Homily for New Year: January 1, 2022

 by Sister Rebecca

 

     Today: Another New Year.  We greet each other:  Happy New Year!  And we truly mean it: May it be a good year for you.  Last year at this time we thought: Oh! Finally 2021—a good year!  Then, the vaccinations were promised, and we could hope to get back to normal living.  Well, by now we are pretty much aware that there is no going back to a ”past normal.” We are facing the reality of the unknown future on numerous scores.  Doesn’t this sound to us like bad news?  Here I will share a story I heard from a Jesuit priest many years ago:

Good Luck? Bad Luck? Who Knows?

There once was a simple farmer who lived and struggled alongside his neighbors and friends, trying to exist and fulfil a peaceful life. One day news arrived, from far away, that his old loving father had died. His neighbors gathered to grieve, but the farmer simply said, “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?"

In time relatives brought a very fine horse of great cost and fine breeding, left to the farmer by his father. All the villagers and neighbors gathered in delight with him to celebrate his good fortune, but he just said, "Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?”

One day the horse escaped into the hills, and when all the farmer’s neighbors sympathized with the old man over his bad luck, the farmer replied, “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?”

A week later the horse returned with a herd of wild horses from the hills, and this time the neighbors congratulated the farmer on his good luck. His reply was “Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?”

Then, when the farmer’s son was attempting to tame one of the wild horses, he fell off its back and broke his leg. Everyone thought this was very bad luck. Not the farmer, whose only reaction was “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?”

Some weeks later the army marched into the village and conscripted every able-bodied youth they found there. When they saw the farmer’s son with his broken leg they let him off. Now was that good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?

 

In some way, to judge, label, and categorize the year as either good or bad is to fragment reality.

 

This is not to say that some aspects of one year or another are not more challenging than others, not as fulfilling as another year, more happy or less happy.  The story doesn’t tell us to be passive, to say “I give up” and just roll with the dice. Rather, it means we must trust the mystery of life more than our assessment of life by thinking and analyzing.  God reveals to us that our life is neither found IN nor determined BY its circumstances, but IN and BY Jesus Christ, God with us: Jesus, the one whose name means “God saves.”  How does God save? By inviting us, challenging us, calling us to a metamorphosis, to transformation. And when God “calls,” “invites,” the call and the invitation include a promise.

A good metaphor is that of the butterfly, which is formed within a dark cocoon, like a cave, a grotto, but totally closed!  Nothing seems to be happening.  All is dark, but new life is being formed untampered by human hands.  Likewise, it is in these dark times—all the while cutting back on all that fragments us and distracts us, spending more time in silence, and solitude, and contemplation—when our covenant in God grows deeper, more luminous.  We are not destined to be like cocoons shrouded in the dark, at the mercy of dismal forces of nature.  Rather, we are meant to be transformed, our consciousness awakened, enlivened, to see luminosity within these somber times. We let God BE, allowing God’s Spirit to transform us into who we are meant to be. We call this theosis: becoming God-like. St John of the Cross said, after a life of many hardships and graces, “I have no other light than the one shining in my heart.”

On this New Year’s Day, let us pause before the coming days give rise to new challenges and deep joys. May we soak in the rich poetic lines below, for the lean days will one day sprout wings.

 

For a New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

~ John O'Donohue
From: To Bless the Space Between Us