With this First Sunday of Advent we begin a new year of walking through the mysteries of our salvation. As with every New Year, we are stepping into territory that is both familiar and new. On a mundane level it is familiar because there is still work, kids, school, chores around the house, and bills to pay. It is also new because you are a year older (and hopefully a year wiser), the kids are a year older, the paycheck is (hopefully) better to pay the bills, and so on. Familiar and new.
In our life of faith, this New Year should also be both familiar and new. It should be familiar because at Mass we will be encountering Gospel readings mostly from the Gospel of Luke, something we do every three years. The same feasts will roll around for us to celebrate, just like birthdays and anniversaries. It will also be new because we are different people from a year ago. Also, this new year will present us with new opportunities to encounter God and to serve Him and one another.
Because we are going into somewhat familiar territory, we can make a plan for the coming year. Having reflected on how the previous year went, we in some measure know who we are and where we stand. How do we want to use this new year to grow in our relationship with Christ and His Church? How do we want to be different (better, more virtuous, holier, etc.) by the end of the year?
There is a saying: No plan survives contact with the enemy. Because we will be going into new territory, we can never plan for every contingency. That being said, there is another saying: Prior planning prevents poor performance. Just because we can't plan for everything doesn't mean we don't make a plan. Without a plan we would be blown every which way by the winds of life. We need some idea of where we want to end up and how to get there.
It is a New Year, a new adventure of transforming the familiar and the ordinary into the amazing and the extraordinary by the grace of God. What might it look like for you?