Some questions for New Year´s Eve (The Octave Day of Christmas Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, 2018)

We are about to begin a New Year. What will it be like? What do I expect of the New Year? What do I really wish for? What is it I need? To what will I dedicate my most precious and important time? What will truly be new and good for me in this year that starts today? Will I live just in any way, going from one occupation to another, without knowing exactly what I want or what to live for, or will I learn to distinguish what is important and essential from what is secondary? Will I spend my life in a rut and bored, or will I learn to live with a more creative spirit? Will I keep on this year distancing myself a little more from God, or will I start to look for him more trustingly and more sincerely? Will I continue this year being muter before him, not opening my lips or my heart, or will a small, humble but sincere invocation finally spring from my shattered soul? Will I again go through life worrying only about my own welfare, or will I know how to be concerned sometimes about making others happy? To which people will I draw near? Will I sow joy in them, or will I spread discouragement and sadness? Wherever I go, will life be more pleasant there and less hard? Will it be one more year devoted to doing more and more things, piling up selfishness, tension and nervousness, or will I have time for silence, rest, prayer and encounter with God? Will I just lock myself up in my problems, or will I live trying to make a more human and livable world? Will I follow with indifference the news coming daily from nations plagued by hunger? Will I look unmoved at the mangled corpses of Iraqi people or of drowned boat people? Will I look coldly at those who come as far as where we are, looking for work and bread? When will I learn to look at those who suffer with a heart that is responsible and committed to solidarity? What is “new” about this year will not come from outside. Its newness can only spring from within us. This year will be new if I learn to believe in new and more trusting ways, if I find new and more loving gestures, so as to share a life of fellowship with those of my own flesh and blood, if I awaken in my heart a new compassion toward those who suffer. Today we start a new year. But can it be for us something truly new and good? Who is able to bring to birth in us a new joy? What psychologist will teach us to be more human? Little do our good intentions count. What’s decisive is to be more attentive to the good that Jesus awakens in us, the salvation we are offered each day. We don’t need to wait for anything other helps. This very day can be for me a day of salvation •  AE