GOOD NEWS OF GREAT JOY!!!

A new year has come to us all. We each may receive it with a variety of emotions. Yet, many of us are drawn to the idea of a fresh start, a new beginning, a clean slate.

Each year, I enter a quiet practice shared by many: prayerfully listening for a word to carry into the new year. This year, the word that gently found me was JOY.

I found myself reflecting on an old image—a royal family whose presence in the castle was marked by a flag flying from the tower. When the flag was raised, all knew the king was home. In much the same way, joy is the flag that rises from the tower of our hearts when God is truly in residence within us.

Joy does not announce the absence of struggle; rather, it bears witness to trust. It is the quiet fruit of a heart resting in God. My desire for the new year.

As I enter 2026, I already have much reason for joy. Many of you know that I have four children, a son and three daughters. In 2023 and 2024, I was blessed with two precious grandsons. This had been such a deep longing of mine for many years. I know many of you can relate to the Lord asking you to lay down a strong desire, even a very good and noble desire, and to trust in His ultimate goodness and wisdom. That was my experience with wanting to be a grandmother. It was a significant surrender to lay that down. As is so often the case with “God’s ways are not our ways”, when God does fulfill that desire, the joy is so much richer. That has been my experience with my grandsons. A joy above and beyond anything of this world. A Divine joy.

And there is more. I enter this new year with all three of my daughters expecting babies!!!  Yes, all three!!! Not something super common. Two new little lives will be joining our family in April and the third in July. One of my friends commented that this is a testimony that we have a God of abundance.

And this good news is just a taste of the good news that the angels proclaimed —a baby was born to a young girl who made a significant surrender to her God–an act of complete trust in God’s goodness, and that “yes, Lord” changed the world for all of us.

My prayer as we enter this clean slate offered to each of us is that we open our hearts to God’s love more and more each day. Live this good news with great joy!

I’ve included three prayers that are very meaningful to me. I hope they will help you more deeply open your heart to Divine Love in this new year.

ACT OF CONTRITION AND PRAYER ASKING FOR CONVERSION
from Mary, Untier of Knots Novena

My Lord,

I am heartily sorry for my sins;
Purify my heart with Your Holy Blood.
I pray for Your mercy;
Grant me the grace of a new conversion.

My Lord,
By the power of Your Cross,
I wish to forgive every person who has hurt me.
Shortly before Your Death You prayed,
“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Merciful Lord,
Teach me mercy even when that seems to be impossible.

I renounce every temptation to harden my heart;
I want to find no anger in my heart, no bitterness, no self-pity.
I renounce every desire to get even and to condemn;
I desire to bless everyone who in any way has harmed me.
I pray to be forgiven for everything I ever did to harm someone else,
Even those I harmed without knowing it.

My Lord,
Remove my heart of stone and give me a new heart,
a heart of flesh.
Fill it with your humility and meekness;
Soften it with your mercy.

I fervently implore You,
Give me the Holy Spirit,
So that I might know how to love You and my neighbor,
So that I might fight the good fight and always choose to do what is truly good.
Grant that I not trust in my own strength alone
And that I not let disappointment quench my hope,
That hope that is anchored in Your strength and Your love.
Amen.

BLESSING
by Jan Richardson

Now more than ever
let us be the ones
who will not turn away.
let us be the ones
who will go further into the wreck
and deeper into the rubble.
let us be the ones who will enter into the places
of devastation beyond belief
and despair beyond our imagining
and there let us listen
for the Spirit that brooded
over the formless darkness
and there let us look again
for the God who gathered up the chaos
and began to create.
Let us be the ones
who will give ourselves
to the work of making again
and to the endless beginning of creation.

LET EVERY DAY
by Thomas Aquinas

Let every day combine
the beauty of Spring,
the brightness of Summer,
the abundance of Autumn,
and the repose of Winter.
And at the end of my life on earth,
grant that I may come to see and to know You
in the fullness of your glory.