1st January, 2007 - Feast of Mary the Mother of God

It is a really nice thing to do to start the year with Mass….  in this mass… we offer all the joys and sorrows of last year to God, and we also stand at the start of a new year… and through the intercession of Mary, the first and most perfect disciple of Jesus, we offer this new year to God…… 

we ask that God will bless us and all we meet this year….   we offer up our work and our selves in this new year… and ask God to make use of our humble offering to help bring God’s Kingdom ever more to birth amongst us….

 

it is a good thing for us to make new years resolutions, knowing that only with God’s grace and guidance can these resolutions bear much fruit…

At the start of 2008 we wish each other and the whole world a Happy New year and we pray that 2008 will be a year filled with grace and happiness and peace….   and when we speak of a happy new year..  we know that God’s idea of happiness is a fresh and challenging one… it is this TRUE happiness we are really seeking….  it is God’s idea of happiness that we desire……

“look at Mary and Joseph kneeling before the manger. They must be tired. They have traveled 75 miles or so from Nazareth to Bethlehem on foot and on the jolting back of a donkey. They must be very hungry. They haven’t had a real meal since they left Nazareth some 3 days ago. They must be cold in this damp cave in the midst of winter. It must have been very humiliating for them to discover no room among their relatives in their ancestral home or at the village Inn.

Yet in the midst of all of this, Mary and Joseph are the happiest people to walk the face of this earth. Here in Bethlehem they are teaching us the amazing paradox that it is only when we lose ourselves in the love and service of Jesus do we find happiness. Happiness that this world can never give and no one can take from us. But how can we lose ourselves in the love and service of Jesus? Jesus has made it very simple, “Whatever you do for one of these least brethren you do for me.”

So on this first day of the New Year let us ask for the grace to know Jesus more intimately, love him more and more fully… and follow him more closely” ((quote from Fr Rodney Kissinger, S.J.)

so that this may be a truly Happy New Year according to God’s vision for the world.