Today, the seventh day in the octave of Christmas, is also New Year’s Eve. It is the perfect time make one last final alignment before the new year begins tonight at midnight. Some call it making New Year’s Resolutions. The one really significant alignment that we need to make is to surrender ourselves entirely, completely and wholly to God who can do so many things through us for others - if we let him!
Our resolve must be to let the beautiful, magnificent and wonderful Truth and Light of God shine through us! The way we do that is to ask for God’s help - which he provides by means of the Holy Spirit; but also to consciously use that help and live as authentic, as genuine, as generous a Christian life as possible trying as best we can to make the outside of our living match the inside. The antichrists that St. John speaks about in the first reading today were defectors from the Christian community; they were liars, they took what was pure and holy, truthful and helpful and distorted it and used it for their own purposes and glory! Their outside did not match the inside.
It is always the final hour, because antichrists, defectors, liars, are always present within the community of mankind! It is up to the core Christian community to resist the temptations of those devious individuals and to demonstrate the power and life that comes from living in God, living in light, living in his Word, living in Jesus!
The gospel passage tells us what our focus should be: THE WORD MADE FLESH! What a truly astounding thing this is: GOD BECOMES A MAN! to save us from the lies, to save us from our sins, to save us from all that we need saving from! At this Mass we receive into our hearts that very Word of Life, that Word of Light, that Word of Love that can guide us throughout this day - and all of the days of the New Year!
Thanks be to God.
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