Happy New Year!!!

I spent some of today and will continue tomorrow reading through my journals from this year --- so much change, growth, and healing that it is hard to believe.  But then, the grace of God is always hard to believe --- even as (whenever it is experienced) it is impossible to doubt. I love paradoxes like this!! God is just SO good!!! The fruitfulness of grace is especially realized in many small steps of faithfulness. So, I look back at a year of hard and fruitful work even as I look forward to another one of the same. The needs of our parishes, communities, neighborhoods, and country cry out for the grace of God. Each of us is meant to be a temple of that grace, that active presence, and our hearts are meant to bring the newness of eternity into the fragility and temporality of our world. This is the vocation of every person, no matter their state of life, nor their age or station. 

We Christians believe that because (he) is eternal and living our God is the ground and source of genuine newness (kainetes). We believe that he is a God who transfigures all of reality into something hope-filled and meaningful with (his) presence. We believe that in Christ we can and are called to cooperate with God in his creative and redemptive activity as he brings about a world where heaven and earth profoundly interpenetrate one another, and where one day God will be all in all. On this holiday, as so many make lists of goals and resolutions for the New Year, may each of us look to the God who is source of all blessings, and recommit ourselves to a time in which God's own projects in us and in all we know, and love may be brought to fulfillment. May God respond to our deepest needs with a presence that transforms all need into blessing! 

That is my prayer for each and all of us. All good wishes for a wonderful year!