September 1st is upon us again. We pass into a new Church year and into new opportunities to renew our life in Christ on an individual basis and together with our entire parish!
When the secular new year rolls around on January 1st, we celebrate and we look back over the past year and wonder what the new year will bring. We make “resolutions” as to how we will change (or how we really want to change). We talk about the bad habits that we will quit (overeating, excessive drinking or ceasing the abuse of any variety of substances or addictive habits). We talk about the good habits that we will focus on (living healthier, working less obsessively and spending more time with family, volunteering more, living my faith at least at a minimum level).
The new Church Year is even more exciting! It is the opportunity (and an excellent excuse!) to enter into a new year of a Gospel life that is guided by the awesome teachings of Christ’s Church (refined over the last two millennia) and energized by Sacramental and Liturgical practices that transform our lives every Sunday and even every single day!
THIS IS IT! This is the day that the Lord has made! Why wait!? There is no benefit in procrastinating! On the contrary, every time we delay the very simple decision to put one foot in front of the other and start finally moving forward, we waste time and we risk squandering the lifetime that the Lord in in His Love has gifted to us.
September 1st… the new Church year…. based on the Imperial Indiction from the ancient Roman Empire…. signifies a new beginning.
This New Ecclesial Year serves as a kind of “spiritual reset” for the annual cycle of feasts, fasts, and Scriptural readings. This has been the practice at least since the great First Council of Nicaea in the year 325.
Indiction comes from the Latin word for Declaration (indictio). Because on this day – first every 15 years and, to some degree later, annually - a declaration was made throughout the empire about new conditions about property assessments and owing taxes and such.
Well, the Gospel reading for this special day in our Church (Luke 4:16-22) is also all about a “Declaration” made by Jesus Christ in the famous episode where He declares a whole new beginning for the entire world! As Jesus the Lord, puts away the scroll in that Syndgogue, He begins with, “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring GOOD NEWS…!” Everyone in that synagogue is either shocked or filled with insuppressible joy or both! We are invited to open our minds and hearts to the latter reaction on September 1st. As we renew the delight of not only being followers of Christ, but as ones who are called to LIVE and SPREAD that Good NEWS as well!
HAPPY NEW YEAR! As we begin a new Church Year!