On this New Year's Eve, I feel tempted to reprise and adapt to this sad year that is now ending some of the sentiments famously expressed by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II back in 1992:
2024 "is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. ..., it has turned out to be an 'Annus Horribilis'. I suspect that I am not alone in thinking it so. Indeed, I suspect that there are very few people or institutions unaffected by these last months of worldwide turmoil and uncertainty."
The end of the year is inherently a melancholy time, when we look back and remember, among other things, those we have lost this year - from the news world, Harold Fineman and Robert MacNeil, from the world of entertainment, James Earl Jones and Bob Newhart, from sports, Pete Rose and Willie Mays, from popular culture, Phil Donahue and Dr. Ruth Westheimer, as well as two priests from my own local community - all among many others. Their memory is a reminder of what we have lived through together and will never experience again.
For me personally, this has been a particularly tough year in terms of aging and health concerns. But that is perhaps to be expected at my age. What was not expected - or, at least, would not have been expected a decade or more ago. - and which is way more important than any individual personal concerns has been the horrendous transformation of American public life. Our country has always had its problems, and as a nation we have always been anything but perfect. But America 10 years ago was a nicer place than it is now. The political transformation that has overtaken our country is both a cause and a symptom of an accelerating national fall from grace.
The year has had its share of surprising heroes (e.g., Gisèle Pelicot in France) and unsurprising villains (whom we may leave nameless). If politics provided the year's low point, the restoration and reopening of Paris's Notre Dame Cathedral may have marked one of the year's outstanding (if few) high points. In addition to restoring and reopening its glorious monument to Catholic culture, French Catholicism has also been experiencing its own modest revival. In 2024, over 7000 French adults - over one-third of them in the 18-25 demographic - chose to be baptized in the Catholic Church.
Closer to home, I was next door in the parish office one day earlier this month. It was the monthly day for distributing food. The line of those patiently waiting for food was quite long, despite it being one of the coldest days of the year. That such severe need exists in a city of such conspicuous consumption of superfluous abundance points directly to the moral failings of our society, highlighting so much of what is wrong right now with our increasingly unhappy country.
And yet... All those people patiently waiting in line were there because other people - parishioners primarily - were working hard inside organizing and distributing an enormous quantity of much needed food. In their own way, at their own pace, in their own corner of the country, they were doing something helpful. They may or may not have had opinions about the larger national catastrophe. But whatever they thought about that, whatever their worries or frustrations, those did not get in the way of their doing something necessary and useful. How encouraging that, in spite of all the socially manufactured sadness that permeates our world, people are still inspired to let go of that and focus instead on making others' lives better - even if only a little bit better!
In the bigger picture, of course, the end of this wretched year promises the arrival of even more wretchedness.From the fact that 2024 was in so many ways a truly terrible year it sadly does not follow that we are leaving all that behind us. It is hardly the case that we are now moving ahead into a new and better year. The challenge will be not to be overwhelmed by all the wretchedness we citizens have inflicted on ourselves and one another but somehow to let go and look for whatever opportunities present themselves to shine some light into the deepening darkness.
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