On Yesterday and Tomorrow

On New Year's Eve I read two paragraphs that put my mind at easy, making this the most peaceful Year transition in many years.  I'd like to share it with you here. 

New Beginnings

This year is ending.  This means, as always, that we spend a few minutes in reflection.  We draw up balance-sheets and make an effort to anticipate what the future may bring.  For a moment we become conscious of the strange thing called "time," which otherwise we simply use without thinking about it.  We fell both the melancholy and the consolation of out own transiency.  Much that caused us distress, much that weighed us down and seemed to make progress impossible, has now passed and become quite unimportant.  As we look back, difficult days are transfigured in memory, and the now almost forgotten distress leaves us more peaceful and confident, more composed in the face of present treats, for these too will pass.  The consolation of transiency: Nothing lasts, no matter how important it claims to be.  But this compromise, also has its discouraging and saddening aspect.  nothing lasts, and therefore along with the old year not only difficulties but mush that is beautiful has passed away, and the more we move beyond the midpoint of our lives, the more poignantly we feel this change of what was once future and then present into something past.  We cannot say to any moment: "Stay a while! you are so lovely!"  Anything that is within time comes and then passes away.

Our feelings toward the new year show the same ambivalence as our  feelings toward the old year.  A new beginning is something precious; it brings hope and possibilities as yet undisclosed.  "Every hope and possibilities as yet undisclosed.  "Every beginning has a magic about it that protects us and helps us live" (Herman Hess)... What can we as Christians say as this moment of transition?  First of all, we can do the very human thing the moment urges upon us: we can use the time of reflection in order to stand aside and widen our vision, this gaining inner freedom and a patient readiness to move on again.

Pope Benedict XVI
from: Dogma and Preaching

I share this so permanently with you because I believe that these quoted lines can help, not only on New Year's Eve, but any time the weight of life's problems suffocating and unbearable overwhelm you. 

I could wish you a Happy New Year, or even a happy tomorrow, but rather than "happy," I wish you a peace; I wish you that specific peace that one only finds through ones personal relationship with God.  Not peace of mind, but peace of heart.  This is a peace that no one can take from you, a peace that only you can give up.  This peace of heart that I wish is what will allow you to surmount and conquer anything the world heaps upon you.

Joseph De Matteo, January 1, 2009