THOUGHTS OF A MONK

New Year

September 2005

What I’d like to draw your attention to very briefly this morning is a contrast. Today is the last Sunday of the liturgical year – September 1st starts the New Year. Generally, most of us probably think of New Years as that which follows Christmas, a holiday that has always struck me as more bacchanalian than anything, a day of excess that tries to drown out the bad memories of the past year with an abundance of booze, distraction, sexual excess, and yes, even football. But for all the revelry, its focus seems to me to be more on the past than the future: trying to start off with a clean slate by blotting out our guilt and shame of the past. But it never seems to work. All we’re left with is a hangover.

Christianity posits a very different vision of the New Year. It comes quietly, at the beginning of September. That was the time appointed in the Byzantine Empire to coincide with the payment of a yearly tax – what was called ‘the indiction’, but the liturgical calendar has remained long after the empire died. Our year begins without fanfare, without a big celebration, but invites us once again to go ever deeper into the liturgical cycle – into the journey of Christ and of all the saints that followed him so faithfully, which is meant to lead us to an ever expanding experience of new life.

This morning’s gospel, the last of the year, indicates that Christianity’s vision is always forward, to the real, but not yet fully realized kingdom of God. Beneath the historical layers of Jesus feeding the multitudes lies the deeper meaning that we taste each time we share in the Eucharist. We share in this kingdom even now, where ultimately there is food for everyone – indeed, more than enough, baskets of leftovers. What a beautiful image of our destiny, which we taste even now; the kingdom of God: where the longing of every human heart will be fully satisfied in a communion of unending depth with God and each other.