“The angel said to Mary, ‘Don’t be afraid, Mary: God has been gracious to you.”—Luke 1: 30-32, 38.
Beloved in Christ:
May this New Year be the happiest year of your life. May you find fulfilment and Peace this Year. May God grant you the graces you need in co-operating with God this year in realizing God’s beautiful dream and will for your life in 2022.
Every New Year, the Church presents to us the mother of God as a model of how to receive God with open heart and how to co-operate with God in bringing about God’s dream for us and for others. Mary shows us that God can use each and every one of us to do great things in the world. Mary shows us how we can use God’s gift to serve others. She received Jesus, and did not keep Jesus to herself, but shared her Son with the world. May you allow God to use you to do great things in the world this year. May you have the spirit of sharing only what is good and loving with others this year.
May God grant you the grace this year to make the simple positive choices that will bring God’s will to fulfilment in your life by saying ‘yes’ to God, and saying ‘yes’ to love and ‘no’ to despair, negativities and discouragement. May you trust God completely this year as Mary did even when you do not see the future with some clarity because through faith, we know who it is that is calling us into the future and the One who holds us strong.
God quietly and humbly entered the womb of Mary. Does it not seem foolish for God to depend completely on an ordinary human being in order to bring about God’s plan in history? This is the “foolishness of God” who uses ordinary things to bring about extraordinary reality.
May you experience the miracle this year of being used in spite of yourself by God. May God ‘embarrass and surprise’ you with some breakthroughs this year as you hold on to God, working hard every day and being at your duty post, on your own lane, while giving life your best shot this year.
Like Mary, be open and docile to God’s action this year; listen attentively to hear when God speaks; have the ‘mysticism of open eyes’ to see God’s action in your life, and to see the action of God in the lives of others, and to behold our naked humanity in the sickness, poverty, death, sufferings and pains of others.
May you recommit yourself to dreaming big and acting boldly with the courage of faith to bring this world with all its current complexities and ambiguities to conform to God’s plan for peace, love, justice, prosperity, and abundant life for all.
May you take all things to God in prayer this year. May your prayer offered in faith and humility with a broken heart, be heard by the Lord. I will be praying for you and I ask you to pray for me too as we hold each other’s hand and walk in the light of Christ to a better tomorrow, Amen. Please, always count me as loving you.
Your Servant in the Lord, Stan Chu Ilo.
