As we enter the New Year

EVERY New Year reminds us, of course, of another opportunity

to make a new beginning in our life. This is a law that governs us in

this life. We have to begin and begin again, because no matter how far

we have reached and how much we have gained in terms of experience if

not of wealth, power, etc., we can never say that we have reached our

ultimate goal, which is to be with God in heaven forever.

          There will always be the need to make a new beginning. So

let us enter the New Year with a renewed spirit of faith, hope and

charity, the basic and indispensable guide we need as we go through

our life’s journey that will involve all sorts of temporal and earthly

affairs that are supposed to be the means and occasions to lead us to

heaven.

          Let us remember that our life is not simply earthly,

material, temporal and natural. It is also spiritual and meant to be

supernatural and eternal in its final, definitive state. We have to

develop our life in such a way that its spiritual and supernatural

character is never compromised.

          We should not forget that the ultimate parameter or

condition of everything in our earthly life is to be with God. We

should not exchange this condition for whatever good that the world

can offer us. As Christ said: “What shall it profit a man, if he shall

gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mk 8,36) As we enter

the new year, let us tighten our relation with God first.

          In this regard, we have to make some kind of prognostication

of what we can expect for this new year. It goes without saying that

there will be new things, new challenges, new goals, etc., that we

have to contend with. In fact, we can expect so many of them that if

we are not careful and prepared, we can easily get lost or at least

get confused.

          The profusion of new things should not surprise us anymore.

The great progress in the arts, sciences and technologies, and the

growing number of people going into all kinds of inventions and

creations, etc. insure that more and more new things will come our

way.

          We really would need to be very discerning in getting

involved in these new things, lest we can get swallowed up by them and

thrown into a current which we would be unable to give proper

direction. These new things can be a blessing or a curse. They can

give us some advantages and conveniences, but they can also be sweet

poisons and Trojan horses. They can be a friendly fire and replicate

the story of the tower of Babel.

          These new things are supposed to enhance, not stifle, our

life, especially our basic duties toward God, our families and others,

and our own selves. What oftentimes happens is that the new things

tend to disorient us, to distract us from our more basic duties.

          So, if these new things become an obstacle in carrying out

our duties to God, to the family, to others and to ourselves, then

they are no good. If they only would lead us to self-indulgence and

self-absorption and all kinds of disorder, they are a great danger to

us. If they trap us into their fascinating dynamic and desensitize us

from our duty towards God and others, they are actually our enemies.

          We need to be truly discerning because definitely we just

cannot discard these new things altogether. We cannot and should not

ignore the many good things they offer us. In fact, we should take

advantage of them. But we need to be well-grounded on the right sense

of priorities because these new things will pose competing values to

us, and we simply have to know which one has priority over the other.