Blessed! A Blessed 2023. That’s my prayer and my wish for all of you. What will make 2023 blessed for you? I tried to make a little list for myself just to see what it would look like. Let’s all agree we’d like world peace, which is what every Miss America pageant winner says she wants. I’m long beyond winning a beauty pageant. (In fact, there was little chance of me ever winning a beauty pageant, although I did have curly blond hair as a kid.)
My mind flirted with some building maintenance issues. Just this morning Patricio found a patch of water in my backyard we can’t explain.
But stuff like that didn’t even really come close to making my “list.” Pretty quickly, my mind went to people. I’m thinking of the friends I have that are very important to me and help me maintain a sense of humor as well as balance in my life. Keeping them and developing them in the coming year definitely tops my list. Part and parcel of that wish is knowing that it will only be with God’s Spirit prompting me, that I’ll be able to treat them with care, and have gratitude for them throughout the year.
In fact, I just made a phone call to one and received one as well. The one I received was from Father Bill Mason, OMI, who is retired now. You’ll never guess where, an Oblate parish in Buffalo. They never lost power during the storm even though they have a huge pile of snow in front of their garage. Fortunately, two days after Christmas, he could walk across the street to a food market that finally was able to open.
I just got another item for my list: “Thank you, Jesus, for letting me live in South Florida!” Gives a whole new meaning to Blessed!
As I ponder what else might bless my 2023, I realize how different my list of blessings seem to be if I had done something like this 20 or 40 year ago.
Maybe the folk who are traveling in the same age group as I am might also agree that some things just don’t seem as important as we used to think they were. It’s not that we forget things, although we do. I think it is more a case of maybe actually thinking a little more maturely about things.
I also think this year will definitely be a time when I will choose not to hold on to memories of past hurts or slights or whatever negatives occurred.
If I’m getting prepared to make what I hope will be a celestial journey in the not too distant future, I sure as heck need to throw the out baggage that weighs me down. Don’t worry. I don’t have any particular health issues to deal with other than diabetes, creaking knees, and maybe a few too many pounds. But let’s face it; 81 is not 21.
As I think about 2023 and calling it blessed, I have this image of God holding a huge holy water sprinkler and carefully letting the blessed drops fall on the earth. I love the line in Eucharistic Prayer II that prays, “Make holy, therefore, these gifts, we pray, by sending down your Spirit upon them like the dewfall, that they may become the Body and Blood ...of your Son.”
What a great image of God’s prompting: ‘like the dewfall.’ There have been times when the Lord has also managed to give me less gentle prods in the rear end when I needed it, but mostly I’m hoping that 2023 will bring a lot of holy falling dew.
So, in addition to the Happy Christmas I hope you had, now you can add Happy New Year and know the Lord wants to do everything we will let Him do to make
it Blessed!
In Jesus, the Lord of Time,
