Enjoy the abundance of a life lived on His time

As we greet a new calendar year, the year of 2022 A.D., that last designation looms large in importance for we who are Catholics, as well as for any other person of good will. Why is this so?

The times in which we live are not terribly conducive to learning and living the truth, to living sincerely one’s faith, and certainly not to any display of sincere faith in public. Our society and culture are collapsing in the face of a serious secularism which actively seeks to not neutralize God and objective truth, but it seeks to eradicate God and objective truth from everyday life.

That last designation of A.D. after our year of 2022 must be kept by us not as some kind of secret but as an outward sign of our faith and our determined courage and zeal to live it according to the teachings of the Church in private and in public.

A.D. is an abbreviation for the Latin words Anno Domini, “the year of the Lord.” We Catholics should make as our resolution for this new calendar year to practice our Catholic faith with greater zeal and devotion. This takes the form of being faithful to our Sunday and Holy Day Mass obligation. This takes the form of being faithful to our personal and daily prayer. This takes the form of receiving the sacrament of penance regularly. This takes the form of extending ourselves and practicing real charity toward all others whether this be the corporal or spiritual works of mercy or both. This takes the form of being willing to practice acts of true penance and mortification for our own salvation and that of others.

Doing all of this willingly and faithfully during this new year gives evidence of our faith and gives evidence that we believe and know to be true that we live our earthly lives on God’s time and not our own. That we believe and know to be true that we are truly living in “the year of the Lord” and because of this we choose to live a life which is an imitation of Jesus and not a life enslaved to the world.

My prayer for each and every one of you is that you have a most Blessed New Year and that you will enjoy the abundance of a life lived on His time.