The beginning of a new year is always a good time to consider how to renew illusions, resume projects, set new goals for a new orientation or change in our lives, to start again with new enthusiasm plans that have sometimes been forgotten or goals that we have not managed to maintain with constancy and the whirlwind of daily life that makes us lose sight of where to walk in what we had set out to do.
Our projects are sometimes simple and modest; we set ourselves goals like returning to an unfinished reading, going back to the gym or exercising, planning a cultural trip that didn’t quite come to fruition… even setting healthy life improvements like taking care of our health and dieting; reconnecting with people and friends we’ve lost touch with, returning with renewed vigor to what fulfills us as people, cultivating closer relationships and bonds with those in our family, social, and work environments… surely each of us has our own illusions and hopes. All of this keeps us alive, dynamic, and optimistic about the future.
Our gaze normally focuses on our personal lives and our own environment. Sometimes we dare to look up and contemplate the great horizons and challenges of our world, so often we are stunned by realities that overwhelm us and we wonder what each of us can do or how not to pass by the dramas that humanity is experiencing at this moment in history, and even dare to ask ourselves if humanity has not learned the lesson of history that especially the first half of the 20th century gave us with wars and destruction, inhuman massacres, hunger and persecution of all kinds, including ethnic and religious.
Every year, on the occasion of Christmas or New Year’s, political leaders and leaders of different countries and nations launch messages and proposals, surely everyone listens to them from their own point of view or from their own ideological option.
Also the Church itself, with its leaders and representatives at the forefront, writes or delivers messages and speeches that often have little resonance within current society, for several and profound reasons: some perhaps because of a distancing from religious practice think that this message is not for them or does not concern them, others believe that faith belongs to the private sphere of each person and that therefore neither the message nor the messenger has anything to contribute today as a message of proclamation and prophecy in the current social context; other times, an immense majority has no access to these messages even if they are served on a silver platter, or even to access them, one must enter specialized media focusing on religious information that most of the public is unaware of.
For 58 years – at the proposal of Pope Paul VI – January 1st is celebrated as the World Day of Prayer for Peace. On the occasion of this Day, the Pope writes a message that is more or less attempted to be conveyed in the religious celebration of the new year. This year, Pope Leo XIV spoke to us of a “disarmed and disarming peace” where, without repeating his speech now, he makes a call for integral disarmament, “a disarmament of the heart, of the mind, and of life,” proposing to reject the logic of violence and war towards a reconciliation based on love and justice.
In the Eucharist on the occasion of the new year, he emphasized that “the world is not saved by sharpening swords but by welcoming everyone,” inviting the construction of peace through dialogue and forgiveness. Peace is the fruit of disarmament and is based on trust and peaceful relations between peoples, today it is especially necessary in the midst of a context of global instability. “Although there are many people of good will willing to work for peace today, a great feeling of helplessness overwhelms them in the face of the course of events, which is increasingly uncertain” (Message of John XIV World Day of Peace), therefore I conclude with the title of the article “New Year… New Life?”. The challenge that the Gospel invites us to is always new, it seeks peace and runs after it.
**Build it!**
**José Antonio Encabo Yagüe**
Digital Religion
José Antonio Encabo Yagüe, Chaplain and Professor of Theology at the Duques de Soria University Campus.
English version translated with AI