New Year's Eve and a New Missionary Age of Christianity

Happy New Year! 2015 will be a profound and prophetic year.

We all want to be better, to live our lives more fully - and to love one another more selflessly. As we end one year and look to a new one, we pause to take inventory. In a rare moment of reflection and honest self-assessment, we admit our failures. We pledge to learn from them and move toward a better future.  We want to begin again. Every New Year I read articles about the efficacy of New Year's Resolutions. However, the fact remains, we all make them. The experience is universal. The question is why? I suggest that they reveal something of our deepest longing. They also present us with an invitation to exercise our human freedom. They are an invitation to turn to the One who alone can make us new - Jesus Christ. Whether we realize it or not.  

CHESAPEAKE, VA (Catholic Online) - One of the constant themes in my writings is that we are in a new missionary age of Christianity. Anyone who has studied Church history knows that a part of past missionary ages has been taking a faith informed approach to culture.

Christian missionaries have entered into cultures which had never heard the fullness of the Gospel as offered by the Church - or had fallen away from the ancient but ever new Christian faith - always on the lookout. They looked for natural patterns in the way of life which contained opportunities for their missionary work of bringing transformation and conversion.

Sadly, some Christians, mostly from communities beside the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, and perhaps because they have not read history, still pass on the notion that some Christian celebrations, or their dates, are pagan in origin - as if that were a bad thing.

In fact, the Christians recognized the value of taking some celebrations, those which could be re-cast or "baptized" with Christian significance, and using them for the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For example, no-one actually believes that Jesus was born on December 25th.

They also recognized that the seeds of the Gospel are present in every culture, because all men and women are called to the fullness of a relationship with God in and through Jesus Christ. He has already planted within them a hunger for Himself.

I regularly suggest in some of my talks on the road that we would all be better off if we pretended we awakened this morning in the United States as Christians. Then we should honestly assess the terrain and get to work as missionaries, called to re-Christianize the West.

The Lord who birthed the Church from His wounded side on Golgotha's Hill, has been raised from the dead! He has poured out His Spirit on His Church. He now walks with our feet. He issues His invitation to all men and women through our lips and the witness of our lives.

We are in a New Missionary Age. We are the missionaries. New Years Eve is precisely the kind of "secular" celebration we should seize in our missionary work in the United States and the West. We should make it a Christian Holiday - of sorts!

Oh, I know some of our fellow countrymen and women celebrate it in a manner which we must reject. But, we must not reject the people! We are called to help them find the Lord. He is the One who can help them begin again. He is the One who will bring them the happiness and human flourishing for which they long.  

On New Year's Eve, people review their lives and recall where they have failed, with remorse. It is a form of examination of conscience, and the stirring of what can become genuine repentance. They make resolutions, which they sincerely hope to fulfill. A seed of longing to be born anew.

Yet, we all know, that human will alone cannot overcome that which impedes our progress and our change. We need a Savior! The Good News is that God the Father sent One! And He knocks on the door of every human heart. (see, Revelation 3:20)

The great Christian writer GK Chesterton once wrote: "The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions.

"Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards. Unless a man be born again, he shall by no means enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."

We all want to be better, to live our lives more fully - and to love one another more selflessly. As we end one year and look to a new one, we pause to take inventory. In a rare moment of reflection and honest self-assessment, we admit our failures. We pledge to learn from them and move toward a better future. 

We want to begin again.

With the differing time zones, the celebrations are staggered around the globe as we welcome the end of one calendar year and the beginning of a new one. The manner of celebrating may differ, but we all have a common hope, the desire to start over, to begin again.

Every New Year I read articles about the efficacy of New Year's Resolutions. However, the fact remains, we all make them. The experience is universal. The question is why? I suggest that they reveal something of our deepest longing. They also present us with an invitation to exercise our human freedom. They are an invitation to turn to the One who alone can make us new - Jesus Christ. Whether we realize it or not.  

Nations use different calendars, but the passing of one year to the next is universally marked by a deliberate period of reflection concerning the year that passed and a pledge to begin anew, to change, in the year to come. This is because we all hunger to be made new!

In Little Gidding, the last of the four quartets written by T.S. Elliot, we find these often quoted words:

"Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.  For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice.What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning."

Over the years I have realized that every end truly can become a beginning, for the man or woman who has faith in a living God who invites us to begin again, again and again.

He alone makes it possible by sharing His very Life with us. This gift is called grace and through receiving it we become what the Apostle Peter called "Partakers of the Divine Nature.(2 Peter 1:4)

As we repent for the failures of the past year, reflect on the gifts it brought with gratitude to God, and resolve to do better in the coming year, we are facing the reality of our human condition and our fractured freedom.

We know that our resolutions to change often end in failure. We are prone to making wrong choices in daily life. Classical western theology speaks of this inclination as concupiscence.

