The beginning of a solar year is totally arbitrary. We celebrate the start of our new cycle around the sun on January 1, but the Romans, whose calendar we inherited, only started doing that in 153 BCE. Prior to that, the year started March 1 with the advent of Spring. The Byzantine Empire (the Christianized Roman Empire) started their year on September 1 (as the Orthodox ecclesiastical calendar continues to do). The Western Church in many cases start their new year with the first Sunday of Advent (unless you start introducing older/different expressions then you're back at square one trying to decide when your new year starts). The Jewish New Year, like the Chinese, is lunar, so the date maddeningly drifts. Other cultures have other dates of special significance to the cycles of their lives and stories.
I call this to mind because today's readings for Mass are a bit of a mix. The first reading is from Exodus (Ex. 12.1-14) and is the institution of the first Passover and that the month would now be the first of months, a New Year as it were. The Epistle is another passage from St. Paul (Rom. 13.8-14) where he tells us how "It is now the moment for you to wake from sleep," and that the time of salvation is really close. In the Gospel (Mt. 18.15-20) Jesus defines that major decisions in His name are done as a group.
Oh yeah, that's all VERY well integrated. So much for a Sunday theme.
Still, I'm going to go with the fact that our OT lesson is about the beginning of the story of the assembly of the people of God, born out of the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt and that it's the beginning of the Byzantine New Year. The people of God have just been liberated, it's a new beginning. What then, does that mean?
Well, there are a couple of things here. St. Paul quotes not just Jesus but the whole Law and the Prophets when he states that, "Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law." (Rom. 13.10) Jesus Himself tells us that, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them." We have a two-fold duty. First, we are called in our redemption to be a community of people, not a bunch of individuals considered separately, where all our actions and petitions are done in common. Second, our role is to fulfil the Law of God, expressed as loving our neighbours as ourselves.
The uncomfortable truth here is we cannot presume to "go our own way" in the Kingdom of God. Merriam-Webster defines individualism as a doctrine that the interests of the individual are or ought to be ethically paramount. However, our call as the people of God demands that we hold the interests of others as paramount and that our actions should be done in common agreement. An expression of the Gospel message that stresses the individual and the personal to the exclusion of the common life of the Church and its mission to others is a distortion of the Gospel, but one that is very common in the West. Don't get me wrong, the individual is still important in being the focus of charity or in the making of a moral decision, but we must realize that these individuals, ourselves and our neighbours, do not occur in a vacuum, that everything we do is impactful to others. Even holding oneself apart from everyone still has a subtle affect on everyone. We have to remember we were called out as a group, we were redeemed as a group, we act as a group, and Jesus is present when we are together as a group.
So in the coming new Christian year, whenever that is, perhaps it is time we resolve to remember we are a group, and we fulfill God's Law as a group. May Jesus always be among us as we strive for that goal. Happy New Year, brothers and sisters.
