Some thoughts that might help us direct our thoughts and wills towards God’s will – instead of our own – for the coming year.
Before we get to Francis, though, let’s hear from St. Jane de Chantal on New Year’s Resolutions – which she approves –
We must make strong and absolute resolutions, that if Our Lord gives us the coming year, we will make better use of it than of those that are past.. Let us walk with a new step in His Divine service and to our perfection..
Now then, let us begin the year in the name of Our Lord, but with efficacious resolutions of beginning to serve Him faithfully according to our small power; for He wants only what we can do, but that He does want; let us be careful to give it to Him, doing good, then hoping and confiding in His infinite mercy.
Now to Francis:
All quotes are taken from various works found in this book, available at the Internet Archive.
First, from Practical Piety – some presentations on feasts and seasons of the liturgical year. This is on “The End of the Year.”
I conclude this year with the satisfaction of being able to present you with the wish I make for you for the year which is coming.
They pass away, then, these temporal years. Their months reduce themselves to weeks, the weeks to days, the days to hours, and the hours to moments, which are all that we possess, but which we only possess in proportion as they perish, and render our duration perishable. And yet that duration ought to be more pleasing to us for that very reason; because this life being full of miseries, we could not have in it any more solid consolation than that of being assured that it is vanishing away, to make room for that holy eternity which is prepared for us in the abundance of the mercy of God, and to which our soul incessantly aspires by the continual thoughts its own nature suggests to it, although it cannot hope for it except by other more elevated thoughts which the Author of its nature diffuses over it.
Certainly I never turn my thoughts to eternity without much sweetness. For, say I, how is it that my soul could extend its thoughts to this infinity, if it had not some sort of proportion with it. But when I feel that my desire runs after my thoughts on this same eternity, my joy takes a new and incomparable increase; for I know that we never entertain a real desire for anything except possibilities. My desire, then, assures me that I can have eternity: what more remains for me than to hope that I shall have it? and this hope is given me by the knowledge of the infinite goodness of Him who would not have created a soul capable of thinking and of aiming at eternity, if He had not willed to give it all the means of attaining thereto.
Let us, then, often say, Every thing passes away; and after the few days of this mortal life which remain for us, will come the infinite eternity. Little matters it, then, to us that we have here comforts or discomforts, provided
that for all eternity we are blessed. Let this holy eternity which awaits us be our consolation, and to be Christians, members of Jesus Christ, regenerated in His blood; for in this alone consists all our glory, that this divine Saviour has died for us.
A great soul reaches all its best thoughts, affections, and aims onwards into the infinity of eternity; and since it is eternal, it reckons as too short whatever is not eternal, as too little whatever is not infinite; and raising itself above all the delights, or rather those poor amusements which this life can present to us, it keeps its eyes fixed on the immensity of the goods and of the years of eternity.
O God, wherefore shall we live next year, if it be not to love better this sovereign goodness? Oh, how it takes us from this world, or takes this world from us; how it makes us die, or makes us better love its death than our life!
Now I wish for your dear soul, that this next year may be followed by many others, and they may all be profitably employed in the conquest of eternity.
Live long, holily, happily here below, amid these perishable moments, to live again eternally in that immutable felicity to which we aspire.
But if our Lord hears my prayers, this year will be to you a year of prosperity, of contentment, and of blessings on yourself, in yourself, and on all around you; and you will see a long succession of like years, which at length will terminate in the eternal year, in which you will immortally enjoy the Author of all true prosperity and benediction.
Then on “The End and the Beginning of the Year.”
Behold the year about to engulf itself in the abyss where all the others up to the present have been annihilated.
Oh, how desirable is eternity at the price of these miserable and perishable vicissitudes! Let us allow time to glide away, whilst we ourselves are gliding away, little by little, to be transformed into the glory of the children of God.
Alas, when I think how I have employed the time of God, I am much troubled that He wills not to give me His eternity; since He wills not to give it, except to those who use His time well.
O God, these years are going away, and run imperceptibly in file one after another; and in winding up their durations, they wind up our mortal life, and in ending they end our days.
Oh, how incomparably more desirable is eternity, since its duration is without end, and its days without night, and its contentments invariable! May you possess this admirable good of the holy eternity in as high a degree as I wish it for you! What happiness for my soul, if God, taking compassion on it, were to make it see this sweetness!
But whilst waiting to see our glorified Saviour, let us see Him with the eyes of faith all humbled in His cradle.
Ought we not to praise God for the many graces that we have received, and to supplicate Him to diffuse the blood of His circumcision over the entrance of the coming year, that in it the destroying angel may have no access over us?
So be it, that through these transitory years we may happily arrive at the permanent year of the most holy eternity!
Let us, then, well employ these little perishable moments in exercising ourselves in the holy sweetness and humility which the circumcised Babe
comes to teach us, in order that we may have part in the efFects of His divine Name.
Might we at least for once well pronounce that sacred Name of our heart!
Oh, what balm it would diffuse over all the faculties of our soul!
How happy we would be to have in our understanding nought but Jesus, in our memory nought but Jesus, in our will nought but Jesus, nought but Jesus in our imagination! Jesus would be every where in us, and we every where in Him. Let us attempt this, let us pronounce that Name as often as we can. But if as yet we can only say it stammering, at last we shall nevertheless be able to pronounce it well.
But what means it to pronounce this sacred Name well? for you tell me to speak plainly to you. Alas, I know not how, but I only know that to express it well would need a tongue all of fire; that is to say, it must be by divine love only, which, without any other, expresses Jesus in our life, by imprinting Him in the depths of our heart. But courage; doubtless we shall love God, for He loveth us.
Finally:
To a religious sister, 8 January 1620
O my dear Daughter—Let us employ this new year well, to acquire eternity. I see you, me seems, near the Infant of Bethlehem, and while kissing his feet begging him to be your King. Abide there, my dear daughter, and learn of him to be meek, humble, simple and amiable.
Let your soul, like a mystical bee, never leave this dear little King, but make its honey around him, in him and for him; indeed let it draw its honey from him, whose lips are all overflowing with grace, and on them, far more happily than they were seen on those of St. Ambrose, holy bees, collected in a swarm, do their sweet and gracious work.
