A new day (Bread for the Journey 1)

 

January 1

A new year arrived – thank God.  It is a bright and sunny new year’s day.  On my way back from giving a lift I dropped into a local church for my first mass of the year.  I was pleasantly surprised to find a much larger than usual weekday congregation along with a very talented folk group that added to the celebration through song. Sing once and pray twice, as the saying goes. The readings were about peace, blessing and birth.  The gospel reading contained a reference to the circumcision of Jesus (“After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb” – Luke 2:21).  It reminded me that the Christian religion owes its origin to the fleshly, human, Jewish real-world in which Jesus Christ was conceived and born.  Here, in the house of bread, which is what Bethlehem means we are renewed, fed and send out as a eucharistic community to live and work to the praise of God’s glory.  Ite, missa est – go forth the mass is ended. Thanks be to God for a new day, another opportunity to repent, to believe, to turn again to be sent out again and again until our time is called.