A New Year of Listening and Doing
Michael Throop
For you were called for freedom, brothers. But do not use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh; rather, serve one another through love.
For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
But if you go on biting and devouring one another, beware that you are not consumed by one another.
I say, then: live by the Spirit and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh.
For the flesh has desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you may not do what you want.
But if you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
Galatians 5:13-18
“The world won’t get no better if we just let it be.”
“Wake Up, Everybody”, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes (feat. Teddy Pendergrass)
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We honor our mother, Mary, on New Year’s day, on Epiphany, and through the whole new year. How fitting we are commended to follow her, to pray to her, to ask her intercession in not only the big things, but the thousand little things that invade our lives each day. Mary is so happy to intervene, but she, as do we, gently ask ‘What do you want, and what do you need?”
We want and need a resolution to the COVID pandemic, and that is underway. We may want shiny new things we didn’t get for Christmas.
We may want and need greater economic security.
What do you want … as opposed to what do you need?
What are you asking Mary’s intercession?
For me, many are outlined in the song above. It was released in the mid 1970s and, unfortunately, was not a pop hit.
It is sincere, heartfelt, and challenging. We have to move beyond our “wants” and take up the cause for those who have so little, for those alone, for those losing hope, for those whose lives are ebbing, and who need our presence and our joy right now.
Happy Re-New Year. Identify your needs and wants, and pursue them accordingly. As St. Paul tells the Galatians, love your neighbor, as yourself.
And 2021 will be a much brighter time for all our blessings.
