Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

There are no specific Mass intentions for today.

As I Was Saying...

Today we come to turn the last page of the year 2006. Like being back at school, we can now draw a neat line under the year, turn over to a new page, put in a fresh margin and begin again. But it will take us some time to get used to the new digit. The past is not discarded that easily!

There are, of course, many ways of marking this moment. Some head for the public places and illuminated clocks, cheering away the seconds and welcoming in the new year with hugs, hooters and good cheer. Others gather in front of the TV for their own domestic 'count-down'. Still others gather, more quietly, with a few friends and talk over the year that's gone and the one ahead. And I know people who absolutely hate New Year's Eve. In that one night they can taste the bitter transience of all things, and they shun that night as no other. This is particularly true of those who have lost loved ones in the year just ending. New Year's Eve distills into one night the loss and grief of an entire year! I know of one man who throws back a few stiff drinks and retires to bed before 10.00, the only day of the year he goes to bed before midnight!

However, almost by reflex, our minds reach back tonight over the closing year. Almost unconsciously we will draw up a kind of balance sheet - annus mirabilis or annus horribilis -most likely somewhere between the two!

But what's the measure we use? How do we determine our judgement on the year that's gone? Personal happiness and satisfaction will be high on our list. But so too will family well-being. But what of our wider family: the neighbours, the wider community, the unfortunate people of Darfur or Iraq?

It's not easy for us to construct our own personal scale of values, as we are so encouraged to do nowadays. We're very likely to take short-cuts, excusing our egotism, overlooking the costly demands of justice, creating a set of values in our own image and likeness. This is the infamous 'relativism' against which Joseph Ratzinger rightly railed.

Perhaps that's why God chooses to speak to us, giving us a revealing Word, written into our hearts and in the great religions, fully expressed in Christ, the Eternal Word made flesh. It's from there that we get our criteria, our understanding of the maker's intentions and therefore of our destiny. This revelation assures us that our world has an underlying order, that it's indeed a cosmos and not a chaos, that it should be going somewhere, not just endlessly round in circles.

So however you spend this evening, spare a moment for this Word of God and His purpose for us. For that is the only true goal: a Kingdom of truth and integrity, of justice and peace, of love, compassion and practical charity. By these criteria we can judge our sense of real progress, or the lack of it.

I hope that 2006 has brought you nearer to this reality and that for the new year you can set your sights afresh on the things that really last forever. A happy 2007 to all.

-Dick Lyng

Items of Some Interest

"Time & Tide..."

Janus, after whom the month of January is named, was the ancient Roman god of the doorway. He guarded all entrances and exits. Janus is represented as having two faces, one looking back to the past, the other looking forward to the future. New Year's Day makes Janus of us all. We have all been changed by the year that has passed. Some of us may have lost loved ones; others may have been broken by sickness or circumstance; others may have married and had children.

Whatever our individual circumstances, we have all been changed by the year that has gone. It was Cardinal Newman who said that "to live is to change, to live fully is to change often." The challenge to us now is to make ourselves at home with our changed circumstances. If we are to live fully human lives, this reconciliation is essential. Otherwise we will waste ourselves and our days in pining after what is impossible, or what is no more.

New Years Day then is a day for reflection on time and how we use it. You may recall that there was great rejoicing when the travel time from Galway to Dublin was reduced by a half hour because of the Maynooth bypass. But the real question is: What do you do with the half hour saved? Is the world, or even my own life improved by my saving half an hour on the Dublin-Galway road?

There is an old Irish saying: 'Life is a sigh between two mysteries'. The journey from the womb to the tomb is a short one, regardless of the years we live. Time is a precious commodity. The poet said that the innocent and the beautiful have no enemies but time. Time challenges all of us, irrespective of our innocence or our beauty.

There are things money cannot buy but time can achieve. According to the Book of Wisdom, if we take time we will find wisdom sitting outside our doors. Other things bought by time, not by money, are another person's respect and trust, and a clear conscience. We pay for each in installments, by the way we use our time. What took years to build up can be torn down in a few careless minutes. When we abuse time, we risk serious damage to our happiness.

It has been said that we die clutching in our hands only that which we have given away in our lifetime. This will be especially true of the way we use time. How we experience it as it ebbs from us will be coloured very much by the way we used it when we had plenty of it. In this sense, time is full of eternity. There are echoes here of what Jesus said about losing our life to find it.

Some years ago, there was great excitement when Telecom introduced its new phone charges. If we are to believe the letters to the newspapers, old egg timers were resurrected and pressed into service once more. For a short while, the whole nation was conscious of time. Sadly, the love affair with the egg-timer ended all too quickly. And the loss is ours. Because the egg timer is the most effective illustration we have of the ebb and flow of time. Time literally runs out before our eyes. But the more conscious we become of this, the more we will treasure time as a gift.

New Year's History

The Babylonians celebrated New Year's Day at the Spring equinox. Our New Year's Day has no such astronomical link. In 153 BC, the Roman Senate declared January 1 to be the beginning of the new year. The early Catholic Church condemned the festivities as paganism. But as Christianity became more widespread, the early church began having its own religious observances concurrently with many of the pagan celebrations, and New Year's Day was no different.

New Years is now observed in the Catholic Church as the Feast of the Mother of God. During the Middle Ages, the Church opposed celebrating this day. January 1 has been celebrated as a holiday by Western nations for only about the past 400 years.

A New Year's Plea

Lord, let me stand in the thick of the fight,
Let me bear what I must without whining;
Grant me the wisdom to do what is right,
Though a thousand false beacons are shining.

Let me be true as the steel of a blade,
Make me bigger than skillful or clever;
Teach me to cling to my best, unafraid,
And harken to false gospels, never.

Let me be brave when the burden is great,
Faithful when wounded by sorrow;
Teach me, when troubled, with patience to wait
The better and brighter to-morrow.

Spare me from hatred and envy and shame,
Open my eyes to life's beauty;
Let not the glitter of fortune or fame
Blind me to what is my duty.

Let me be true to myself to the end,
Let me stand to my task without whining;
Let me be right as a man, as a friend,
Though a thousand false beacons are shining.

-By Edgar Guest (1881-1959)

Valid HTML 4.01 Strict