In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. (Genesis 1:1-5)
As you and I force ourselves to write 2022, on those rare occasions we hand-write the date, we think of this as a beginning. A new year, after all, begins, and a new calendar, somehow a new trajectory, a new course of days is launched. Some make resolutions, some make merry; it is a beginning. But stop and think about the beginning, described above.
First, realize that there is a true beginning to all creation, and behind that creation is the will and work of the Creator, God. Realize, too, before descending into the details of how and when, that there is a why: because it is good. Being is good; all creation’s being, and yours and mine too: good. From the beginning.
God creates light, and sees that it is good; but there remains darkness. There remains what does not have the goodness of God’s creating will. God divides the one from the other, but does not eliminate the other.
So it is at the beginning; so it is in this year’s beginning. Even as we mark this beginning, the original echoes: certain darknesses are too much with us. These weeks have been marked by a resurgent darkness that has shuttered much of our celebratory light; I have named it the Grinch Variant for its uncanny ability to take the joy out of Christmas. Families came together, only to share the virus with one another. Caution kept people one from another, and from the common celebration of the true light in our midst. And now that our holiday time, thus gutted, is ended, even the tenuous, new-normal practices by which we provided and enjoyed many aspects of the common life that nurtures our life, fall short. Will we never begin to emerge?
We can lapse into cyclical, inescapably recurring fatalism. The hapless would-be pagans who rejoiced at the solstice know that is not a new thing, a new reality – simply the same sun, on its same course, redisposed according to our planet’s revolution to be more, rather than less, in the course of our day. Even that increase heralds not all the desired changes. “As the days grow longer, the cold grows stronger” a dear friend’s mother taught us. Brace yourselves.
But we are not bound by pagan darkness of mind; we know of the beginning; the true beginning that indicates an end, a goal, a purpose; the beginning that already includes the accomplisher of that end. That is the true beginning present in the beginning we celebrate now. We can see it, if we can hear the words of John who speaks the good news.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:1-5)
He hearkens to that same beginning, those same words that announced and describes the first beginning, but with a difference: And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. (John 1:14)
This is the light that is not and will not be overcome by the darkness; Who gives light to our eyes and to our steps. Every beginning, even one so filled with frustration as the one we undertake now, is made authentic because it acknowledges this light, and anticipates its accomplishment of that same will that underlay the first beginning, Creation: that it be good. The Word has become flesh, and our eyes have seen His glory. Behold, He makes all things new.
Happy, new, year. It’s a beginning.
Monsignor Smith
