New Year’s Eve
December 31, 2023

The motherhouse chapel is hushed in sacred quiet. We have spent these New Year’s Eve hours in prayer, thanksgiving, and hope. Now in midwinter’s purple shadows, a silent nun touches her single, small light to the majestic candelabras to prepare for this Mass which balances on the turning of the years. The tiny flames slowly saturate the darkness, transforming it to a warm, golden invitation.

Our Mercy family gathers from the places where they have been praying.  Each one carries a heart filled with the past year’s blessings and challenges and with the new year’s hopes.  

As each one enters the chapel, she places her thoughts in the ciborium of silence. She pours her needs into the chalice of trust.

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Evening, through the stained-glass windows, breaks its dark rainbow across the sanctuary, wakening an expectant God to receive our promises. The schola rustles to life for the celebration.  With them, our spirits hum the treasured Christmas harmonies learned in distant novitiates. Some who will celebrate Jubilee this year gather at the back of chapel for the entrance procession, awed that the years have carried them to this moment. The stage is set for the great liturgy of renewal, for on this night each year, we pronounce again the vows that sculpt our lives.

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This is a most-hallowed ritual for year after year in Mercy, even before we were born, we have been carried by the sacrament of one another’s fidelity.  As we light the slender tapers, we remember and are encouraged by our beloved sisters who now live the fulfillment of their vows in heaven.  

We give thanks for the new life of our candidates and novices whose eyes and hearts open in wonder at the incredible power of call and community. And we see the inexplicable beauty of one another whose lives, woven together in joys and sorrows through the years, have carried us to the merciful heart of God.

These are the grains of bread.  These are the drops of wine – these lives, taken and called by God, blessed and broken over the world, given again and again in mercy for the poor, sick and uneducated. This is the Eucharist of our vowed and covenanted lives.  This is the Body and Blood of Christ.

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On this night, the spice of life steeps in a mulled wine where tart experience and sweet assurance marry in faith. On this night, we offer the past; we pledge the future, but we do so in this present moment which alone holds meaning. It is in this vowed moment – this pledged renewal – that the host is lifted and the cup sanctified. It is a moment repeated infinitely in the faithful living of our call. It is the moment of transformation.

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Poetry:

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Music: Auld Lang Syne – played by Kenny G