Another Year Closer To Heaven

As we come to the close of 2024, let’s count our blessings.  If you had a great year, you will probably find it easy to joyfully count your blessings and thank God for them.  If you had a rough year, you may find it difficult to count your blessings and maybe more difficult to thank God for anything.  And for some of you, maybe the only blessing you can think of is that the year is almost over!  Somebody thank God for that!
 
After thanking God for the past year, let’s look ahead to 2025.  Will it be a good or bad year?  Are you hopeful or pessimistic?  Peaceful or anxious?  As one year rolls into another, do you ever wonder where it’s all leading?  So, the planet begins another cycle around the Sun, but does anything really change significantly?  Are you progressing or digressing?  Whatever you may think, I can tell you that God has a plan.
 
His plan is revealed in today’s second reading which is one of my favorite Biblical quotes:
“Beloved, see what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God…  Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed.  We do know that when it is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is”      (1 John 3: 1-2).

This is the blessed plan of God for you and me.  Through Jesus, God has made us His children now, and He is sending us grace to become more “like Him” day by day, year after year. The Holy Spirit is guiding us through this process of sanctification, the goal of which is to become like God when “we shall see Him as He is” in the kingdom of heaven.  
 
This is the purpose for each daily rotation of the Earth, each of its yearly revolutions around the sun, every liturgical season that the Church has ordered, every sacrament and holy day.  God designed it all to help us grow in holiness and love.  This is the same purpose for everything we do as a parish family: to help each other grow in holiness and love, to help each other get to heaven.  Every liturgy, every prayer, every act of love, even down to emptying the trash and cleaning the bathrooms—we do it all to help our neighbors get to heaven.      
 
And as St. Therese of Lisieux said, “All the way to heaven is heaven.”   This may sound idealistic.  But God designed this world to be a heavenly place for us.  And when human beings fell into sin, God sent His Son, Jesus, to make our path to heaven realistic.  Because the way we get to heaven is through Jesus; as He said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father [heaven] except through me” (John 14: 6).    
 
So, however you are feeling about the past year or the new year, give it all to the Lord.  At the coming Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God, you can let go of the past year and consecrate the new year to God through the intercession of Mary.  (New Year’s Eve 5 pm Mass, or New Year’s Day 9 am and 11 am Mass). ​

Remember, beloved, you are God’s child now.  And everything that happens to you in the coming year can help you become more and more like God.  So let us thank God for the gift of another adventure around the Sun, which promises to lead us another year closer to heaven.