Tag: New Year’s Eve

… a cup of kindness yet …

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Faith, spirituality9 Comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

Poetry:

Music: Auld Lang Syne – played by Kenny G

The Word

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, Eternal Life, Faith, Jesus3 Comments

The Seventh Day in the Octave of Christmas

December 31, 2020

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 96, which set the tone for us to more deeply appreciate our beautiful Gospel today on this New Year’s Eve.

The LORD comes,
comes to align the earth in Grace.
The LORD shall tender the world
with merciful justice
and the peoples with divine constancy.

Psalm 96: 13

Who is this Lord Who comes,
comes to each of us and all of us?

I think no one describes this mysterious, yet enfleshed, God more beautifully that the writer of John’s Gospel and Epistles.

For our prayer, let’s savor that beauty from today’s Gospel.

Click the little white triangle in the grey bar above to hear some lovely accompanying music
as you slowly move through the slides below by pressing the right arrow on the slide.

Poetry: a prayer from Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179 – O Eternal Lord 

Dear Friends, perhaps we might pray Hildegard’s prayer for one another as we leave this painful year and move toward New Hope. 

O eternal Lord,
it is pleasing to you
to burn in that same fire of love,
like that from which our bodies are born,
and from which you begot your Son
in the first dawn before all of Creation.
So consider this need which falls upon us,
and relieve us of it for the sake of your Son,
and lead us in joyous prosperity.

Children, it is the last hour …

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Faith, Hope, Love, Thanksgiving1 Comment

Monday, December 31, 2018

Click here for readings

Jn1_2 NYE

Today, in Mercy, on this New Year’s Eve, our spirits are occupied with the passage of time – the endings and beginnings that compose a life.

In the public domain, this night is often characterized as one of wild celebrations, almost as if we need to prove our endurance within time.

But in the privacy of our hearts, there are the moments of quiet nostalgia, bittersweet memory, and vulnerable gratitude for all that has been in this past year and the years preceding.

On this Sacred Eve, as people of faith, we will hold time’s hourglass up to the Light of eternity, knowing that – in God – there is no time.

In God, there is only love – the only human capacity which endures beyond time. In heaven, we will not need faith because we will see. We will not need hope, because all will be fulfilled.

But we will always need love.

In the end, there are three things that last –
faith, hope, and love.
And the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:13

So before the tolls welcome midnight, let us raise up to God our Eucharist of 2018:

  • those whose lives have been completed; those who have just begun
  • the efforts we made which succeeded; those which failed
  • the dreams secured; the dreams abandoned
  • the opportunities for grace that we seized; those lost which we hope to have renewed
  • the prayers answered as we had desired; the prayers answered in ways we didn’t recognize
  • all that we have loved; all that we hope to love more worthily

As John says in our first reading, “Children, it is the last hour …” 

May we let it go with gratitude, wisdom and joy.

But as John also says in our Gospel:

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God …
…. and from his fullness we have all received,
grace flowing upon grace …

May we welcome this grace of eternal life and hope given to us in another New Year.

Blessed 2019, dear friends.

Music: Amazing Grace ~ Salt Lake City Vocal Artists