What’s really New about the New Year?

Over a century ago, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) wrote that a world without God would be a world in which things could not really change. Since Nietzsche believed that God had to die so that human beings could be free, he tried to give some sense to a world in which, although there is no possibility of anything really new because time is closed in on itself, we could still find some meaning in the passage of time. His answer was that we preserve our “freedom” in our willing things to be just as they are. Nietzsche wrote movingly and poetically about our willing “the eternal return of the same”. History is not a story of novelty or even of progress, since progress is an idea borrowed from Jewish and Christian faith. History is about everything repeating itself. Our human place in history is to deliberately will this constant repetition, the eternal return of the same, and to do so defiantly, triumphantly.

If you found yourself believing on New Year’s Day that 2001 would be just like 2000, especially if you found yourself hoping or willing that 2001 would be basically the same as 2000, maybe you are, without realizing it, a follower of Nietzsche. For a Christian, that is not a good thing to be. Believers in God have hope because they know they’re not alone in the universe. Things can always be different, because history depends more on God than on ourselves. We do not become free by being left by God to our own devices. Only people who want things to remain basically as they are, who are afraid of real change, resent God’s action in history.

On New Year’s Day, 2001, the Church celebrated the feast of Mary, Mother of God, by focusing again on the quest for world peace. If anything seems to be eternally the same, it’s the search for peace on earth. Every year we speak of peace and pray for it, and then we pray for it again the next year. The Pope’s message for the World Day of Peace, January 1, 2001, spoke of peace as God’s gift, of course, but also of our preparing to receive the gift of peace through a growing dialogue between cultures. The relation between faith and culture has been the subject of much reflection since Vatican II and has been of particular importance in the teaching of Pope John Paul II. He returns to it in his New Year’s message now because the United Nations has declared the year 2001 the “International Year of Dialogue among Civilizations”.

The Holy Father writes of culture as a form of common self-expression. It has both stable and changing elements, some of which are distinctive to one or the other human group. It conditions the human beings who share it without destroying their individual freedom. A healthy culture is open enough to respect other cultures without being destroyed by them. Today, many fear a “homogenization” of culture because of the political and economic and cultural power of western countries, especially of the United States, in a more global society. In this situation, the Pope calls for a dialogue between cultures about causes of conflict today: the impact of new communication technologies, the challenges of migration, the shared values we need to emphasize in this new millennium, human solidarity and the value of human life, the importance of education and also of mutual forgiveness across cultural and ethnic and religious lines.

Secular theorists of social change recognize now that any analysis of change which limits itself to economic and political causes is inadequate. Economic and political factors play themselves out through human agency; and human beings are fundamentally shaped by their cultures. In all the international conferences, alongside the politicians and business leaders, the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) play an increasingly important role. They bring values and other cultural factors into the public forum. What Pope John Paul II is saying this New Year’s Day is that culture is rooted in cult and that religion, more than any secular NGO, can be the major catalyst in shaping a genuinely new order of things. In more traditional language, we would say that religion not only accompanies people and institutions as they are but calls them to conversion, to change.

Religion is a shaper of the cultural fabric which shapes us all; religion becomes public in synagogues, churches, mosques, temples, monasteries and schools and hospitals and many other institutions which serve and shape men and women around the globe. Among the “public personages” of the Catholic faith are the bishops, and the public life of the Archdiocese will change when we greet a new bishop on January 8 in Holy Name Cathedral. Father Jerome Listecki’s episcopal ordination takes place during Vocation Awareness Week (January 7-13, 2001), and I would ask you, as you welcome and pray for Bishop Listecki, to pray as well for our seminarians and those whom God is calling to ordained priesthood in the Church.

The day before Bishop Listecki’s consecration as a bishop, the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 comes to an end. The Holy Father will close the Holy Door in St. Peter’s basilica in Rome on the Feast of the Epiphany of the Lord. Here in the Archdiocese, we will celebrate the concluding Jubilee Mass in the Cathedral on January 5 at 5:15 p.m. Even as we thank God for all the graces and blessings of this year, I would like to thank also those who worked so hard to organize the events that have marked the Jubilee celebrations in the Archdiocese: Father Wayne Prist and the Millennium Committee, assisted by Al Castillo; Sheila McLaughlin and the Office of Divine Worship; the mission preachers; Father Joseph Kruszynski, OFM. Conv., and the Evangelization Office; Ray Coughlin and the Office for Stewardship and Development; the auxiliary bishops and so many others.

The programs to help us share Christ’s gifts, both spiritual and material, begun during the Jubilee Year, will continue beyond it, shaping the life of this local Church for the first few years of the new millennium. My prayer is that these years will not be business as usual, the eternal return of the same, but will witness instead a new springtime for the Gospel. I hope that is your prayer too. God bless you.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Francis Cardinal George, OMI
Archbishop of Chicago