The Time

Although New Year Parties and resolutions create a conversational mosaic of brittle, polite chit-chat, the post-Christmas times becomes a clatter of Madison Avenue jingles and video vignettes and newspaper inserts presenting smiling, happy, faces finding more sales, more bargains and more beautifully photographed stuff waiting to be purchased, waiting to be returned. How colorful and entertaining and predictable these advertisements are!

For many the New Year is a time of anxiety, a time of angst as one year ends and another begins. The problems of the old year carry over into the next year. There is a selfishness attached to some of the current contemporary New Year's rituals with so much attention being placed on anticipation and expectation. There is no time to be mellow. There is no time for repose. Tranquility and serenity are banished. Often there is little time for reflection between shopping, attending parties, recovering from the shopping, recovering from the parties.

The beginning of a new year requires each Christian to examine his conscience, to examine the good and the bad from the previous year, to examine the relationship with the people in his life, to examine the relationship with God. The central focus of each Christian might involve how to love better, how to love his neighbors, his family, his friends, and God better. The central focus might involve how to serve God better with his entire being, how to share God's love with all the people around him.

Serving God requires a special humility, a benevolent placidity which leads to a loving obedience.

This is the time for prayer, the time for silence. This is the time to use the Rosary. Loving and serving God are very important activities which take time, effort, patience. Saying that we love God is easier than showing it. As Christians we must learn to put God first.

Find the courage to be humble, to be patient. Find the courage to love, freely, unconditionally, universally without anticipating, desiring, or expecting anything in return. Simply allow yourself to freely, quietly love all whom you come into contact with. Let love for God diffuse all your fears, all your jealousy, all your anger. Let love for God lead you to the peace and quietude of devotional expression. Let love for God guide you away from temptation and sin.