NEW Year was celebrated in spectacular style in 2016. Images of the pyrotechnics in Melbourne and Sydney flashed around the world. Australia is truly a prosperous country can afford tens of millions of $$$$ on “fire-crackers” (sic).
But they were spectacular and they promote our cities internationally and bring visitors to the country. It seems right headed to affirm their value but wrong to deny that this money could tender medical and educational services to the impoverished. The Medieval logicians had an expression for this: you can be right in what you affirm and wrong in what you deny.
Elsewhere other than Australia, 2016 was celebrated by a troubled world which seems to be more filled with violence and tension than many years past.
In 1968, Pope Paul VI designated January 1 as an annual World Day of Peace. His words in Marialis Cultus remain particularly poignant:
“This is a fitting occasion for renewing adoration of the newborn ‘Prince of Peace’, for listening once more to the glad tidings of the angels (Luke 2:14), and for imploring from God, through the Queen of Peace, the supreme gift of peace.”
This year, as ever, the Church prays that the Mother of God and the Mother of the Church will hear our supplications, suffer us not to be in adversity but deliver all the nations of the earth from danger.