Happy New Year
Most significant moments of our existence adjust, as by decree, to the rhythm of the calendar. Time goes by, marking stages, dividing what seems indivisible, making itself known, leaving a record of its passage, its course.
A new year can be focused in many ways. It can be "one more year". It can also be a "new" year, an open possibility, a page to write, a window open to the future or to the unforeseen.
For Christians, years and days are not in the hands of a dark chance or an implacable destiny. For Christians, Jesus Christ is the Lord of time. He has entered, by the Incarnation, in time and time is, since then, "time of the Lord." This is what we read in the various inscriptions: "Year of the Lord." The year that begins will be no exception. Whatever happens in the course of their days will be a "year of the Lord", a year that does not escape, as none of them does, to the computation of God.
Beyond the minutes of our life, the quality of our time experience matters. "Time is money," is heard, but, if we speak with more property, "time is glory." That is, if we live facing God, which is how we have to live, time is the occasion to grow in friendship with Him. Our days are not merely stages of a calendar, but moments of grace, spaces that we must use to hurry them up , knowing that, at the end of the day, what counts, what really matters, is what we have done for God.
If for us Jesus Christ is the Lord of time, our look to the future must necessarily be a look of hope. Hope does not consist in believing, perhaps naively, that everything will be fine. Hope is trust in God; It is the certainty that, whatever happens, we are in God's hands.
A Christian should never contemplate the future with uncertainty. Each passing year is a new occasion, a new possibility. If we know how to take advantage of it, each year represents a new gift; A possibility opened by grace. May the Lord grant us to live with this certainty, and with this hope, the next year!
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