Open any paper, anywhere, anytime. In it you will find the news. There were many news stories throughout 2024 featuring the rise and fall of governments. Some orderly and peaceful through elections, as in the United States. Some disorderly and accompanied by violence, as in Syria. The year 2024 also had its fair share of heinous crimes and inspiring heroism. Technological innovations in artificial intelligence made headlines. Medical breakthroughs in HIV prevention, as well as in food allergy medications and schizophrenia, weight loss, diabetes, and cancer treatments, were less reliably reported. Change has been inexorable, exhilarating—and terrifying.
It has always been so. There will be hundreds of features, essays, and columns that will try to sum it all up, break it all down, and tell you a story. A story of amazing material progress here. A story of cultural degradation there. A tale of democracy’s triumph or demise. Signs and portents of the days to come will be divined from the year’s entrails.
The ancients were less suspicious.
In the longest part of India’s longest epic there is a legend of a virtuous crane. The crane guards a lake deep within a forest. Five legendary brothers, the Pandavas, each discover the lake one after the other. Each brother is warned in turn that the lake’s waters will be poisonous to them unless they satisfactorily answer the crane’s questions before drinking. Each brother ignores the crane and meets his end, except for the final and eldest brother, Yudhisthira. Among the scores of theological, philosophical, and moral questions asked is: “What is the news?” Yudhisthira answers:
This world full of ignorance is like a pan. The sun is fire, the days and nights are fuel. The months and the seasons constitute the wooden ladle. Time is the cook that is cooking all creatures in that pan (with such aids). This is the real news of what is happening in the material world, which is a miserable place full of ignorance.
This answer is judged by the crane, along with all Yudhisthira’s other answers, as correct. This may strike the modern reader as a bit of a downer. All the meaning we invest in the news cycle, our hopes and fears, are deflated. We are not winners or losers of events in the headlines but merely the product of our identification with them. We get caught up only to become frustrated, as Swami Vivekananda describes:
Why are we here? We came here to sip the honey, and we find our hands and feet sticking to it. We are caught, though we came to catch. We came to enjoy; we are being enjoyed. We came to rule; we are being ruled. We came to work; we are being worked.
In Harold Ramis’ comedy classic Groundhog Day, the protagonist, played by Bill Murray, is trapped in a time loop, forced to endlessly repeat the titular day. In a Punxsutawney dive bar, he asks a fellow patron, “What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?” The patron, presumably not himself trapped in a time loop, replies, “That about sums it up.”
How can we experience change in the world as inexorable and by turns exhilarating and terrifying—yet experience ourselves as stagnant and meaningless? By missing God’s presence in the world’s events and our own lives.
Solomon in his wisdom saw the true nature of things: “The lot is cast into the lap, but the decision is the Lord’s alone” (Prov. 16:33). History is not as capricious as it appears, and it does not rule us, even though we are often caught in the illusion that it does. God uses his creation to bring about his ends, penultimately and most dramatically in the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of his son, Jesus Christ:
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth (Eph. 1:7–10).
Overenthusiasm and anxiety in the face of change is the result of getting caught up in the things on earth, losing sight of the things in heaven, and ignoring their gathering together by God in his providence for his purpose of reconciliation. Such ignorance is also at the root of feelings of stagnation and meaninglessness.
While some are carried away, caught up in the year’s events and trends, others fall into despair and indifference. This danger is particularly acute during the Christmas season and on New Year’s Eve with its festivities. Those with many social obligations encounter abundant material distractions from the divine purpose of the season. Those who are socially isolated feel the absence of community most acutely.
If we feel as if our lives are just an endless series of empty repetitions, that we are isolated and alone, we should recall that God is with us, “Emmanuel” (Matt. 1:23), and his desire is for us to find him out!
For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart (Jer. 29:11–13).
At this year’s Acton Institute Christmas party, Fr. Robert Sirico, our president emeritus, shared with the Acton staff and their families and friends the secret to holiness: “Every day, do the next best thing you can do. That’s how you become a saint.” It’s good advice. Transformational if sustained. But where to begin?
After the plans and parties, the noise and bustle, and the loneliness and despair that come in some measure to all over Christmas and New Year’s, there are moments of silence, opportunities for reflection. If you want to put the world’s changes in perspective and find meaning in your life in the New Year, begin with silence and listen:
Be still, and know that I am God!
I am exalted among the nations;
I am exalted in the earth (Ps. 46:10).
