A New Year’s message from our Provincial Director Fr. Jeffrey Kirch, C.PP.S.
As we celebrate the New Year, our prayers are with all God’s sons and daughters that they enjoy a happy, healthy, fulfilling life in Christ. There is no sense in praying for a trouble-free year—has there ever been such a thing? But we can pray that the peace of Christ takes root in your home and grows and grows.
There is not much growing now. As I look outside I see gray Ohio in the dead of winter. Not much looks new in this New Year, at least not outside. But inside, we are invited to grow in spirit. We take our cue from Mary. In today’s Gospel we hear how she was adjusting to her life, which must have seemed so surpassingly strange to her. “Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart” (Luke 2: 19).
In nature, much of God’s creation waits for exactly the right conditions to grow and bloom: the right amount of sunshine, the proper measure of rain. But God’s sons and daughters have been given the ability to grow regardless of the weather. We, like Mary, can reflect on the Word in our hearts. We can allow it to take root and grow.
My prayer in this New Year is that the Word lives and grows within us, where it becomes so much a part of our lives that we cannot help but share its light and goodness with others. In that way we follow Jesus and become a force for good in this old world, which through the Precious Blood of Jesus, is made new.
V. Rev. Jeffrey S. Kirch, C.PP.S.
Provincial Director