New Year, New You? HE makes All Things New
Dear All Saints Parish Family,
First of all, MERRY CHRISTMAS! That’s right, it’s still Christmas, and what a glorious time it is. The Christmas decorations will stay up in the church through the whole of Christmastide, which ends with the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord.
Second, Blessed and Happy New Year! May the Lord bless this new calendar year, making it a year of grace, deeper conversion, inner healing, greater prayer, more Christ-centered loving service for all of us, and indeed for the whole world.
The start of the year gives us a time to reflect on what went well in 2024 and what didn’t, and at the same time to think a little about what we want to change in 2025. The phrase “New Year, New You” will certainly be making the rounds in advertising, trying to entice us into gym memberships, “healthy” eating subscription boxes, and the like, most of them pointing merely to our physique…our weight, our shape, our muscle mass.
But we are more than a bag of flesh…what we are celebrating in the birth of Our Blessed Lord is that human nature is sacred…the body is sacred, the soul is sacred. The entirety of the human person is sacred, because the Word was made flesh, the eternal Son of God reclaimed our human nature.
And this truth is at the heart of the Epiphany as well. By these Wise Men, these Magi from the east (rightly considered pagans at the time), coming to seek out the newborn King, and when finding Him, worshipping Him, the total renewal of humanity is being made manifest to the world. This newborn baby is making all things new.
As we consider our own resolutions this near, let’s open ourselves to being renewed as a whole person, according to the desires of Our Heavenly Father. I share 4 questions that can seriously aid our discernment on how the Lord wants to make us new, adapted from Fr. John Ricardo and the ACTS XXIX Ministry (with permission). Bring these questions to prayer.
1. Lord, what are the gifts you have so generously given to me?
2. Lord, show me my greatest wound.
3. Lord, what is Hell’s strategy for my life?
4. Where are you asking me to change, Lord?
Seeking out the answers to these questions in prayer brings lots of things to light. But it’s the light that scatters the darkness, like the light of that holy star.
Jesus wasn’t born to teach us to be nice. He came to make us new creatures, new men, new women, knowing our worth and dignity, filled with grace, capable of heroic virtue, with the very divine life coursing through us.
Praised be Jesus Christ, the Newborn King, now and forever!
All you holy saints, pray for us!
Peace in Christ,
Fr. Michael Silloway
Pastor