January 2025Dear Companion of St. Anthony:Our New Year 2025 begins today, January 1st, amid the Church’s Christmas Season. The 8th day of Christmas, in fact. This day is also especially honored as the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. Mary’s response to God, “Let it be done to me according to your word” is a model and foundation for us all. It is thus, rooted in these great aspects and figures of salvation history, that we are prepared this year to move forward more Intentionally into the Jubilee Year of Hope. This is a confluence of major importance as our world begins this new calendar year.We know that Christian Hope is one of the three theological virtues: Faith, Hope and Love. If we take these three virtues in their traditional order, we can acknowledge that Faith in Jesus leads us to being disciples of Hope. And Faith and Hope lead us then to more honestly Love. That sounds like a great New Years resolution. Lord, in all that I will encounter and experience this year, might I more honestly love.In his letter instituting this new Jubilee year, Pope Francis writes that his hope is that this “Jubilee be a moment of genuine, personal encounter with the Lord Jesus, the “door” (Jn 10:7.9) of our salvation, whom the Church is charged to proclaim always, everywhere and to all as “our hope” (1 Tim 1:1)”. Hope is a person, and it is encountering Jesus our Hope in a personal way, that we grow to become tangible expressions of that same virtue to those that we encounter.Let’s together ask our patron, St. Anthony of Padua, to cheer us on and encourage us in our effort to strengthen our personal encounter with the Lord Jesus. In the face of anything that might tempt us to hopelessness, may we turn to Jesus, God with us, and then share our Hope as the necessary antidote, as a light amid any darkness.Blessings to you and to all your loved ones this New Year, 2025. Peace, Friar Gary W. Johnson, OFM Conv. |