Auld Lang Syne

"Auld Lang Syne" is a song that is traditional to the New Year and has been sung and toasted at midnight on New Year's Eve for generations. The song began as a poem written in 1778 by Robert Burns, which he set to folk melody.

The message of "Auld Lang Syne" is that we should not forget our friends from times past, and the song sings of two old friends who haven't seen each other for a while, meet and share a reminiscing of past memories.

To me, the song signifies letting go of the last year and what it represented. Often, good friends or family move away, which leaves us with a sense of a loss and void that is not easy to fill. Out with the old and in with the new can sometimes be tough. New situations are sometimes faced with ambiguous feelings, with more than a little anxiety lagging behind. Healing is not easy.

The truth is that healing is a powerful choice, and the commitment to heal is the first step in recovery and wellness. As the year 2025 ends and the New Year 2026 begins, let us hope all our endings lead us to a healthier, happier, and a blessed future.

Jesus and His Disicples

Jesus took his disciples up on the mountain and gathered them around him. And he taught them, saying “Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who are persecuted. Blessed are those who suffer. When these things happen, rejoice, for your reward will be great in heaven.”

And Simon Peter said, “Do we have to write this down?”
And Phillip said “Is this going to be on the test?”
And John said, “Would you repeat that, slower?”
And Andrew said, “John the Baptist’s disciples don’t have to learn this stuff.”
And Matthew said, “Huh?”
And Judas said, “What’s this got to do with real life?”

And then one of the Pharisees said, an expert in law, said, “I don’t see any of this in your syllabus. Do you have a lesson plan? Where’s the student guide? Will there be a follow-up assignment?”

And Thomas, who had missed the sermon, came to Jesus privately and said, “Did we do anything important today?”

And Jesus wept.

The Tiger and the Fox

A fox who lived in the deep forest of long ago had lost its front legs. No one knew how: perhaps escaping from a trap. A man who lived on the edge of the forest, seeing the fox from time to time, wondered how in the world it managed to get its food. One day when the fox was not far from him he had to hide himself quickly because a tiger was approaching. The tiger had fresh game in its claws. Lying down on the ground, it ate its fill, leaving the rest for the fox.

Again the next day the great Provider of this world sent provisions to the fox by this same tiger. The man began to think: "If this fox is taken care of in this mysterious way, its food sent by some unseen Higher Power, why don't I just rest in a corner and have my daily meal provided for me?"

Because he had a lot of faith, he let the days pass, waiting for food. Nothing happened. He just went on losing weight and strength until he was nearly a skeleton. Close to losing consciousness, he heard a Voice which said: "O you, who have mistaken the way, see now the Truth! You should have followed the example of that tiger instead of imitating the disabled fox."

~ Anthony De Mello, SJ

Saying Thank You

Saying thank you from the heart makes us feel full. Perhaps we don't really know we have something until we express our thanks for it.

There are different levels of gratitude. There is the polite, automatic response when someone opens a door for us or the bank teller tells us to have a nice day. Simple, almost perfunctory, these acts of courtesy nevertheless add an element of grace to our daily transactions.

On a more personal level, saying thank you often and sincerely to those we love keeps us from taking each other for granted. We all like to feel appreciated - how many relationships dry up because the people involved don't realize what they have?

Then there is the gratitude we feel toward the God of our understanding, the source of all the blessings we enjoy but do not create for ourselves. This thankfulness can be a part of every breath we take. As often as we remember the many gifts of every day, our emptiness is filled.

Today, I will replenish my supply of gratitude.

Praying to See God's Glory

 Familiarity breeds contempt. It also blocks the mystery of Christmas by breeding a view of the life that cannot see divinity within humanity. 

All of us are hopelessly prone to see most everything in an over-familiar way, namely, in a way that sees little or nothing of the deep richness and divinity that is shimmering everywhere under the surface. G.K. Chesterton, reflecting on this, once declared that one of the deep secrets of life is to learn to look at things familiar until they look unfamiliar again. 

We are all challenged to learn the secret of seeing the extraordinary inside of the ordinary, of seeing divinity shimmering inside of humanity, and of seeing haloes around familiar faces. 

Thomas Merton shares how he once had a quasi-mystical experience of this in the most ordinary of circumstances. He had been living in a Trappist monastery outside of Louisville, Kentucky, for nearly 20 years and one day needed to go into Louisville for a medical appointment. He was standing at the intersection of Fourth and Walnut, when suddenly the ordinary changed into the extraordinary. 

Everyone around him began to shimmer with a deep, divine radiance. They were all walking around, he wrote, “shining like the sun.” And he adds: “Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.” 

This kind of vision, seeing the world as transfigured with haloes around familiar faces, is ultimately the meaning of Christmas, the meaning of the incarnation, and the mystery of God walking around in human flesh. Christmas is not so much a celebration of Jesus’ birthday as it is a celebration of the continued birth of God into human flesh, the continuation of the divine making itself manifest in the ordinary; God, a helpless baby in a barn​.

(Ron Rolheiser)

Feast of the Holy Family

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family.   Pope Leo XIII established this Feast to promote the sacredness of family life and to present the Holy Family as the model for all Christian Families.  Many people struggle with the notion that all families should model themselves on the Holy Family.  After all, Angles communicated with Joseph quite a lot, Mary, our Blessed Mother was conceived without sin and Jesus is the Son of God.  No other family on earth has members who achieve this level of perfection. 

We can, however, strive for holiness within our families.  The key to achieving the ideal modeled by the Holy Family is found in our second reading from Colossians 3:12–21.  In this reading St. Paul provides the Christian community of Colossae in Asia Minor with some guidelines for living the ideal Christian life in the world:  “Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do. And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body.” 

If each one of us follows St. Paul’s guidelines for Christian living, and applies them to our own lives and to our families, then we might come close to achieving the holiness modeled by the Holy Family.  St. Paul certainly gives us great material for making our New Year’s resolutions.  Happy New Year!   

God our Father,
we give you all thanks and praise
that you chose for your Son a human family.
Through the prayers and example
of Mary and Joseph,
may we too learn
to make room for Jesus in our lives,
that he may grow up in us day after day
and make us more like him.

Teach us to rely on your word,
that in our trials as in our joys
we may be clothed in gentleness and patience
and united in love.
We ask this in the name of Jesus the Lord.

Amen

 

 

Merry Christmas!

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