Sunday, January 1, 2023
The Eighth Day of Christmas
Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God
New Year’s Day
 The first day
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord let his face shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
Of course the first day is just like the last day. Mostly we mark time in our thoughts and in the records we keep of those thoughts, while time is very different to the blue skies of mid-morning, or the snowfall at midnight, or the silence of a pastoral landscape, or the mooing of the cows, aching to be milked. Happy New Year, come thou fount of every blessing!
May God bless us in his mercy, so may our ways be known upon the earth, among all nations. May all the peoples praise you.
War goes on. There is less power for electricity in Ukraine today than there was a week ago. My favorite historian, Heather Cox Richardson, offers a column six out of seven days each week, and a slightly longer essay to cap each year. She remembered her comment at the end of 2021: “It looks like 2022 is going to be a choppy ride, but its outcome is in our hands.” And she shared a comment from Congressman John Lewis, who died two years ago after a long, active life: “Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part.”
God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then also an heir.
On this eighth day of Christmas, Mary keeps all these things and ponders them in her heart. The shepherds continue to visit the Holy Family, and the wise men and women will be here any day now. On this solemn, special day, the baby was circumcised and named Jesus, and all glory and honor are bestowed on Mary, Theotokos, Mother of God. Just outside the cave where the shepherds and their animals have been staying, we too kneel, and bow, we sing and pray, and join the endless array of angels just above us in the sky.
Here is a wonderful prayer written below the stars, in a darker time of night, by Thomas Merton as part of his Thoughts in Solitude (1958):
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that, if I do this,
You will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust you always
though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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