Tuesday of Christmas Octave
1 John 2: 18 – 21; Ps 96; John 1: 1 – 18
At midnight tonight we end one year and begin another yet there is no abrupt end nor an abrupt beginning as far as our personal lives go. Rather there is a continuing; we pass into 2020 with our story of salvation, with its triumphs of grace and with its unredeemed urges seeking God’s redeeming love. By God desire for us, each one of us, we seek to grow more and more into the divine mystery that St. John proclaims with the mysterious phrase “In the beginning…”
In his profound and captivating proclamation of the Incarnation of the Lord and of the mission of John the Baptist, in the very center of the Gospel, St. John remembers us and speaks of the mystery of our own lives of divine election.
“But to those who did accept Him, He gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by man’s decision, but of God.” These last two words underline clearly what we carry in our hearts into the New Year. We are of God because He gifts us – not once and done – rather continually, faithfully, lovingly.
Into the new year of 2020 we carry within things that are unique to each of us and surely, we all carry a heart of gratitude, of deep thankfulness that our God blesses us so abundantly – not because of any merit, not by way of reward – rather because of His lavish mercy, His infinite goodness which was from “the beginning.”
Perhaps we might pray, “Lord, I praise and thank you with my lips but more so with my whole life. Make this growing gratitude evident in the charity of my life because You are love and I am of You.”
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