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January 1, 2025We gather this evening around the altar, celebrating on the last day of the octave of Christmas, the solemnity of Mary Mother of God, thanking the Lord for the gift of the past year and asking for blessings in the new year. This year will be particularly intense as it is the Jubilee Year of the Lord, a year in which we are called to be pilgrims of hope.
First of all, let us thank the Lord for what we have experienced this year in our families, in our communities, in our churches. Each of us has to recall the events that have given us joy and consolation; events in which we have felt the closeness of God. Let us thank God for all those encounters through which we have been able to grow spiritually. At the same time, let us sincerely ask for forgiveness for our faults. May God's mercy renew us profoundly in our hearts and in our lives. May the Jubilee of the Lord be an auspicious occasion to experience God's forgiveness and the conversion of hearts.
The end of a year and the beginning of a new year pushes us to reflect on the meaning of time. Time is a mysterious reality. Saint Augustine, the great father of the Church, said in his book of Confessions that if you do not ask me what time is, I think I know what it is, but if you ask me about it, then I realize I do not know.
Let us look at this fact: the past is no longer there, the future is not yet here, and the present cannot be held, it is passing. But the past remains in our memory and recollection, the future is anticipated in us in the expectation and hope of the fullness that satisfies the desire we have in our hearts. Time is therefore mysterious for humans, it needs an ultimate meaning, a goal. Only God can give meaning to time.
Saint Paul in his letter to the Galatians answers this enigma and speaks of time starting from its fullness; the incarnation of the Son of God who is born of a woman, Mary. In this way the apostle makes us understand that the decisive time is not the chronological one, the one indicated by the clock where the moments follow one another equally and indifferently. The true time, the one significant for us is the one linked to the events that mark our personal history and that of humanity.
Chronological time ultimately makes us slaves; the fullness of time, that is in Jesus, Emmanuel, God among us, makes us free. Jesus teaches us that the meaning of time is the gift, it is love. He is the fullness of time because he is the fullness of the gift of God to us. Therefore, St. Paul invites us to pass from being slaves, crushed by the weight of passing time because time is never enough, we lose time, to being children and heirs, who is, capable of receiving the gift of God and making it bear fruit in us for eternity.
Dearest people, time is given to us by God to receive his gift, to welcome it and to give it to others in return. The meaning of time is love, to love and be loved. The gift of God in us makes us participants from now on, in eternal life, that which time cannot consume. Without love, time remains incomprehensible; life remains without meaning.
Therefore, it is so significant that the Church begins a new year celebrating the divine motherhood of Mary, the birth of the Son of God in time: in this way we too are invited to be reborn to the life of the children of God.
Finally, it is equally significant that the Church celebrates the world day of peace on the first day of the year under the protection of the Virgin Mother. We know very well the great need for peace the entire world has, torn apart by wars.
In the context of the Jubilee of Hope, Pope Francis has chosen the theme for this day: Forgive us our trespasses: grant us your peace. In this way, the Holy Father reminds us that we are all debtors before God, we all need forgiveness and mercy. If every human person is aware of this, there would be less arrogance in the world, and we would learn to forgive one another.
Pope Francis reminds us that: “The cultural and structural change needed to surmount this crisis will come about when we finally recognize that we are all sons and daughters of the one Father, that we are all in his debt but also that we need one another, in a spirit of shared and diversified responsibility. We will be able to “rediscover once for all that we need one another” and are indebted to one another.”
Dear Brothers and Sisters, let us therefore pray for peace and that the mercy of God prevail in our hearts; let us learn to treat everyone as brothers and sisters because we are all children of God.
May the Mother of God, mother of every new beginning, accompany us during this new year so that it may be a year in which we experience reconciliation with God and among people, beginning with our hearts, our families and our communities.
