January 4

Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation

In order to excite ourselves to lead a better life during the new year on which we have just entered, we will consider: 1st, the motives; 2nd, the means whereby to pass this year holily. We will then make the resolution: 1st, to endeavor more ardently to perform our ordinary actions with greater perfection; 2nd, to attach ourselves to repairing past evils by present good, and above all every day to make war to the death against our besetting sin. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the recommendation of St. Paul: “While we have time let us work good to all men” (Gal. vi. 10).

Meditation for the Morning

Let us adore Jesus Christ, giving us, in His goodness, another year in which to work out our sanctification and to merit a place in His Paradise. Let us thank Him for this grace, and endeavor to profit by it.

FIRST POINT

Motives for Spending this Year Holily.

1st. We have a miserable past to repair. God gave us the year that has just closed in order to employ it for our sanctification. What use have we made of it? He bestowed upon us all kinds of blessings in the natural and the spiritual order. What fruit have we drawn from them? Have we become better? Alas! how much evil committed! how much good omitted or ill-done! What an abuse of graces! Great God! when Thy justice shall put in one of the scales of Thy balance all that Thou hast done for me, and in the other all that I have done against Thee, together with the small amount of good which I have performed, I tremble lest Thou shouldst say to me as Thou didst to the King of Babylon: “Thou art weighed in the balance” (Dan. v. 27), and the weight of My grace has borne down the weight of your merits. The only resource remaining to me is to amass during the present year a superabundance of good, which shall compensate the superabundance of evil. 2nd. We have the present to sanctify. We shall have to render to God a strict account of all the moments of the present year. Each moment ill-employed or even only uselessly, will be brought against us. Oh, if we but knew the value of the gift of God! (John iv. 10.) 3rd. We have the future to foresee. And what more uncertain to foresee! Upon the globe about seventy-six persons die every minute, 4,560 every hour, 109,440 every day; nearly forty millions every year. Shall I not be of this number during the year which has begun? If I but knew it, how well I would live! how I would abstain from all sin! how holily I would perform even my least important actions! how I would keep my soul always pure! My death might be sudden, but it would not be a calamity, because it would not be unforeseen. Therefore St. Antony said to his disciples: “Live each day as though it were the last of your life”; and St. Bernard recommended his disciples to do everything as if they were to die immediately afterwards.

SECOND POINT

Means Whereby to Spend this Year in a Holy Manner.

1st. We must attach ourselves to performing our ordinary actions well, even down to the most common amongst them, which appear to be nothing in the eyes of the world; that is, to do them at the proper time and in the right manner; to perform them for God, with an ardent desire to please Him. Therein holiness consists, much more than in the extraordinary actions which, for the very reason that they are extraordinary, are rare. 2nd. We must always be endeavoring to live better during the present moment than during the one which preceded it. If we have done well we must strive to do still better. True virtue never says: It is enough. In this matter, not to advance is to go back. Always to advance, such is the word of command; always to rise higher, such is the rule of the just (Ps. lxxxiii. 5). 3rd. We must study our besetting sin, and when we know it well, make war to the death against it all the year long, by means of vigilance, of examination of conscience, of good confession, and fervent prayer. “If, every year,” says the author of the Imitation, “we tear out a vice from our hearts, we shall soon be perfect” (I. Imit. xi. 5). Let us be deeply penetrated with these three means for passing the year holily, and let us make a strong resolution to do so.

Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.