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The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new
ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular person made New Year resolutions, he (or she) would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.
- G. K. Chesterton (Happy New Year! What do you hope will be different about your life a year freom
now?) |
1 Jn 2:22-28; salm 98:1, 2-3ab, 3cd-4
Jn 1:19-28 This is the testimony of John.
When the Jews from Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to him
to ask
him, “Who are you?”
He admitted and did not deny it, but admitted,
“I am not the Christ.”
So they asked him,
“What are
you then? Are you Elijah?”
And he said, “I am not.”
“Are you the Prophet?”
He answered, “No.”
So they said
to him,
“Who are you, so we can give an answer to those who sent us?
What do you have to say for yourself?”
He said:
“I am the voice of one crying out in the desert,
‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’
as Isaiah the prophet said.”
Some Pharisees were also sent.
They asked him,
“Why then do you baptize
if you are not the Christ or Elijah or the Prophet?”
John answered them,
“I baptize with water;
but there is one among you whom you do not recognize,
the one who is coming after me,
whose sandal strap I am not
worthy to untie.”
This happened in Bethany across the Jordan,
where John was baptizing.
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.) John 1: 19-28 (Jesus and
John) We now return to a familiar theme: John the Baptist is precursor to the Messiah. Like John, it is important that we, too, recognize our limitations. * How does selfishness limit your experiences of creation, work, and relationships with other people?
* How do you usually respond to selfishness? Think about the next twenty-four hours and anticipate a time when selfishness will probably tempt you. Pray for the grace to respond in love.
Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) ____________ BOOK III: OF THE PROGRESS AND PERFECTION OF LOVE Chapter 5: That the happiness of dying in heavenly charity is a special gift from God Finally, all these effects have an absolute dependence on Our Saviour's redemption, who merited them for us in rigour of justice by the loving obedience which he exercised even till death and the death of the cross, which is the root of all the graces which we receive; we who are the spiritual grafts engrafted on his stock. If being engrafted we remain in him, we shall certainly bear, by the life of grace which he will
communicate unto us, the fruit of glory prepared for us. But if we prove broken sprigs and grafts upon this tree, that is, if by resistance we interrupt the progress and break the connection of the effects of his clemency, it will not be strange, if in the end we be wholly cut off, and be thrown into eternal fires as fruitless branches. God, doubtless, prepared heaven for those only who
he foresaw would be his. Let us be his then, Theotimus, by faith and works, and he will be ours by glory. Now it is in our power to be his: for though it be a gift of God to be God's, yet is it a gift which God denies no one, but offers to all, to give it to such as freely consent to receive it. But mark, I pray you, Theotimus, how ardently God desires we should be his, since to this end
he has made himself entirely ours; bestowing upon us his death and his life; his life, to exempt us from eternal death, his death, to possess us of eternal life. Let us remain therefore in peace and serve God, to be his in this mortal life, and still more his in the eternal.
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