January 1 is the World Day of Peace (a Church observance that ought to be adopted by every nation!). To help you prepare for this, here is the Pope's message
Signis, the Vatican-recognized World Catholic Association for Communication, also put out a valuable document entitled "Media for a Culture of Peace." It is worth reading.
Our own community tradition, rooted in our Founder's experience on New Year's Eve 1900, is to make a day of retreat and close it in a Eucharistic Adoration that ideally ushers in the New Year. Our Founder's prayer from 1900 was that the "new century would be born of the Eucharistic Christ," and we can pray in the same vein as every new year of now another new century dawns. Our community will be making the Adoration earlier than midnight; I can't function at that hour, and Sr. Helena (who is at her most alive around midnight) promised an African-American friend that she would go with her to her church's "Watching Hour."
God bless all his faithful who join together to seek his blessings on the New Year.
What are your plans?
1 comment:
At our parish, we are invited to a 10:30p.m. mass and then a little social afterwards that probably ends around 1a.m. At the social, our pastor normally has us form a ring around the room near midnight, arms crossed and linked. Then at midnight we'd turn around, uncrossing our arms but remain linked. Then unlink, turn right, put your right hand on the shoulder of the person in front of you and promise to pray for that person for the year.
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