There is an eschatological note to this final day of the calendar year, as there was a month ago in the end of the liturgical year with Christ the King, and the beginning of Advent. In the first reading this morning, the Apostle John warns of Antichrist, and that already many antichrists have come, whose spirit may be recognized primarily, as the Apostle warns elsewhere, in the denial of Christ’s Incarnation – see, Arianism, and Islam today. We may extend this. to include opposition to the Church, the sacraments, to the truth of the end and purpose of Man. As the Catechism puts it, the antichrist will preach a ‘secular messianism’, a salvation in this world alone, that our happiness and security are to be found in the hic et nunc, the here and now – in fact, ‘stay safe’ might be his motto. Hence, radical environmentalism and ‘population control’ – becoming more bizarre and cult-like, bitter fruits of the socialism, and communism, and the moral disorders of hedonism, selfism, relativism, transgenderism, with an easy euthanasia when it all becomes too much and the inevitable suffering becomes ‘intolerable’.
Catholics are full of hope, but not in this world. Our true hope, as Pope Benedict points out in his encyclical Spe Salvi, is in heaven. So we take all things from the hand of God, whose providence brings good out of all. So we Christians live in joy and expectation in the midst of the strife, like children, in laughter, life and love itself, with each new year bringing us a little closer to eternal life, for which we were made, and hopefully many new little souls to enjoy that life (see Sean Fitzpatrick’s reflection, and Terry McDermott’s marvelous piece in these pages on children who offer their brief lives and their crosses to Christ. How much we ‘adults’ have yet to learn!).
On that note, we are offered a plenary indulgence for reciting – or, better yet, singing! – the Church’s ancient hymn of praise and gratitude, the Te Deum on this New Year’s Eve. We should give thanks for all things, our works, prayers, joys and, yes, our own sufferings. So rejoice, belt it out, loud and clear, and fill thyself with grand, good cheer, for our redemption is nearer at hand now than it was last year.
And may 2025 be filled with Christ’s grace, peace and truth, for one and all.
