New Year…New Life!

For time immemorial, the arrival of a NEW YEAR has served as a catalyst for our renewed commitment to fulfill unfulfilled resolutions and to realize our unrealized hopes and dreams. This annual cycle of reflection and optimism is an engine of personal, family, and social history. 

The arrival of a NEW YEAR is like a balm, an oasis in the hustle and bustle of personal and social stories. It is an opportunity to pause and evaluate, reconsider, strategize, and redirect the path of one’s life with new fervor, insight, and motivation. 

Clearly, our view of history is not a fatalistic one predicated on a belief that human history is an inevitable succession of events that are recycled and repeated because nothing changes and everything -- as in a whirlwind, as in a whirlpool -- cyclically and spirally returns to the beginning. 

No. Our view of history -- heir to the philosophical conception of Heraclitus of Greece -- is one in which, as the philosopher himself said, "Nobody bathes twice in the same waters of the same river." In other words, we understand history as a succession of events that, linearly, reflect the unforeseeable decisions of human beings who, with their intelligence and freedom, shape and determine their personal history as well as that of their communities, organizations, institutions, and society at large. 

The fate of humanity, then, is not determined by hidden forces (the gods or the stars) that manipulate and control the course of events to an irremediable and immutable destiny – fatal and pre-determined. The story of every human being is constructed, freely and intelligently, in our daily decisions, in the anonymity and silence of our smallest tasks as well as in the grander narratives of our lives, be they noble or petty, generous or selfish, personal or civic. 

Our view of history is neither naively optimistic nor fatally pessimistic. It is true there are many reasons for confusion, sadness, and pessimism in the form of inequalities, inequities, and injustice, in the hunger and misery of so many in stark contrast to the abundance of the few. These shortcomings are evidence of a world in which human beings have not achieved solidarity, equality, trust, compassion, or even developed ways of relating to one other to envision the world as a great fraternal table in which each one of us has a seat. 

And yet, it is the hope of a better world that gives us strength, sustains us, and pushes us every day into our daily lives and being. We are men and women who live in the hope of a better tomorrow; it is this hope that marks our present. The belief in a better humanity refuses to die. 

Faced with reasons for pessimism and sadness, we need optimism to build a better world, a better society, better families, and better personal stories through our decisions both big and small, with our activities and daily tasks, starting with better values and better ways of interacting with each other. 

Inspired by a CELAM Document from the year 2000, For the Construction of the Civilization of Love, I propose that we start 2018 by saying NO to individualism, to consumerism, to the absolutizing of pleasure, to intolerance and injustice, to discrimination and marginalization, to corruption, and to all forms of violence. 

Instead, I invite you to say YES, with your words and in your deeds, with your attitudes and behaviors, to all forms of life, to love as a human vocation, to solidarity and to freedom, to truth and to dialogue, to participation and integration, to the permanent construction of peace and to respect for others, for differences, for cultures, and for the environment.

I invite you, at the beginning of this NEW YEAR, to prioritize human life over any other value or interest, to give primacy to the person over material things, to give priority to ethics over technique, to the testimony of life over discourses and doctrines, to service over power, to the worker over the job, the company or the capital, to the transcendent over all attempts to absolutize the here and now of the human being. 

I invite you to build a New Year that is NEW for the NOVELTY of our lives. There is much we have done, but much more we need to do to build hope in the midst of the despair that challenges us daily.

HAPPY NEW YEAR - NEW YEAR, NEW LIFE!

Those whose lives we cannot ignore...

There are men and women whose lives mark -- for the good of all -- the history of humanity. There are men and women whose lives set a standard for every person's life. Men and women who, through their words and in their deeds, leave a legacy of good, who improve the lives of everyone on Earth; among them are Gandhi, Francis of Assisi, Paul of Tarsus, Martin Luther King, Theresa of Calcutta, Nelson Mandela, Einstein, Da Vinci, Aristotle, Marie Curie, Diana of Wales, Einstein, Muhammad, Buddha, Gutenberg, Confucius, Qin Shi Huang, Tsai Lun. JESUS OF NAZARETH is counted among them.

