Rev. Fr. (Dr.) Osmond Anike

Readings:

First Reading: Numbers 6:22-27 – They are to call down my name on the sons of Israel, and I will bless them

Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 66(67):2-3,5,6,8 – O God, be gracious and bless us

Second Reading: Galatians 4:4-7 – God sent his Son, born of a woman.

Gospel: Luke 2:16-21 – The shepherds hurried to Bethlehem and found the baby lying in the manger.

January 1 is celebrated as “New Year’s Day” (or simply, “New Year Day). It is the first day of the year on the modern Gregorian calendar as well as the Julian calendar. In pre-Christian Rome under the Julian calendar, the day was dedicated to Janus, the god of gateways and beginnings, for whom January is also named. As a child, I was fascinated with New Year Day. I used to have very curious expectations of that day. I expected an unusual and somehow mysterious day when there would be anomalies in the sky and when everything as one knew it would change. I was even expecting that people would change to the extent that one would not even recognize oneself. To heighten my expectation was the usual midnight cross-over held to drive away the old year and welcome the new one. In the part of the world where I grew up, it was traditional, during that epoch, that people didn’t eat leftovers from the previous night of December 31^st because, they jokingly said that the food was already one year old and therefore not healthy for consumption. They preferred to begin the New Year with freshly-cooked food. All this combined to continue to fuel my expectations for the New Year in the form of metaphysical hallucinations of a child.

Each year, however, I was monumentally disappointed to realize that nothing apparently changed. Because I was very little then, my parents did not allow me to go out for the “ushering in” of the New Year. As a matter of fact, by midnight I was already fast asleep. Then one year it occurred to me that probably the metaphysical changes I was always expecting happen at midnight; otherwise, why was it that people continued to talk about “New” year. Something new must be happening at midnight, and there was only one way to find out: stay awake. This was what I did that year as I kept on drifting from waking state to sleeping state until midnight. At midnight, I ran out of our house with the expectation of seeing the “new” things in the sky and the environment. But everything was the same. I came inside to look at myself in the mirror, and I didn’t notice any change either. It was after that year, and, having exhausted my “investigations”, that I concluded that there was nothing like “new” year because everything was the same.

Now, having grown to full maturity with all my learning, and beyond my childhood hallucination, a very pertinent question still persists: What is “new” in the year? Perhaps it will not be out of place to go back in time and revisit Heraclitus – the ancient Greek philosopher – who was famous for his insistence on ever-present change known in philosophy as “flux” or “becoming”. He said that “everything flows” (panta rhei); and because everything is in a state of flux, “no man ever steps in the same river twice”. Heraclitus expressed this idea of flux by saying that the sun is new every day, rather than thinking the same sun will rise tomorrow. It must be noted that Philosophy has since moved beyond Heraclitus. But if there is anything we can learn from him, it is this: January 1 is called “New Year day” in order to show that every day is new. If we can alter our manner of looking, we will discover that everything is new (and beautiful). The reason we fail to discover the newness and the beauty in creation is because our familiarity with things make us loose interest. It is said that too much familiarity breeds contempt; and again, that monotony kills interest. If we focus intensely on people and things we are familiar with, we will discover novelty in them. To achieve this, we need to zero in on individuals. Because we are accustomed to multitude, we often fail to see individuals in their uniqueness. Today, instead of making “new year resolutions” which we hardly ever keep, why not spend the rest of the day discovering what is new in what you are accustomed to (your environment, your wife, husband, children, parents, colleagues, friends, enemies, etc.). Treat each day as a new day and you will enjoy a happy new year.

Another way to look at the New Year is to think about the Roman god, Janus, to whom the month of January is named after. Janus is an appropriate personification of the start of the New Year. And one special feature of this god is that he is two-faced. He has a face looking to the past and a face looking to the future at the same time. He thus became the symbol of New Year’s Day where we look at the past and give thanks for it, and at the same time, we look at the future and gather our hopes for it. Today, as we get rid of the old year and look forward to the new one, we need to reflect and think about what the past year that just ended brought, and what the new year ahead of us could bring. In this way, we become little Janus.

January 1 is not only a New Year Day; it is also a Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, as well as a celebration of the World Day of Peace. From some of her qualities which we highlighted on the Feast of the Holy Family, it is obvious that Mary is also a model of peace. Peace is one thing that can save the world. But it has continued to elude us probably because the world has been searching for peace the wrong way. We think that peace can be achieved when we subjugate all our enemies and opponents, or when we confiscate all the wealth of the world, or when we get the entire world to do our bidding, etc. Despite channelling our efforts to achieve peace by means of crazy stuff like these, the world has woefully failed to attain peace. Curiously, two unlikely personalities gave us two related formula for achieving peace decades ago, but the world has not listened. First was Bob Marley who proposed that, “Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, there is going to war everywhere”. Then Peter Tosh followed it up by lambasting our superficial search for peace: “Everyone is crying out for peace, but no one is crying out for justice. But there cannot be peace until there is equal right and justice”.

If only the world can alter our manner of “searching for peace” and begin to appreciate the newness and uniqueness in every individual and in every nation, tribe and race, then the prayer of peace uttered in the first reading will indeed become realized in our world of today: “May the Lord bless and keep you. May the Lord let his face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord uncover his face to you and bring you peace”. This is our prayer for all of us as we begin this year 2021. Happy New Year!