happens, you may be assured that this same
God will be there to help you on the way if you ask him.
But above all, we should make spiritual acts of resolution according
to our abilities and state of life. Take
the time to really examine your conscience at this doorway between the two
years. The word January comes from the
name of a Roman god called Janus. Janus
is represented as having two faces, one looking back and the other looking
forward. We can learn from this representation of a pagan god, and make this
new month of January a time for looking back at our past faults and a time for
looking forward with resolutions to know, love and serve God better.
One of the ways God helps us do
this is to give us the examples of his own life in the gospels of the daily
Mass, and of course the examples also of his holy saints, whose feastdays we
celebrate almost every day of the year.
We can learn by them, learn to emulate their virtues and good deeds,
learn to follow in their footsteps as they themselves followed Christ our Lord. If you can’t attend daily Mass, try at least
reading the Epistle and Gospel of the day from the Missal, try reading the life
of the Saint of the day from the Breviary or other books.
Today’s feast of the Circumcision
of Our Lord is a good example of how we should think about each feastday, and
how every day we can learn from the liturgy of the Church. For today, the little Christ Child, just eight
days after he was delivered, shed his first drops of blood. This might not seem like a big deal, and yet
to this day is accorded the highest honour of being made a Holyday of
Obligation. For these first few drops of
blood that our Saviour let fall, these alone were sufficient for the redemption
of mankind. Each drop is the source of
infinite merit and grace, as each drop is the blood of the infinite God-Man,
our Lord himself, everlasting, and omnipotent.
If you were able to go to daily
Mass during this Christmas season, you would have noticed in these days since
Christmas an unusually frequent mention of the spilling of blood. It is no coincidence that the very first day
after Christmas, the Church celebrates the stoning to death of St. Stephen the
First Martyr. It comes as a salutary
reminder that in spite of all the peace and good will that comes from the
Angels’ message, nevertheless, as we read in the Second Psalm, “the kings of
the earth have arisen, and the rulers have taken counsel together against the
Lord, and against his Anointed.” One
such king was the cruel Herod, who ordered the murder of all infants two-years
old and younger in the region of Bethlehem.
Indeed, just a couple of days later in the Christmas Octave, this
slaughter of the Holy Innocents is commemorated at “Childermas”, with purple
vestments and great mourning. On the
next day, it is the turn of St. Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, to
give his life for the freedom and exaltation of Holy Mother Church, facing the
fury of yet another of those “kings of the earth”, Henry II of England. The very sanctuary of the great cathedral of
Canterbury was literally and deliberately strewn with the blood and brains of
the martyred Archbishop.
But why so much bloodshed during
this holy tide of Christmas? Or as the
same Psalm 2 asks: “Why do the heathen so furiously rage together?” It is because the Nativity is the grand
announcement of our Redemption, a Redemption that would be won only with the
shedding of the Precious Blood of the Redeemer.
It was to be the fall of Satan’s kingdom, and thus it is only natural
that Satan’s followers would rise up together against the Lord’s Anointed. But today, the Feast of the Circumcision,
that same Infant Redeemer willingly chose to shed his first drops of Blood for
our sinful humanity. He bled so that we
might live. This is the hidden yet true
message of Christmas and of all those Yuletide feastdays, which are all
fulfilled today with the shedding of that first drop of Divine Blood for all
mankind.
As symbolized by the red berries
of the holly, blood is shed today. But
the green leaves of the holly remind us that by that Blood, all things are made
new, the days are getting longer again, and the green leaves of spring will
come again. “Thou, O Lord, shalt renew
the face of the earth.” But before that
great renewal, alas, more of His Blood must flow. The green leaves of the holly branch do not
have smooth edges. Their thorny leaves
warn of that crown which the Roman soldiers would press down on the head of their
king before they took him to the Cross.
We must see Our Lord suffer his bitter Passion before we may see him
glorious in his Resurrection. And so
today, that same Infant King now calls us, on this Feast of the Circumcision,
to come and worship, to conclude the Octave of His Nativity by giving to Him
and His Precious Blood the adoration which is meet and right, to give Him the
only thing He asks for, which is our love.
So as we go through this doorway into
the New Year, let us remember that one day we shall come to another door, the
door which is the Gate of Heaven. To
pass through that door, we won’t be able to make “resolutions” to be better in
future. We will have only the past to
look back at, as we gather up all the little drops of blood we shed for love of
Christ, all those little acts of sacrifice, penance, prayers, rosaries, acts of
kindness and love. Will they be truly
only very little drops of blood? Will
they be enough to let us pass through the Gate of Heaven? Let’s pray that our blessed Mother, who IS
the Gate of Heaven and Morning Star, will intercede for us on that day, at the
hour of our death, and will welcome us into the Kingdom of her Son, where ours
will be not just a happy new year, but a happy eternity for evermore.