In December, Christians around the world celebrate the CHRISTMAS feast, the Nativity or the Birth of Jesus of Nazareth. This celebration does not correspond with an exact historical and chronological date. Christians, for whom Jesus of Nazareth is acknowledged to be the Light of the World (Jn 8:12), sought to make the birth of Jesus of Nazareth coincide with the feast of the Sun God in the Roman Empire, which today corresponds with our Christmas holidays.

About 2,017 years ago, Jesus of Nazareth was born in Palestine, which was inhabited by the People of Israel of the Old Testament and a colony of the Roman Empire in the time of Emperor Augustus. Most certainly, Jesus was born in a small village called Bethlehem (Mt 2:1ff) in a manger, about two hours away on foot from the capital, Jerusalem. His parents were named Joseph and Mary. Jesus grew up in Nazareth as a person among his people, as a son, a carpenter, a neighbor.

When he was about 30 years old, Jesus took to the roads and immersed himself with the peoples of his land (Galilee, Judea ...) to preach (Mt 4:23) the Good News that all men and women are children of God, who is the Creator and FATHER in heaven, and who is good, compassionate, and merciful. He preached that we are all BROTHERS, CHILDREN of the same Father, called to live in LOVE, as the only form of relationship between people and as the only mandate for those who, henceforth, would be called his disciples. He preached a commandment of LOVE (Jn 13:34) among human beings that emanates from the recognition of God’s LOVE for us that is concretized, especially in truth, in forgiveness and in the service of one another. He preached life in LOVE that makes us better human beings and that makes the experience of living and coexisting in society and in the world better and more livable.

He joined together with some friends, fishermen like him. People -- especially the simple, the impoverished, the marginalized, the known sinners -- followed him because they admired his "authority" (Lk 4:36), that is, the consistency in the way he lived and what he preached, between his words and his deeds, in contrast to the hypocrisy of others. Living in the love of God, whom he confidently called "Abba," or "Father" (Lk 11:2), he consoled, healed, and liberated. Those who approached him found in him "a force," that of the love of God himself, which gave them "life in abundance" (Jn 10:10).

Jesus lived his life doing good (Ac 10:38), as a man faithful to the Father and faithful to the human condition. He was a free man who, in defiance of the laws of his time, preached mercy and justice; who, facing the ostensible worship of God that neglects the human being (Lk 10:35), opted for love and the worship of God in his brother, especially in the most needy. He was a man free from ambition and greed, (Lk 12:15) free from fear (Mt 10:28) and public opinion, free from hatred and resentment, free from attachment to riches (Mt 6:24) and free from adulation (Lk 13:32) to the powerful.

Accordingly, he was killed by hanging from a cross (Jn 5:18). After his death, his first disciples, beginning with a transformative experience through which they proclaimed themselves new men and women living the same life that the Master himself had lived and preached, confessed the Risen and Living Jesus (Mt 28:6) in the midst of the Christian community and Christian life, of every Christian.

For Christians, the life of Jesus -- through love -- reveals the face of God, for "he who has seen him has seen the Father" (Jn 14:9). For 20 centuries, the Son of God has been confessed. Indeed, not a day passes in which names, events, or acts are unrelated to the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth. His impact is of such magnitude in the story of humanity that history is divided into years and centuries before and after Christ.

For all this, we Christians are preparing to celebrate, once again, the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the one to whom we confess our "Way, Truth and Life" (Jn 14:6). This is a celebration that, despite an infinity of extraneous manifestations – decorations, lights, trees, cards, gifts -- must be lived, above all, within (Mt 6:6) every human being who recognizes God as Father, who recognizes himself as a child of God, who is capable of recognizing everyone as brothers, who seeks to live according to the plan that God has for every man and woman who comes into this world.

This is God's plan, a plan that Jesus of Nazareth designed and continues to design with his life and gospel: a new style of man and woman capable of living in the love of God given and provided to all in a life lived as a gift (Mt 10:39) and in service to others, especially those most in need of God's love in the world, so that it is always CHRISTMAS.