Psalm 62:1–2, 8
“For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be greatly moved… Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.”
Another new year is upon us. As I write this, I pray you had a holy Christmas season and blessed beginning to 2025!
This time of year always brings me to a place of deep reflection. The timing of the intersection of a new calendar year with the Church’s liturgical calendar, I believe, is no coincidence. I feel there is so much richness and depth in this that it could be food for thought for years to come.
The Church’s liturgical calendar year begins anew each year with Advent, often starting in November or December, the end of our calendar year. The calendar year begins on January 1, the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, falling within and towards the end of the Christmas season. Beginnings alongside endings. We say goodbye to one calendar year and hello to another with all its new opportunities for hope. Isn’t this also true of His birth. His Incarnation was for His Resurrection. We cannot think of His birth without thinking of His death. The wood of the manger is closely tied to the wood of the Cross.
In the Church’s liturgical year, Christmas is followed by Ordinary time. The often-busy holiday season, full of lights and fellowship, is followed rather abruptly by the quiet, stillness of the Ordinary. December with all its noise is placed up against January, with its often gray, dreary skies (and followed often by more dreariness in February and March if you live in the cold northern states like I do). What is God trying to say to us in these juxtapositions?
As I write this, although it is January, the sun is shining brightly through my office window. Even brighter than normal due to the reflection off the white blanket of snow which has recently descended upon us. The white and the light has broken through the gray and ordinary, bringing with it a calm, quiet stillness that seems to me to be a reminder of God’s ever presence in the Ordinary; It is a reminder of how His light and mercy can make us new again, as white as snow. “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:14). His love is even brighter when we allow it to reflect off ourselves to others. All this sits in a backdrop of barren, dead trees which wait in patient expectation for the promise of spring and resurrection.
When I read this Psalm verse, I was instantly reminded of the silence and stillness and calmness that January brings (post-Christmas), and especially when it sits in a newly fallen blanket of snow. In the Ordinary. With all the unknown of the future months ahead of us, we are called to trust in Him at all times. So go ahead and spend some time pouring out all your hopes and dreams to Him for the year ahead and then proceed to sit still in the silence, listening to Him reveal to you what new beginnings and endings He has planned for your life. How are we called to die to self to bring new birth this year? In what ways are we called to make ourselves white as snow in His blood to best reflect His light off us to those around us? God awaits us in the silence of the snow.
Lifting you in prayer & Trusting in His care –
Christine