The Apostle Paul wrote about this experience to the early Christians in Rome in the seventh chapter of his letter:

"For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want. Now if (I) do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me... Miserable one that I am! Who will deliver me from this mortal body Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Fortunately he answered the question when a few lines later he proclaimed, "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ!" Our human freedom is a reflection of the Image of God within us. Our ability to always choose what is true and good was fractured by the effects of the first sin.

Through the Incarnation, the saving Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus, we are invited by grace to live our lives differently. It is possible, not of our own human effort, but by giving our lives to the Lord! Freedom itself can be set free, by the One who brings true freedom, Jesus Christ. 

Jesus can make all things new within us - and continue His work of making all things new through us. Even though our human freedom is fractured by sin, the splint of the Cross is a real, lasting and life changing remedy.

On the first day of the New Year Catholic Christians celebrate the Feast of the Solemnity of the Mother of God. This phrase, used to refer to Mary of the Lord, is no Catholic invention. It arose out of the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D. This was a Council held by the undivided church of the first millennium. The term is Christological - it defended the truth that Jesus is truly God and truly man.

This celebration is no liturgical accident. She who beheld the face of the Savior invites us to hear these words of Jesus Christ, "Behold I make all things new!" (Rev. 21:5) Jesus alone can fulfill the desire at the heart of the New Year's celebration, and help us, through  His saving grace, to make them become reality.

Mary is, in a spiritual sense,the Mother of the New Creation because the One whom she held in her womb is the One who makes all things new! He is the first born of a New Creation, and all of those who say Yes to Him, follow in Him. (Col. 1:15)

I am more grateful every year for the opportunity to attend Holy Mass on New Year's Day and celebrate the Feast of the Mother of God. Mary is the first disciple, the prototype, the symbol of the whole Church.

We who are members of the Church, the Body of her Son, are invited to emulate her Yes to the invitation of God and make it our own. We are to make a place for Him within us and become bearers of Christ to the world. For He alone can make us new.  

Millions will utter sincere words on New Years Eve, promising to do better. Lists will be compiled - and promises made - to oneself, to others and to God.

Sadly, many will not be kept.

These words attributed to Mark Twain too often ring true "New Year's Day - now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual."

When I was a young man, I would write my New Years goal list first and then, in a fit of self-generated enthusiasm, ask the Lord to bless it! I know better now. I need the light of the Holy Spirit to even comprehend what is needed if I ever hope to change.

I now pray first and then, my list has become increasingly simple. Mary's Fiat (a Latin word for let it be done) has become my prayer. I seek to make it the pattern of my life. The full phrase opens the door to beginning again and again and again, "let it be it done unto me according to your word." (Luke 1:38)

I pray that in the Year of Our Lord, 2015, we may all find the fullness of grace which comes through a living relationship with the One who makes all things new (Rev 21:5), Jesus Christ.  There is a universal longing in every human heart to be made new, to begin again, because the Holy Spirit prompts it in every human heart.

In and through Jesus Christ, there is a path to being made new. That promise is at the heart of the Gospel, the Good News! St. Paul reminded the Christians in the City of Corinth - and reminds every one of us- "whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come." (2 Cor. 5:17)

New Years Eve is a global existential moment, ripe with anticipation and expectations. It invites a spiritually cathartic time of reflection, offers us hope for change and invites us to make new choices. Resolutions can become reality, when we turn to the One who makes it possible, the One who truly makes all things new, the Lord Jesus Christ.

In reality, our choices will make us. In our choosing we not only have the potential to change the world around us, we change ourselves. Let us choose in 2015 to live our lives in, with and for Jesus Christ. That is the way we can turn those resolutions into reality. Let us also say "yes" to the Lords call to be missionaries.

St Josemaria Escriva once wrote:

"For a son of God each day should be an opportunity for renewal, knowing for sure that with the help of grace he will reach the end of the road, which is Love. That is why if you begin and begin again, you are doing well. If you have a will to win, if you struggle, then with God's help you will conquer. There will be no difficulty you cannot overcome.' (The Forge, 344)

Happy New Year! 2015 will be a profound and prophetic year. Much will be shaken, in the Church and in the culture. But the unshakeable will be revealed. (Hebrews 12:18-29) All who bear the name Christian are invited to be missionaries to a world waiting to be born again.

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Deacon Keith A. Fournier is Founder and Chairman of Common Good Foundation and Common Good Alliance. A married Roman Catholic Deacon of the Diocese of Richmond, Virginia, he and his wife Laurine have five grown children and six grandchildren, He serves as the Director of Adult Faith Formation at St. Stephen, Martyr Parish in Chesapeake, VA. He is also a human rights lawyer and public policy advocate who served as the first and founding Executive Director of the American Center for Law and Justice in the nineteen nineties. He has long been active at the intersection of faith and culture and currently serves as Special Counsel to Liberty Counsel. He is also the Editor in Chief of Catholic Online.

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