Did you realize the liturgy on New Year’s Day does not officially countenance the civil new year?

New Year is traditionally a day when people reckon with the passage of time. That’s particularly true when it also marks the closure of a quarter century. (Yes, I know, some folks want to count the 21^st century from 2001.) My point is: New Year focuses us on the fleeting sands of time. As human beings, we are immersed in time because time is a measure of change and, in both our biology and history, we are changing. God, who does not change, is beyond time. God is Eternal and sees human history — past, present, and future — in one sweep. God does not sit in heaven waiting to see “how things turned out.” He knows. But, as St. Augustine long ago reminded us, God’s knowledge is not coercive: it does not foreclose our freedom.

That said, New Year’s should be a time to adopt God’s perspective, in a variety of ways. The Liturgy for the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God leaves behind various crumbs to guide our way.

Woke wails notwithstanding, there are only two pieces to time: before Christ (B.C.) and after Christ (A.D., “anno Domini”). The coming of Christ is the fundamental cleavage of time.

The Acclamation before the January 1st Gospel tells us that: “In the past, God spoke to our fathers through the prophets; now He speaks to us through His Son.” Re-read that passage. It’s not that the Father “spoke” to us. He “speaks to us” — even though revelation closed with the New Testament (sorry, Mormon friends). The time begun with Jesus’ coming is not just “another event.” It is now. It is “the Year of the Lord.” What began at the First Coming is inseparably linked to the Second Coming, which will not be evaded.

To us in history, we live in times that theologians speak of as both “already” and “not yet.” Everything essential to the consummation of the world has already been put in place. Our widow’s (and widower’s) mites remain, however, to be contributed in history. God made salvation possible; now, it’s our decision. But we are in the “now,” even if also the “not yet,” which is why every Ave we pray captures both moments: “now and at the hour of our death.”

This perspective, of course, is made clear in the Second Reading, where St. Paul reminds us that “when the fulness of time had come, God sent His Son” into the world (Gal 4:4). The “fulness of time” had come. It has come. It isn’t going to get any fuller, only fulfilled.

But the Prayer over the Gifts takes account of the fact that we are also still in the churn of history. It reminds us that God’s mercy “begin[s] all good things and bring[s] them to fulfillment,” i.e., works with us through grace in history. It asks that “just as we glory in the beginnings of your grace, so one day we may rejoice in its completion.” Words the bishop prays in the Rite of Priestly Ordination are true for all of us: “May God, who has begun this good work in you, now bring it to completion.”

How do we assume this perspective? At the risk of alienating some readers, I’ll acknowledge my debt to a thought by Marko Rupnik. His book, Human Frailty, Divine Redemption, is about the Jesuit end-of-day practice called the “examen.” As he explains it, the examen is not just an examination of conscience, i.e., what I did wrong today. It is bigger than that. It is an examination of one’s whole day, trying to see it as God saw it: where I received and used His grace, where I didn’t, what helped and what hindered me. The key is to try to see oneself as God sees him.

Yes, I know there are those who will say that, given the author, medice, cura ipsum! That’s not my point. I have too much worry on how my own actions don’t measure up to my words to worry about somebody else. That said, Rupnik’s failures notwithstanding, the idea he proposes has value: we need to ask to see ourselves as God sees us, from the perspective of eternity. That view does put things in perspective as to how I, a branch, fit onto the vine that is God’s Plan for the salvation of the world. That’s going to happen; the question is whether I am part of the vine or do I get lopped off as a dead drag on its vitality? That is the question of what I am doing with time.

As I previously wrote, the word Luke uses for baby — brephos — is the same one applied to unborn John leaping in Elizabeth’s womb and born Jesus being wrapped in swaddling clothes in a Bethlehem manger. Luke’s pro-life perspective is also clear in the Gospel for this Solemnity. The Gospel is chosen in part because it fits the Octave Day: on the eighth day, according to Old Testament ritual prescriptions, Jesus is circumcised. But Lk 2:21b adds a remark perhaps often overlooked: “He was named Jesus, the name given him by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.”

How that perspective differs from that of contemporary secularism! “Jesus” isn’t prospectively named just in case Mary’s clump of tissue actually turns into a human being (surprise!) and gets born. Gabriel doesn’t say, “if you choose, do name Him Jesus, for He will be great and called Son of the Most High if He gets born” (Lk 1:31). (Similarly, John the Baptist gets his name before birth: see Lk 1:13.)

No, Gabriel is not playing the game married couples do, especially before their first baby: “she’ll be Alexandra is she’s a girl and John if he’s a boy.”  It’s clear not just this fetus but this future fetus is intended, planned, and loved by God (which makes your intentions, planning, and loving not unimportant but subordinate). Luke’s matter-of-fact pronouncement about “the name given Him… before He was conceived in the womb” no doubt would have resonated for Jews with the words of Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations” (1:5). God did not know a “potential person.” He did not appoint a “blob of tissue.” He knew and planned for John.

That vision needs to be kept in mind the next time you hear a false “Christian” prophet of Baal — oftentimes Protestant but sometimes nominally Catholic — tell you that the Bible has nothing to say about abortion.

Recently I was asked “since when has January 1 been a holy day?” I noted it had been many centuries and that the doctrine it affirms goes back roughly 1500+ years. My inquirer was not some “C&E” (Christmas and Easter) Catholic. The fact that the question arose triggered two observations. First, the Catholic bishops of the United States’ subjecting January 1 to their “sometimes holydays aren’t holydays” rule, even though it is a civil holiday most people have off, no doubt contributes to this. Second, civil society has largely amputated New Year’s from Christmas but for the décor. Christmas is for kids; New Year’s for grownups headed out on the town.

I’ve long argued that we need to create a Catholic counterpart to New Year’s. I applaud Knights of Columbus and parishes that create celebrations that are affordable and include families. I laud parishes that have also revived and incorporated some “Watch Hour” or even midnight Mass as ways of marking the passage of the year.

But I would also note that, given that people do go out to New Year’s parties that run late, which means they get home late and generally want to sleep late, the typical Sunday Mass order (especially in parishes where the last Mass is 11 am or noon) could perhaps be accommodated to include some later Mass on New Year’s Day. When I lived with my young children in Warsaw, for example, the Dominican parish we often attended had a Sunday Mass at 2 pm, which worked well for families. Perhaps pastors thinking about the unique time contours of New Year’s Day in America might want to consider something like that.